Why is this day called Good when we
are remembering such horrible things that happened? Well, it was on this day that a new and living
way was opened to God. It was on this
day that death itself was put to death.
This is why we call it Good. We cannot understand how this is, but we do
know its after effect – we have become participants in the divine nature as
Peter writes in his 2nd epistle 1:4.
This means that the Holy Spirit is present with us and at work in us
making us to be more like Jesus in our character and actions proving the love
of God the Father. The wrath of God that
humanity deserved to have poured upon us has in God’s great love become God
pouring himself out upon humanity to heal us.
I can’t explain how this happened so that we can understand what
happened when death and God met when Jesus the incarnate Son of God died on the
cross. But we do have an analogy from
nature to help us visualize it – the black hole.
At the heart of every galaxy in the
universe that is of any size is a supper-massive black hole. Black holes form when stars burnout their
fuel and collapse to become neutron stars and then some of these collapse even
further until gravity just becomes so powerful that not even light can escape
this thing that looks like a perfectly spherical black hole. On every black hole is a point of no return
known as the event horizon. Things get
weird at this point.
If you were falling into a black hole,
the closer you get to the event horizon space and time (spacetime) will begin
to warp. For you, you wouldn’t notice
this warping. It would seem like, “blip,
I’m gone”. It would be all over in less
than an instant. But for someone
watching you fall into the black hole, it gets spooky. Space warps.
Seeing you fall feet-first we watch you begin to stretch
feet-first. Your feet and legs begin to
elongate as your head stays the same. The
distance between your subatomic particles begins to expand as gravity pulls
them apart until you finally disintegrate into basic particles; like a balloon
expanding until it pops.
All the while you would start to orbit
around the black hole ever faster approaching the speed of light and this
causes time to warp. For us watching,
the closer you get to the speed of light the slower time appears to go and the
effect of this is that we would never see you or your particles pass the event
horizon and go on into the black hole.
If we could talk to you, the sound of your voice would be slower and
deeper. It would take years to nearly
forever for a mere sound to come to us while you would experience yourself
talking normally.
Once in the black hole, who
knows? Like death we have no idea what
goes on in there. But amazingly, as you
can see in this doctored up picture spewing forth from the black whole is a jet
stream of matter that shoots across the galaxy seeding it with the stuff that
stars need to come into life and for planets to form. Without black holes our universe would not
exist, life would not exist. Though
black holes seem like the death of everything they make new life possible.
Thinking about the Christian faith in these
terms, the great mystery of the Christian faith is that God the Son who became
human as Jesus of Nazareth has somehow experienced death himself when Jesus died
on the “black hole” of the cross. God
the Father and God the Holy Spirit somehow suffered the death of God the Son. These are things too big for this small mind to
comprehend. Thinking pastorally, it is helpful
to know that God the Trinity knows in his very self what it is to die and even
to loose a child to death. But, death is
not the end. Let us not forget that
resurrection was forth-coming for God the Son because death could not hold
him. The result of death encountering
God in the super massive black hole of the cross was that the life of God
expressed itself in the resurrection of Jesus, God the Son still incarnate but
now in resurrected flesh. He has gone
through death and come out the other side.
Moreover, the Holy Spirit spews the life of Jesus’ resurrected humanity forth
upon us and into us like the matter stream that inexplicably jets forth from
black holes and seeds galaxies with the stuff of which stars and planets and
everything else are made. But for now, this Holy Spirit stream of new life in
Christ brings forth his life in us until Jesus comes again to make all things
new.
John gave us a very graphic image of
this when that Roman soldier pierced Jesus’ side and water and blood began to
spew forth upon him. This is what is
happening to humanity and all of the creation now since God the Son has died
and risen. We are being flooded with the
life of God and are being recreated to bear forth the living image of Christ
Jesus and his self-giving love. God the
Trinity has written upon our hearts a new covenant, a new and living way of
coming to him and of living in response to him.
The way of this new life isn’t for us
to simply pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and simply be good people who
live according to higher standards of morality and altruism. No, rather it is that we live forth from the
new life of faith, hope, and unconditional love that we find in God's continual
presence with us bearing our old life away into the black hole of the cross and
transforming us with Jesus’ resurrected life.
Jesus' once and for all death has made it possible for us to be a part
of God's now and forever life-giving, person-restoring work as we listen to
Jesus with ears made alive by the Holy Spirit whom he has poured into us making
us able to trust and to follow him.
Unlike death is for us, Jesus' death
had a purpose. It was a purposeful
death. But, we still have the capacity
to void his death of its purpose. When
we let go of our hope and cease trying to discern and follow his guidance in the
acts of love and good that the Trinity wants us to do with the new life he has
given to us we make Jesus' death meaningless.
When we turn our backs on each other and let hate, unforgiveness, and
disunity into our communities of faith we make his death to be in vain. When we cease to encourage and love one
another and rather gossip and lie and ignore one another, we have done nothing
less than crucified our Jesus once again.
Friends, for Jesus’ sake live your new life before the Triune God of
grace in the new and living way, the way that is steeped in prayer, worshipping
and rejoicing always, studying and meditating upon the Scriptures, turning from
selfish ambitions and narcissistic tendencies to love everyone unconditionally
no matter who or what they are. Jesus,
God the Son become a man and died in order to write a new and living way of
being in relationship with God and one another onto our hearts. Yet, God raised him and through him all
things are being made new according to his image. Such is the new and living way he has given
us. This is reality. Live accordingly. Amen.
