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Friday, April 18, 2014

Good Friday


Matthew 27:45-46 - Good Friday Tenebrae - April 18, 2014
Reconciled to God
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 
That portion of Scripture which we consider this evening the Holy Spirit caused to be recorded in the twenty-seventh chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, starting at the forty-fifth verse, which we read as follows in Jesus’ name: 
Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land.  And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
These are your words, holy Father; sanctify us in the truth; your word is truth.  Amen. 
The first thing that God created was light.  He spoke his Word and there it was: light shining in the darkness.  All things that God created were made by the Father through the Son.  He is the eternal Word of God.  Wherever the Son of God goes forth from his Father, the Father accomplishes that for which he sent him.  God sends his Son by speaking.  The Son does what the Father says.  God spoke, and there was light. 
God did not create light for his own sake.  He himself is light.  He doesn’t need what he creates.  We do.  Light, the very first thing that God created, was made for the sake of man, the very last thing that God created.  He is the crown of God’s creation and love.  Everything on earth was made for our sake.

But is there anything in creation, among all the things we need, that is more basic than light?  Nothing can live without it.  Not plants or animals, nothing small or large.  Without light, everything that God made would be for naught.  It would be dead and useless the moment it was created.  Every earthly blessing that God showers upon us depends on this first fundamental gift. 
One of the arguments that evolutionists make against the biblical account of creation is that according to Genesis, God made light, and even counted the days, four days before he created the sun and moon and stars.  “How primitive,” they say. “They didn’t have the scientific knowledge that we do!”  But this is really quite a silly objection, and only goes to prove their stubborn impudence — as though anyone, let alone God, would make such a blunder in inspiring the creation account so as to forget that the sun produces light.  No, the reason God waited until the fourth day to create the sun and moon and other fixtures in the sky was precisely to confound those who will not believe.  It is because the sun and moon and stars and planets are not and have never been the source of light on earth.  God is.  Period.  The sun is but a humble servant of God, as are the other heavenly bodies.  Light comes before the one who bears it.  This means that in order for the sun to send light, God must tell it to.  He must give it permission.  He must provide the very light for the sun to shine.  And God does so, because what he made is good. 
God made everything by calling it forth by his word.  But to man, he gave special attention.  He formed him from the earth and gave him life by breathing his Spirit into his nostrils.  All creation was called good.  But only man was created to share completely in God’s goodness.  God made Adam and Eve in his own image. This means that they were created to have perfect fellowship with their Maker.  They had perfect righteousness and knowledge of him who made them.  They dwelt in the perfect, uncreated light of his love.  All creation was there to give praise to God by serving man.  And as all things showed traces of God’s gracious character – the magnificent mountains, the gentle horse, the faithful dog – so also the light that shone from the sun and moon only served as a sacred reminder of the Light, which is God himself.  Creation was perfect, because the relationship between God and man was perfect. 
But man lost his fellowship with God by rejecting God’s word.  He believed the devil who spoke a different word – a lie that hurled Adam and Eve and all their children into spiritual darkness, and that brought earth under their curse.  The devil bore a false light.  In fact, this is what his traditional name, Lucifer, means: light bearer.  He promised that light came from within them, and that they could be like God.  But by rejecting God’s word, man rejected God’s Son by whom light and all things were made. 
The fact that God did not utterly destroy creation once Adam fell is evidence that God had further plans to save us.  The fact that he did not immediately tell the water to stop being wet or seeds to stop sprouting life shows that, although God cursed what he made, he also desired his creation to continue serving us to some degree.  And it does.  Even the sun and moon and stars of heaven continue to obey God’s command to shine light on his disobedient creatures.  But what accounts for such kindness from God?  What was God’s plan to save us?  This they could only know by listening to God’s word. 
God promised that the Seed of the woman would crush the devil’s head.  But this salvation also required that the devil bruise his heel.  This means that in order to save us from the lie of the devil and from the guilt of our sin, God would have to join his rebellious creation and suffer the death that we deserved.  What amazing love!  The crown of God’s creation, in his sinful pursuit for the illusive light within, rejected the Light of God and chose darkness instead.  And so the Crown of the Creator, that is Christ, chose to assume our flesh and blood so that he might take the curse of God upon himself.  He who is himself the uncreated Light, by whom light first shone in the darkness, descended into the darkness of our sin in order to take that darkness upon himself.  And he did.  God’s curse is real.  As Jesus hung on the cross paying for the sins of Adam and all his children, he felt the full force of it.  God the Father treated his own Son as we deserved — so much that he even commanded the sun and stars to stop shining on him.  O darkest woe. 
