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A sermon is a manner of oral communication and therefore words and sentence structure/order would be added, altered, or deleted at the moment of delivery. + In Nomine Jesu + The Rev. Evan Gaerther The passion of our Lord is a story with many layers of meaning. Every year the story of our Lord’s suffering can be heard and visualized and because of that past years experiences what is heard and seen in the mind’s eye is enriched with greater meaning. For you this year it is possible the struggle of Peter that is especially rich with meaning. For someone else it is the struggle of Pontius Pilate with truth and power and how they intersect in his life. And for another it is the visual image of Jesus’ mother and the beloved disciple in each other’s grasps at the foot of the cross. All the harmony which God created within us at creation is seen in remarkable dissonance when God’s own son is rejected. We may be good at fooling ourselves for a little while that we are living the good life. You may have developed coping skills to deal with the abusive drinking of someone you care about. We can develop the skills to avoid noticing the problems in our society. We all like to achieve a certain amount of harmony in our life and maintain it. But the words and images of Good Friday strike a dissonant chord into our manufactured lives of peacefulness. Sin is not just the action but is a statement of relationship with God. Sin is defying God and seeking to become god’s of our own lives. Our disobedience of God and the rejection of the relationship is the casting off of the author of life. Sin and death are interwoven together. The mark that God has for us in creation itself is for us to be in a relationship of mutual love and favor with him. Our reward for missing this mark is death. On Good Friday, most clearly of all days, sin and death are interwoven together. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that “the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” The power of death depends on sin. Death grows out of our rejection of the author of life. When Adam and Eve rejected God and sought to be masters of their own life, death was given power over all of creation. But the power of sin also depends on death. Sin relies upon a false sense of need for self-preservation. The idea being that we are on our own and have to watch out for number one. Sin feeds on a self-preservation mentality which forces us to seek comfort and reliance upon the false idols of fame, money, pride, and self-seeking pursuits. Sin springs from the threat of death, from our fear of the threat of death. Death is the confirmation of humanity’s decision to separate from the Author of Life. The troubles and disappointments of life are existent because as individuals and as societies we break out of a relationship with God. God’s judgment of death given to Adam and Eve and all those that followed is only a confirmation of our decision to live apart from Him. Good Friday is a day we must confront our responsibility for death. This is called guilt. This can be used to describe our regret over things we have done wrong in our relationships with others. But Good Friday illuminates the evil of the world stems from our inability to truly be who God created and intended us to be…people who fear, love and trust in him above all. The events surrounding Jesus death on the cross highlight our inability to fear, love and trust in Him above al things. You and I are made to live and function to be truly human, to truly live as children of God’s creation. But too often we seek to live as our own creations and become our own masterpieces without respect to the author and perfector of our lives. Judas sought to fashion his messiah into the messiah he wanted and not the one he needed. When he saw Jesus accept the expensive ointment of a woman that could have been sold to help many poor, he left and made the arrangements with the chief priests and elders to betray Jesus. He desired to force Jesus into becoming a radical political leader by forcing conflict with the leaders of the time. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, desired to sit at the right and left of Jesus when he came into his kingdom. I suppose later they would figure out who got the right and who received the left, but for now it was important for them to clarify their positions of power. Jesus revealed to them his kingdom was not about power and who had it, but about serving and giving of oneself. After Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead the rulers of the people met together determining that if Jesus became much more powerful they would lose their position and nation through conflict with Rome. It was better for one man to die than the whole nation, Caiaphas prophesied. The leaders of the people sought to protect themselves rather than connect to the author of life. Peter vowed he would not leave the side of Jesus even if all others would fall away. But three times before the rooster crowed Peter showed that he could not manufacture his fidelity. The struggle of Pontius Pilate for truth created an inner turmoil. He washed his hands clean, presuming he could fashion himself innocent in this whole affair. But Pilate would never be clean of the blood of this man. We too may wish to seek in others the reasons for Jesus’ crucifixion and also wash clean our hands of this affair. But we cannot separate ourselves from our sin, we cannot separate ourselves from the death of Jesus. As much as sin and death speak to our separation from God, the author of life; the miracle of Good Friday is seen in Jesus connecting himself to our sin and death. Death and sin are the result of our separating ourselves from God, the author of life. Life and salvation are found in God reuniting himself with us, through becoming death and receiving the judgment our sin deserves. Through faith in Christ and his gift of life on the cross we are reconnected to God and so grab hold of God’s power over sin and death’s judgment. Soli Deo Gloria -->> Home |