We all have a question after hearing this story, and we have this question no matter how many time we’ve heard it. And the question is, “Why?” Why did this have to happen? We’re told Jesus in some way died for us, that this was necessary. Even he said so, it had to happen, and no one understood him, and we don’t either. So how do we answer this “why” question that is here each Good Friday?
Our mistake is to see what happened here as a tragedy, someone who got something terrible he didn’t deserve. But we can’t ever forget what kind of story this really is. Because what this really is, is a love story, a story of what love really means if you let love take over everything. God is love, and now we find out what it really means to say God is love. God emptied himself out, the scripture says, took the form of a slave, and then died like a slave, all for people he loved. That’s what you do if you love someone, you pour love out until often you give more than you think you have available to give. And when Jesus said this had to be done, he meant it had to be done so that we’d know we were finally free from the power of our weakness and our sin and our imperfection. They can’t destroy us. Someone was willing to die for us. He would give so much love to do this that on Good Friday there was literally nothing left.
Maybe you are here today with your own burden of suffering, of illness or fear or loneliness or grief. And nice-sounding words about how God is with you in all that, wants you to see him on the cross suffering along with you, that can all sound empty. Sometimes people say that God never gives us more suffering than we can bear, but that’s not in the scriptures, and I think it’s not true, either, some people experience more suffering than anyone should have to bear.
But even for those of us who are suffering, the cross is our vision of where we can go, emptying ourselves through love the way God does. This story today shows us how to love, how to live for someone else, how to live for those we love, but also for those we don’t love, how to live for people who have been rejected by this world as he was. We keep trying to give until at the end of life there is nothing left, except for one thing, except for life with that God whose nature is constantly to keep giving. The pain of this life is real, but so is the self-sacrificing love that even overcomes death.
Today we find out that being made in God’s image, whatever else it means, it means we are made in this image up here on the wall. This is what the cross means for us, it is a sign not just of who Jesus was but who we are. Today you can look up and you see what you really are: a humble and broken person totally dependent on God. And you also see what you are called to be: someone who can live as part of this endless love story, you can give away everything, knowing that in the end, you will be given that love back a thousand times over by a God who will even give his life for us.