“JESUS MAKES YOU GOOD IN HIS GOODNESS”
Saint John 18:1 - 19:42
Good Friday: 15 April Anno Domini 2022
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
God saw everything He had made and it was good.
Man chose to become bad. The badness was so bad that death came into the world. The world became cursed. All men are bad and all men are cursed. All men die.
God saw this and came for man. Man was hidden. The Lord found Adam. The clothed Adam with bloody skins. The Lord promised that He would send The Seed of the woman to be the Savior and Restorer.
That Seed is your Lord Christ. He is the Second, Final, and perfect Adam.
With that Gospel message, that GOOD news, Eve gave birth to many children. Adam evangelized his children, i.e., he “Good newsed” them. They remained bad. Cain murdered. Abel’s blood cried out from the ground. The world was so bad that God destroyed it and the bad people; all of them save Noah and his family of eight. The cleansing proto-baptismal flood washed away the bad and the wooden ark of the Church—God’s merciful grace saved The Lord’s Church.
You don’t need an Old Testament survey this evening. You have your own old history and past. God’s Word mirrors your badness back at you with The Law that you do not keep. You and Saint Paul, in your falleness, do not do what you should do; you constantly DO that which you should refrain from.
No big deal, because God forgives you? Are you that presumptuous, callous, ignorant, and desensitized? Have you deluded yourselves about what the Crucifixion of God truly was?
He Who made everything out of nothing, became sin for you; became the magnet for all the bad nails and spikes and thorns and spears of your daily badness.
He Who healed the leprous skin of so many, who gave sight to the blind, and who staunched the flow of blood of the woman; had His innocent skin desecrated with wounds dug deep, had His own eyes stinged with burning sweat and darkest death, had His flow of blood soak His precious Body in the true night sweat of sin atoned for.
No, despite medical and physiological experts explaining the horror and trauma of crucifixion. This death is so terrible it is indescribable, save for the brief words the Evangelists leave for us.
God suffers. God is in agony. God is left to be the ultimate Good for all of us. The ultimate Good is that you are free from the crucifix, you are free from death, and you are free from the eternal grave.
The perfect Good Friday is NEVER getting all maudlin, sentimental, morose, and weepy—for poor Jesus. On His way to Calvary your God spoke: “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children” [Lk. 23.28b]. Much the pity that so few Christians can weep over their trespasses.
The perfect Good Friday is to repent of the horror of your sins and your sinful condition—“for if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry;” to pray The Holy Ghost to assist you in being more in The Word; and then to have the life-giving Word placed on your tongues and poured into your mouths. To receive The God/Man Who suffered and died and Who now lives forever seated at the right hand of The Father, feeding you with forgiveness and life—That is Good. This, is such a day. This is Good Friday!
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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