Good Friday
Psalm 22
"The Rough Road"
22:1 ¶ To the choirmaster: according to The Hind of the Dawn. A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer; and by night, but find no rest.
3 Yet thou art holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4 In thee our fathers trusted; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5 To thee they cried, and were saved; in thee they trusted, and were not disappointed.
6 But I am a worm, and no man; scorned by men, and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads;
8 “He committed his cause to the LORD; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”
9 Yet thou art he who took me from the womb; thou didst keep me safe upon my mother’s breasts.
10 Upon thee was I cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God.
11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help.
12 Many bulls encompass me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
13 they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast;
15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; thou dost lay me in the dust of death.
16 Yea, dogs are round about me; a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet--
17 I can count all my bones--they stare and gloat over me;
18 they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots.
19 But thou, O LORD, be not far off! O thou my help, hasten to my aid!
20 Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog!
21 Save me from the mouth of the lion, my afflicted soul from the horns of the wild oxen!
22 I will tell of thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee:
23 You who fear the LORD, praise him! all you sons of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel!
24 For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.
25 From thee comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
26 The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD! May your hearts live for ever!
27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
28 For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.
29 Yea, to him shall all the proud of the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and he who cannot keep himself alive.
30 Posterity shall serve him; men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation,
31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he has wrought it.
Grace and Peace to you from our Lord and Saviour, Jesus wh is the Christ. Amen
A fire swept through the three bedroom trailer as the family slept. The father tried many times to bring out his wife and their three children, but he could not reach them.
The tragedy left the man homeless, widowed and fatherless. Fire had swept through the trailer, and all was lost. It took some time for the full weight of the loss to descend, and when it did, he was nearly crushed. Like Job in the Old Testament, he would not be comforted.....When the gift of shock was lifted, anger, resentment filled every waking thought. God had not been fair to him -- God had not protected his family. He had not come to him with a special visitation to explain the "why" and the "what next".
He was in a wilderness as rugged as the Sinai.....The greatest temptation was to add to his losses by forfeiting his faith. He felt justified. No one would fault him. Some might even support him. He prayed angrily now, daring God to hurt him further, and challenging Him to give any reason to hold on to the thin thread of his faith that was left.
He prayed angrily, but he prayed, and God could handle it..........The anguish continued to mount until one afternoon he uttered a cry so forcefully, it could only be described as a scream. No word was spoken, just a loud angry scream against the forces of heaven and hell, as if to say, "I’ve hurt all I can, and I’ve paid my dues for love.... Help me!!!."..........
The silence that followed was quieter than silence. A peace was evident for the first time in months. Scripture might have said, "Angels came and ministered unto him."
The journey of this Good Friday is not some sentimental journey that we relive once a year as we follow Jesus to the cross of Calvary. But the journey of the cross is indeed a real live journey. For I believe that all of us at one time or another have journeyed to our Jerusalem where we have encountered the cross, the cross of separation from God, the cross of separation from the human race, the cross of separation from the very essence of life. The journey we travel this evening into the darkness of the cross of Calvary is a journey into the reality of life.
For the reality of the cross of Calvary for us is to admit in the most inner depths of our souls that our relationship to God is like that of St. Paul’s when he said he didn’t love God, or that of St. Augustine when he said he was plagued by the truth that he didn’t want God to be God, or Martin Luther when he confessed that there were many time that he hated God.
We as the human family have separated ourselves from God. We deny him, we defy him, we ignore him and deep down in the depths of our beings we hate him because we don’t want God to be God!
We want to be our own God!
And what is God’s response to all of this. In the play,"Green Pastures", "God is pictured looking down upon the earth with his hands clasped behind his back and he is torn between his justice and His mercy, between His anger and His love, between His vengeance and His compassion; one moment determining to be through with man, leaving him to his own devices and the next wanting to lift man up in His arms and hold him to His heart."
As we contemplate the cross of Calvary this evening we witness the battle in God’s heart . But this battle was fought not with us, as it should have been, but in reality it was fought between God. God punished his son for the sins of the human race, because the compassion of God could not punish us.
