19 April 2019 St. Athanasius Lutheran
Church
Holy and Good Friday
Vienna, VA
Holy and Good Friday
Meditations
Isaiah 52:13-53:12;
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18-19
OT and Epistle Meditation:
High priests passed through the curtains and into
the holy of holies, into the presence of God, in the Tabernacle and the Temple.
Jesus passed through the heavens, into the
presence of His Father. Our great High Priest who offered
Himself as the sacrifice for the sin of the world.
He knows the onslaught of temptation, yet He did
not succumb to it.
He prayed as we do, to Him who was able to save
Him from death, but was He heard? He died, after all. But He was
heard, for He was saved - not from death, but by rising from the
dead. And so He became the source of eternal salvation, saving us from death,
too. All who obey Him. All who repent and believe the
Gospel. For that is what He preached, from beginning to end. Salvation
by grace through faith alone. Through Him alone.
Our suffering servant.
The one Isaiah described.
The one who bore our sin
in His body.
The one marred beyond human semblance.
The majestic one, yet
with no form or majesty when you looked at Him.
The one despised and rejected by men.
The one bore our griefs and sorrows.
The one stricken,
smitten, and afflicted for us.
The one wounded for our transgressions and
crushed for our iniquities.
The perfect lamb led to slaughter.
All this, for you.
That you may be His own.
We could ask why. Maybe we should. But we’ll never
understand the answer, the love. We can only see it, hear of it, and marvel at
it. And we do. Tonight. That’s what this night is all
about. Not mourning, not pity, not sorrow. But to marvel at
the love of God, shown to us this night. That a few
moments in darkness tonight yield to an eternity in light. With the one
who loves you more than we could ever imagine. The one who
loves you like this.
Meditation #1 (John 18:1-11):
Gardens are supposed to be places of rest and
peace, of calmness and serenity. Into just such a garden satan injected sin and evil, unrest and rebellion,
and so it has been ever since. And so the Garden of
Gethsemane. The betrayer comes in this place of peace and prayer with
his cohort of soldiers and officers.
Jesus, though, will not play their game. He
could. He showed them that He could, causing them all
to fall to the ground with simply His Word. For that is
His weapon, and a most powerful one at that. But then He returns to peace. For
that is why He came. A world created peaceful but then plunged into not peace
will become peaceful again. Through Him.
So put your sword away Peter, He says. Wrong weapon. Cutting off ears will do not good, just as
neither would cutting off hands and feet and gouging out eyes do no good in
eliminating the sin that begins in our hearts and minds. Only the Word of God
can do this. And He will. He goes now, just as it is written of Him.
Yet how often do we choose the wrong weapon, like
Peter? Instead of the Gospel, instead of forgiveness, we strike with our own
swords. No. Put your sword away. Listen to the Word. Hear Him die, that we may
live. In peace again.
Meditation #2 (John 18:12-27):
Jesus is bound. Or is it Peter? Jesus doesn’t act
as one who is bound, but free. Peter, though, is bound. In
fear, in sin, in death. Even to the point of doing what he thought he
would never do: deny his Lord. Three times.
You know how it is. So did the apostle Paul who
said: The good that I would do I do not do; but the evil I do not want to
do, that I do (Romans
7). Peter
didn’t want to deny Jesus. It must have seemed like an out of body experience
to him, like hearing someone else say those words that were coming out of his
mouth. Those words he vowed he would never say.
But there is no contradiction with Jesus, no
inner turmoil, no confusion. What He speaks in private He speaks in public. And
His words and deeds agree. For Jesus, while divine and human, is not saint and
sinner like us, but the sinless Son of God. And He will do as Caiaphas so
unknowingly prophecied: He will die for the
people. He will lay down His life for you. And when the day of the
judgment of all flesh comes, announced not by the crow of a rooster but the
blast of a trumpet, Jesus will not deny knowing you. But confess: I am one of
them, and he, she, is with me.
Meditation #3 (John 18:28-40):
What is truth? That is what Pilate
asked. But why did he ask it? Did he think the truth unknowable? Was he
sneering at the thought of there being this thing called truth? Or did he think
it didn’t matter? What is truth? What does truth matter? What
difference does it make? What is that to me? Pilate would do what was
expedient, what was necessary.
It is the question many are asking in our day and
age. What difference does the truth make? What is that to me? The truth is
often inconvenient and messy. The truth is sometimes hard to hear. So better to
do what is expedient, what is necessary, whatever I think is good and best and
right for me.
