Hello,
This week is Holy Week, the week that God changed everything. Sin no more sting. Death no more power. That makes Easter a grand day of celebration like none other, but to get to Easter we need to go through Good Friday, the day of Jesus crucifixion. For this week’s Bungee Cord I am printing my sermon for this year’s Good Friday Worship Service.
Luke 23:35-43
Good Friday 2019
“What’s the problem? Don’t you like pie?”
That was the response by one of my seminary professors to the grilling of a bunch of other professors at a seminary that he was visiting to deliver a presentation.
“So much of what you write,” they said, “speaks of the culmination of God’s grace in heaven, about until God gathers us in heaven we cannot expect things to go very well. You seem to be resigned to the pain that is part of this life, and you keep on turning our eyes to the peace and joy that awaits us in heaven. You talk a lot about the wonder that lies ahead in the sweet by and by. What you seem to offer is a lot of pie in the sky.”
“What is the problem?”, he responded with a pregnant pause, “Don’t you like pie?”
As we gather here on this Good Friday, we need little reminder that this world in which we live is far from perfect. Pain and suffering is part of our daily forecast. Sometimes it pours into our lives like cats and dogs, and sometimes it is there as a misty haze. Sometimes, we like cloud seeders bring it into our lives and the lives of others. Sometimes it seems to just blow in from nowhere. But this is certain, there are no cloudless days as we live this life. We need little reminder that this world in which we live is far from perfect.
It was certainly a far, far from perfect day for the three who hung on those Golgotha crosses. The clouds of suffering a pain darkening by the moment. Two who hung were criminals who had stirred up a deadly storm in their lives. The crowds around them and one who hung on his own cross, rumbled with thunder, mocking the seemingly powerlessness of the one who hung innocently on his cross.
But what the crowds and the one who hung next to Jesus did not know was that this storm in which they found themselves had not happened by accident or chance. What they didn’t know was that the one who hung in the middle was the cause of this great storm. For he, whose heart was a low pressure center of God’s uncompromising love, was like a black hole of grace, suctioning every sin and evil into it, gathering into itself everything of every time and place that brings pain and suffering. The storm that was stirring on that Golgotha hill was being gathered from every corner of the universe by the one who had created the universe.
It is true, there is still pain and suffering in this world, but we who gather here on this Good Friday see all those clouds of pain and suffering moving in a crossbound direction, a destination from which they cannot escape, a destination that will be their end. From every corner of creation, being drawn to the cross, so that the day will come when pain, and suffering, and tears, and sorrow will be no more…and joy, peace, and love will shine with endless light.
Unlike the crowds who were gathered on that hillside and mocked Jesus for the swirling storm…unlike the crowds who still gather on the hillside and mock Jesus for the storms that swirl in life…Jesus knew why those clouds were there….Jesus knew why those storms were circling around……Jesus knew that those clouds and those storms were being sucked into his heart by the power of God’s love….and that is why he said to the one who hung next to him….that is why he says to you and me who gather around him, “Truly, I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise.”
John 16.33:
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you may have peace. In this world you shall have tribulation. But be of good cheer. Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.
You’ll like the pie!
AMEN.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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