The cross is the symbol of the constant battle that is taking place in our lives. We struggle with the love of God for us, and the brokenness we face in this world. We struggle with the unanswerable question; if God did love us so much that he punished his son why do we still encounter all those circumstances in life that separate us from God
Why do we encounter all those circumstances in life that separate us from each other ,that remind us that our lives do experience the cross of Calvary in all of its weakness, in all of its pain, in all of its humanity.
Each of us, if we are honest with ourselves, have or are traveling the road to Jerusalem where we will face a cross. If the Christian life is a life of glory as some of our brethren would have us to believe. That Is there perfect peace, security, plenty of goodness and ample prosperity, then the cross has no meaning for us.
But if our road is like that man who lost is family, then our road is the road of the cross. The road of the cross is the road that can see our families, our homes, our comfort ,our security, our pleasure, our health all go down the drain in a blink of an eye. No one has ever said that it was going to be easy following Christ on the raod of life. The 12 were promised nothing but blood and sweat and tears, and that’s what you are promised too, my friends.
God did not promise our journey would be paved with a road of ease, of peace and goodness, but for many if their road is not paved with those kinds of things, they somehow believe that God has abandoned them, or this God they have believed in has been lying to them.
But the cross of Calvary is a example for us that God works in ways different than we can comprehend. Today is called Good Friday because out of the death, the pain, the anguish, the tears, the bitterness of the cross God brought life on that first Easter morning.
And God continues to work in that mysterious way. We want success, we want fame, we want glory, we want prosperity, but God says those things don’t necessarily need to be there for life too be full and rewarding.
God says out of the brokenness of life, out of those events, and circumstances that remind us that we are not what we want to be, God can bring a measure of his grace, his peace, his power that was not there before.
Does a faith in God preclude accepting and acknowledging the weakness, the vulnerability , the brokenness, the humanity, the emotion of dealing with the pain of this world?
If being a Christian means that I have to be always strong, that I cannot share with others the pain, the hurts, the doubts, the weakness, the brokenness, the sinfulness of their life, that somehow being a Christian means, that I must he a superman, then I think we have the whole business turned up side down.
For in the weakness of the cross, we saw the greatest power of God. In the pain of the cross, we saw the great love of God. In the brokenness, the agony, the bitterness, the pain, of the cross, we saw the majesty of God.
So, I think, in all areas of our lives, the strong as well as the weak, the good as well as the bad, the healthy as well as the brokenness, we see, feel and experience the power of God. God accepts us for who we are, for what we are, with our faults, with our weaknesses, with our failures, with our lifes that do not measure up to the expectations of others.
The cross of Calvary points out to us that God accepts us with our weakness as well as our strengths. Because on that cross, God not only showed us his power, but he shared with us his weakness, his willingness to share in the pain and the brokenness of this world.
Out of the event of the cross, the glory, the miracle, the power of God was revealed on Easter morning through the resurrection.
A poem by William Stidger says it well:
"I saw God bare his soul one day
Where all the earth might see
The stark and naked heart of him
On lonely Calvary.
There was a crimson sky of blood
And overhead a storm;
When lightning slit the clouds
and light engulfed his form.
Beyond the storm a rainbow lent
A light to every clod,
For on that cross mine eyes beheld
The naked soul of God. "
From the naked soul of God comes the greatest act of love humankind has ever experienced. For the power of the resurrection came not from glory, or power, or fame, or strength, or prosperity, or security, or wealth, or success, but the power of the resurrection came from the bare soul of God hung on a cross that endured the pain, the brokenness, the humility, the reality of this world.
Someone said; "I believe it was Ernest Hemingway who coined the phrase "growing strong in the broken places." When a bone is broken, for example, the calcium buildup that "welds" the bone together makes that the strongest part of the bone.
When our life is committed to God and we bring our broken parts to him for healing, we, too, become strong in the broken places.
Another aspect on being broken is in the words of Vance Havner who said, "God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume . . . it is Peter, weeping bitterly [after his failure of denying Jesus], who returns to greater power than ever."
The cross says that life is a journey along the road where might scream the cry of pain that pierces the very breath and depth of heaven and hell.
And from that cry comes the silence, the peace, the health that knows God is in charge, God cares.
Amen
Written by Pastor Tim Zingale March 26, 2007