But Jesus said that He came to bear witness
to the truth. It matters to Him. For the truth is the
only thing that saves. The truth of our sin, the truth
of our Saviour. What is expedient and
necessary may help for a bit, but only the truth can help for eternity. Pilate
had blinders on - he was thinking only of the here and now and this problem
before him. As we often do. But Jesus was thinking of much more than that. This
moment in time would serve an eternal purpose, far more important. A kingdom not of this world.
Lord Jesus, help us see that kingdom, not our
own. And lead us there, in truth.
Meditation #4 (John 19:1-16a):
Behold the man! Behold what man has
become. How far has man fallen. Created
to have dominion over creation and care for it. Created to love and be
in fellowship with God. Now, treating each other like this. Flogging.
Mocking. A crown of thorns.
Behold the man, and men behaving like animals.
Behold your King! That’s what Pilate said
next. We have no king but Caesar, the chief priests answered.
Just as Old Testament Israel rejected God as their king in favor of having an
earthly king, so again. Sad. Sad
then, and sad now.
Normally, Pilate would have been happy to hear
such allegiance to Caesar. But not now, not here, not like
this. It didn’t make sense. The Jews had always resisted Caesar and his
rule, not exalted him. So now he was out of options. He had tried. Jesus was
not guilty. He said it three times. He meant it. He knew it. But what is truth,
right? That’s just not always how the world works. Sometimes, well, duty calls.
So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. The guilt was
theirs, not his. At least, that what he wanted to believe . . .
Meditation #5 (John 19:16b-24):
Each of the soldiers got a piece of Jesus, a
piece of His clothing, to take Him with them; a souvenir. Or was it payment for
services rendered? Well, it was according to Scripture and the prophets, so it
had to be so.
Jesus has garments for us, too. But not of linen or flax, seamless or not. He clothes us
with His righteousness. The righteousness He earned here, on the cross, for us.
That we might never be naked, never without His righteousness
before God, but clothed in His purity. And this clothing He has for the
whole world. It is not divided up or cast lots for - a little Jesus here, a
little Jesus there. But all of Jesus for all of us.
And so we take Him home with us, having recevied Him here in His Word. And in the end, He will take
us home with Him, too. To live with Him forever.
Meditation #6 (John 19:25-30):
It is finished.
The pain is finished.
The suffering and agony is finished.
The bleeding is finished.
The mocking and taunting is finished.
The forsakenness is finished.
The humiliation is finished.
The darkness is finished.
The atoning for the sin of the world is finished.
The breathing is finished.
The dying is finished.
The life is finished.
The redemption is finished.
The old testament is
finished.
It is finished.
And it is beginning.
The rest is beginning.
The new testament is
beginning.
The resurrection is beginning.
The forgiveness is beginning.
The restoration is beginning.
The exaltation is beginning.
The joy is beginning.
The light is beginning.
The victory is beginning.
The giving is beginning.
The kingdom is beginning.
The feasting is beginning.
The life that will not end is beginning.
It is beginning.
For He bowed His head and
gave up His spirit. He handed over the Spirit. To us,
the Church, His Bride. So for us, too, it is finished. The old life, the old man. And it is beginning. The new life, the new man. For in Christ, you are a new
creation.
Meditation #7 (John 19:31-42):
It was the day of preparation for the Sabbath,
for the Passover. But this was also the day God had been preparing for since
the beginning. The day all the types and prophecies had
pointed to. When the shepherd would die for the sheep.
When God would die to save His creation. When we would see the love of God in all its height and width and
length and breadth. A love bigger than we could ever
imagine.
So the body of Jesus is laid in a tomb. But not by any of the twelve, as we might expect; one last, loving
act. No, it is a man named Joseph instead. And
Nicodemus. Perhaps it is better that none of the twelve did it - cannot
now accuse them of faking the resurrection.
But who is Joseph? We don’t know much about him.
But Nicodemus we know, we’ve met before. And he seems like a new man. He came
to Jesus at night the first time, as John said. Now, he is different; bold.
Perhaps the words of Jesus came true for him and he was born again, born from
above. Perhaps he looked at the cross as his ancestors had looked at the bronze
snake on the pole, and believed. And believing received life.
Would we have been so bold? Hard
to think so. We fail and fall at so much less. But we, too, look at
Jesus on the cross and believe. Believe Him the Son of God. Believe Him the
promised Messiah. Believe Him our substitute. And that is enough. With such
faith the poison of the serpent’s bite is thus healed and we do not die.
Through the water and the blood that flowed, too, are we given life. We are washed. We eat and drink. And we are new men
and women. Born from above. Born from the one who came
from above, but descended to us, that we who have
descended into sin, might rise with Him.
And you have. That’s what this night is all
about. The dying of the Life, and the living of the dead.
In the Name of the Father, and of the (+) Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.