March 25, 2016 – Good Friday
© 2016 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon can be heard here.
There are certain places
in this world where we are not supposed to go. Most of them are roped off for
our own protection. High voltage, vicious dogs, molten lava—these are all good
reasons to KEEP OUT! But what about the not-so-good reasons. What about your
neighbor—the one who keeps the perfectly manicured lawn, practically mowing the
grass with a pair of scissors. That sign in his front yard that says, “Please
keep off the grass,” doesn’t it make you want to veer ever so slightly off the
sidewalk into his lawn when no one is looking? What about the Teachers’ Lounge?
Don’t you still want to know what happens in there? Aren’t you just a little
bit curious to know what your mother has been keeping in her purse all these
years?
As far as I know, my two
grandmothers didn’t coordinate their efforts, but both of them laid down the
same unbreakable law: thou shalt not enter thy grandmother’s living room. A
grandmother’s living room was, by definition, a room in which no child would
ever have reason to go. I still remember standing in the foyer of one of their
houses and cracking the louvered doors that screened off that sanctuary so that
I could get a peek at what was enshrined in there. Pristine ivory carpet.
Perfectly upholstered chairs. A sofa that looked as if no one had ever sat upon
it. Even the light, straining to shine in through the decorative curtains,
seemed too rich for a boy like me. It was beautiful. It was more than
beautiful. It was holy. And it was off limits.
But, when you tell a
child that something is too nice, too wonderful, for him to experience, what do
you think that makes him want to do—want to do more than anything he has ever
wanted to do in his whole, short life? “What is behind this door is too
marvelous for you to fathom. Please, don’t peek.” Yeah, right.
I don’t know whether it
was my experience in my grandmothers’ houses that caused it or whether it was
simply the same innate desire that was awakened by the pictures in my
children’s bible, but the only other place on this earth where I wanted to go
more than my grandmothers’ living rooms was the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem
Temple. That might sound like a stretch, but I assure you that, for this nine-year-old,
it was not. On one of the picture pages in the bible that we used in Sunday
school was an illustration of what the holiest place in the world might have
looked like. And, when I heard my Sunday school teacher tell me that I wasn’t
allowed in—that only one man was allowed to go in on one day of the year and
that even then a rope was tied around his ankle in case he did something wrong
and God struck him dead on the spot—I knew that that was the place I wanted to
be.
It was, after all, the
place where God lived—where his presence dwelt on the earth. And, in that
strange paradox that strikes at the heart of the relationship between God and
humankind, the Holy of Holies was, therefore, both the place of perfect
communion with God to which all of God’s people are beckoned yet also the place
where no one except the High Priest was ever allowed to go. Like all paradoxes,
that makes perfect sense yet also completely defies understanding.
What does it mean for us
to believe that we are unworthy to stand in the holy presence of the Almighty
yet also believe that God wraps his loving arms around us? What does it mean
for us to worship God as transcendent and ineffable yet name him as “father”
and “friend?” What does it mean for us to know the depths of our imperfection—our
complete inability to be the people we know God is calling us to be—yet still hear
God say to us, “You are my beloved son,” or “You are my beloved daughter?” That
is what today is all about. In the crucifixion of our Lord and Savior, the Son
of God, whose flesh was torn for us, we see the temple curtain ripped in two. We
are given a glimpse into the inner sanctuary. We are beckoned into God’s holy
presence. But how?
One of our Lenten
speakers this year was the Rev. Kelley Hudlow, who serves as the manager of The
Abbey, which is a church disguised as a coffeehouse in the Avondale
Neighborhood of Birmingham. She came and spoke to us about what it means to be
a church in a non-church context. She invited us to consider how we, too, might
be a place for unchurched people to call home. Before she came to visit, I
heard her say in a workshop on that subject that, if you’re going to make
yourself available to inquirers who didn’t grow up in the church, you’d better
be ready to explain your theology of atonement. In other words, she cautioned
us that non-Christians who are asking about the Christian faith really want to
know how it is that Jesus’ death on the cross makes a difference. How is it
that what happened at Calvary changes our relationship with God? How does
Jesus’ death work?
I heard her make those
comments two months ago, and I still can’t get them out of my head. And today,
Good Friday, I find myself confronting my own theology of atonement. What is
that I believe about the cross of Christ that makes a difference in my own
life? How has my relationship with my Creator been changed by Good Friday in a way
that gives me good news to share with our congregation and with the world? Do I
believe, as so many Christians do, that God’s wrath against humanity needed to
be satisfied and that Jesus, the perfect sacrificial offering upon the cross,
took my place—that he was damned so that I did not have to be? I don’t know
about you, but, when I peer through the torn curtain and get a glimpse at the
divine nature, I see not a wrathful God but a loving one. So what, then? Is
Jesus merely an emblem of God’s unchanging love—a testament to God’s unwavering
willingness to forgive? If so, why was the cross necessary? Why was Jesus
necessary? I know in my heart and in my bones and, more importantly, in the words
of scripture that Jesus’ death changes everything, but how can we believe that
without believing in a God who makes no sense? How can we understand that which
cannot be understood?
Today we make our journey
to the foot of the cross in order that we might stare up at the one who was
crucified for us and, through his torn flesh, see beyond the curtain that has
always separated us from God. It is by his blood, as the author of the Letter
to the Hebrews writes, that we have confidence to enter God’s sanctuary and stand
in his holy presence. This new and living way has been opened for us through
the tearing of the curtain, which is his flesh. As William Barclay put it in
his commentary on Hebrews, when God became man in the person of Jesus Christ,
the flesh of that man was a veil that covered the divine nature until, at last,
that veil was ripped upon the cross (p. 134). Now, staring at the one who died
for us, we see for the first time that which has always been true even before
time itself existed: God’s nature is always to love.
As I understand it, it is
our sinful nature and the guilt and shame that our moral failures have produced
within us that have made it impossible for us to see God’s loving nature. We
are the veil. Our human nature is the veil behind which the Incarnate Word was
covered. It is our sin that necessitated the curtain which kept us out of God’s
holy presence. But the cross of Christ is the final translation of the Word of
God. And the Word that God has spoken is love. The death of Jesus does not
change God—it does not even affect him at all—but it has the power to
completely change us. Now, standing at the foot of the cross, we see the
unveiled love of God for the first time. Now, in the agony of the crucifixion,
we hear God say to us plainly and clearly and perfectly, “I am love without
limits. I am love with no end.”
Look upon the Crucified
One and see God’s nature unveiled. Stare at the flesh of Christ torn asunder
and peer through the ancient curtain. We are beckoned inside. We are welcomed
into God’s presence. There is no separation anymore. There is only love.
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