From Forward Day by Day
John 19:30 Then Jesus bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
It is tempting to look away from the cross today. It is tempting to
skip the painful Passion story and go from Maundy Thursday right on to
the radiant joy of Easter. But that won’t do. Today the whole world
stops as we re-enter the sacred mystery of Good Friday. The whole
creation wept when Jesus died.
The cross is the inevitable result
of the collision between God’s perfect love and our perfected fear.
Here heaven and earth meet in a gruesome instrument of torture and
death. And, yet, Jesus bore this willingly. I will confess that the
transactional language of paying for my sins isn’t always helpful. But
what is always helpful is the knowledge that God’s love for me knows no
limits, that God enters even into death for my sake. There is no part of
my life that God cannot redeem, nothing that is removed from God.
Good Friday does not, as some say, expose a cruel, distant God. Rather,
in Jesus’ free choice and willingness to die, we have proof that God
could not love us more, for God is willing to do anything for our sake,
for our souls. To receive this gift, we must gaze at the awful reality
of the cross.