If you have ever been out of town in the country or forest on an overcast night, where none of the stars could pierce through the cloud cover, you know what darkness is.  As a child I remember up at our lake one time having to navigate through the woods about 100 yards from one cabin to another in pitch-black darkness.  You could feel the darkness.  That’s how oppressive it is when all your senses are heightened by fear, but you cannot see a thing.  I got from point A to point B, I remember, only by taking advantage of the intermittent flashes of lighting that would briefly illumine the way.   
But when darkness covered the earth for three hours from noon to three as Jesus hung on the cross, there were no such flashes of mercy.  There was no relief to the darkness that Jesus bore, because their was no lifting of the curse until Jesus paid the full price for our sin.  His Father created everything through him; but now creation itself abandoned him and refused to serve its Lord, because he bore our sin that rejected the light of God’s word.  But much worse than the physical pain of crucifixion and the abuse by men upon his created body, was the fact that he was being forsaken by his eternal Father.   The physical darkness in the land only served to reflect the spiritual darkness that overwhelmed his tender soul.  O darkest woe.  There is no mystery in all creation sadder than this: True God and true Man hung on the cross.  He was innocent in his own Person.  But in order to give his innocence to us, he had to bear our sin. 
Creation is cursed.  We experience the curse of creation everyday.  It comes not only in the form of hard, fruitless labor, but in seemingly senseless pain.  Mental exhaustion, emotional stress and depression, loneliness, disease, poverty are all the result of living in a cursed world.  Often we are able to trace what we suffer to our own foolishness and sinful decisions.  Other times we are left in the dark as to why we must experience hardship and sadness.  It is especially when we consider why God cursed his creation in the first place that we learn the real sting of the curse.  It is our fault.  Adam’s sin was not some ancestral blunder that we unwillingly bear the shame of, like the unfortunate descendants of some notorious criminal.  It is the sin that we willingly take part in every day. 
In pain, it feels like God has abandoned us and that we must bear the curse alone.  This grief and sadness often afflicts us Christians the most, because we actually have a conscience that has been instructed by God’s holy law.  Though the hedonistic world mocks us for it, it is true that we have a heightened sense of guilt when we experience what our sin has caused.  But the reason God shines light on our sin is not so that he might abandon us.  It is precisely the opposite.  He shines the light of his law as a bright mirror to our corrupt nature in order that we might look to him who suffered in darkness in our place.  He teaches us our sin to prepare us for the light of the gospel that brings us forgiveness.  
The fact that the sun still shines – it sounds cheesy, but it’s true – is proof that God does not want to leave us cursed.  But we need more that what nature can teach us.  So we look to where the sun did not shine to understand why the sun still shines today.  And knowing what Christ bore for us enables us to face our darkest hour.  Our sin was imputed to him so that it would not be imputed to us.  He bore God’s anger so that he might shine his face upon us.  He died so that we might live. 
God cursed the earth to teach us that there is no light within, because there is nothing within that can save us from dying.  And so that’s not where we look.  Instead we listen to the word of God.  That is what Jesus did.  Even in his death, although his Father had turned his favor from him as he hung dying in the darkness, though there were no flashes of lightning to cheer his soul, he held onto something brighter, the promise of the word of God, which serves as a light shining in a dark place – even for Jesus on the cross.  Jesus held to the words of our Easter Psalm:
Therefore my heart is glad, and my spirit rejoices;
My flesh also will rest in hope.
For You will not leave my soul in death,
Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.
You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Jesus held to this.  He held onto the words of our Old Testament lesson this evening:
He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death.
Jesus was abandoned, but even then he hoped in God.  He lived the perfect life of faith in our place.  And by his death God reconciled the world to himself.  He then he sent forth his ministers as servants.  Just as the sun and moon and stars serve as ambassadors of the light that was called into being on the first day of creation, so also Christ sends ambassadors who bring the light of the gospel that first shone on Easter morning, the first day of the new creation.  
And so in the darkness of our sin, we cling to the word of God just as Jesus did.  We trust in him who was abandoned in our place so that we can rest our faith in the sure promise that God will never abandon us.  We don’t wait for flashes of light from heaven.  We stick to the word of God that pleads with us to be reconciled for the sake of Christ and in fact, tells us that we already are.  In Christ we are a new creation.  By our Baptism, his death is ours, and so we live and die in the same hope that was fulfilled when he rose.  A new sun now shines.  It is glorious.  And we will shine with him as stars in the new heavens.  And all things as unpleasant as they may be – all things in heaven and on earth and under the earth – all things in all creation that are passing away must serve us to this end and purpose.  Christ is with us in the forgiveness of our sins.  He will not leave us.  He who poured his soul into death will divide with us the spoil of eternal life and divine favor.  He will show us the path the path of life and lead us to the right hand of the Father where there are pleasures forevermore. 
Let us pray:
The radiant sun hath vanished,
His golden rays are banished
By night, the foe of day;
But Christ, the Sun of gladness,
Dispelling all my sadness,
Within my heart holds constant sway.  Amen. 

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