Now we have come to the time for which our Lord Jesus took flesh and became a human being. His hour has indeed come. Now is the Son of man glorified. As important as the three years he spent with his disciples was; as important as all of his teachings are; as significant as his miracles are; none of these things are ultimately the reason for Jesus’ taking flesh and living among us. He came to die, that he might pay the terrible price for our sin, that we might be reconciled to God and live with him eternally. “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
That is why the cross is the symbol of our faith. Frederick Buechner, in Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, says, “A six-pointed star, a crescent moon, a lotus—the symbols of other religions suggest beauty and light. The symbol of Christianity is an instrument of death.” And yet, of all the religious symbols which exist, it is the one which proclaims hope, for it was on the cross that Christ freed us from the bondage of sin and made us heirs of eternal life. Thus, what once was a hated instrument of a most cruel and violent death, even by the standards of an extremely violent and cruel society, has now become a beloved and exquisitely beautiful symbol of faith.
Fifteen hundred years ago Venantius Honorius Fortunatus wrote a hymn extolling the beauty of the cross:
The royal banners forward go, the cross shines forth in mystic glow
Where he through whom our flesh was made, in that same flesh our ransom paid.
“Fulfilled is all that David told in true prophetic song of old;
how God the nation’s King should be, for God is reigning from the tree.
O tree of beauty, tree most fair, ordained those holy limbs to bear
Gone is thy shame, each crimsoned bough proclaims the King of glory now
Blest tree, whose chosen branches bore the wealth that did the world restore,
The price which none but he could pay to spoil the spoiler of his prey.
O cross, our one reliance, hail! Still may thy power with us avail
To save us sinners from our sin, God’s righteousness for all to win.
To Thee, eternal three in one, let homage meet by all be done;
As by the cross thou dost restore so rule and guide us evermore.”
At the very heart and soul of Christian faith is the death of Christ on the cross. Every time we celebrate the holy eucharist, the central act of Christian worship for 2000 years, we are celebrating the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. We call it a sacrifice because Jesus died to pay the price for our sin.
Anybody who has been around Redeemer for over a year has probably heard me say that everyone comes to church on Easter, yet relatively few come to church on Good Friday. We are not unusual in that statistic. In fact, I suspect that compared to most Episcopal churches we stack up pretty well. Yet, maybe three hundred people are worshipping today at Redeemer and I project our numbers for Sunday to be over 1600. Our numbers for Easter Day will be over five times what they are today. Why is there such a difference between our observance on Good Friday and Easter? Is it because people want resurrection without crucifixion? There is probably truth to that. In fact, I would prefer it that way, but that isn’t possible. The crucifixion had to occur before there could be a resurrection.
There is something even more fundamental going on, however, in many people’s reluctance to come to the cross; and that is a growing doubt in the reality of sin. If there is no sin, then it doesn’t make much sense to talk about someone dying for it. Truly to come to the cross means to mourn our sin and to acknowledge that our sin is responsible for Jesus’ death. “Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee, I crucified thee.”
Soren “Kierkegaard tells the story of a peasant who came barefooted to the capital, and had made so much money selling his produce that he could buy himself a pair of shoes and pants and still had enough money left over to get drunk on. As he was trying to find his way home he lay down in the middle of the highway and fell asleep. Along came a wagon, and the driver shouted to him to move or he would run over his legs. The drunken peasant awoke, looked at his legs, and since, by reason of his new pants and shoes he didn’t recognize them, he said to the driver, ‘Drive on, they are not my legs.’” In our culture many have become so anaesthetized to the reality of sin that, like the drunken peasant, they don’t recognize their own sin and thus do not recognize their need for the Savior.
Mona Charen had an article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune several years ago entitled “Who Can Remember Sin?” She stated that Americans are very religious people, according to results by pollsters. Her statistics were that 90% believe in God, 43% attend religious services at least once a week, and 58% report that religion is very important in their lives. Charen wondered if there is much, if any, identifiable content to that religiosity, however. She points out that society “at large enshrines tolerance and reluctance to make moral judgements,” and asks “What can they be hearing at those weekly services?”
She goes on to say that James Davison Hunter, writing The Public Interest, concludes that at this moment in history, the secular world view is influencing the churches far more than the churches are influencing the surrounding society. He finds that the old categories of sin, repentance and redemption are out and the therapeutic language of self-esteem and self-love are in.
Charen goes on to quote from a pamphlet for young people from one of the Protestant denominations: “Loving myself is at the heart of living, loving, and growing…to love oneself is holy.” Another denomination rejects “handing out absolutes,” for these can be a “disservice to youth.” A rabbi in Manhattan states, “Sin isn’t one of our issues. My guess is that in twelve years in religious school, our kids will never hear the word.” The principal of a Roman Catholic school in San Antonio expressed a similar view, “Oh no, that kind of language would not relate to them anyway. When I was growing up, I personally might have responded to someone if they said, “Hey, this is a sin.” Today, though, I don’t think that young people would respond to that. The most you could say to them is, ‘That is not allowed.’”
Charen concludes by saying, “The triumph of the therapeutic has left millions of Americans without the mental equipment to make moral choices. And when sin does rear its ugly head, our national response, both secular and religious, is to call in the shrinks.
The witness of Holy Scripture and of the Christian faith throughout the ages is that there are moral absolutes, that sin is at the root of all of human problems, that there is a vast gulf between us and our Creator because of sin, and that Christ has bridged that gulf through his atoning death on the cross. If Charen is right, and I believe she is, the tragedy of our time is our inability to recognize sin for what it is, much as the drunken peasant could not recognize his own legs and feet. And without a recognition of sin, there can be no real acceptance of the Savior.
One big reason why many do not observe Good Friday is precisely because they have no recognition of sin. You and I are here, worshiping on Good Friday, but we are still a part of the society in which we live. We need to understand that our society does not generally accept this central doctrine of our faith and resist any temptation to water down or ignore its importance. We must teach our children and converts to the faith that they are sinful human beings in need of our Savior. We must not be seduced by our cultural surroundings into thinking that we really are not in need of the Redeemer.
Our Lord Jesus Christ “gave himself as a ransom for all,” not for us to wallow in our sin, but so we could acknowledge and confess our sin, and “God, who is faithful and just, will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” as St.Paul said in his first letter to Timothy. As we come to the foot of the cross this day, may each of us be able to say in his or her heart, “He died for me.”