logos redux

Today especially we remember that we live because God died. We have peace because he suffered torment. We are glorified because he was mocked. Today we commemorate, we make memorial of, the death of God. In Christ we see what our God is like. As my pastor mentioned tonight we do not confess a God who is aloof, far off, or beyond passion. We do not serve a tribal deity who crushes all opposition or a principle that swallows change and emotion up in absolute transcendence. We serve the Creator who revealed himself most fully in dying painfully and wretchedly at the hands of his creation.

Today we see ourselves standing at the foot of the cross, heads wagging, crying ‘come down you king! Come down you would be monarch!’ It is this day which makes Easter Sunday so poignant. It is the cross that bodes the Resurrection. It is a death that makes life so precious and so sure.

So when we talk of who God is, let us think twice before we begin speaking in philosophical terms of dispassion and immutability. Let us think of the God who revealed himself as one who pitied and cried over a people held in the sway of the evil one. Let us think of the God who revealed himself in pain and anguish, blood and gore. Let us think of the Creator who died that his creatures might live.

Finally, as we approach Holy Saturday, let us remember that Good Friday ends with no benediction. Let us enter into the ultimate meantime. Let us enter into the supreme ambiguity. Today and tomorrow let us wait with baited breath, placing ourselves in the Story and anticipating what may come. For now there is no benediction. For now there is only darkness and earthquakes. Although, we know how the story ends, like any good story we enter into the time and space laid before us by the storyteller that we might feel the anxiety and be surprised again for the first time. For now there is no benediction.

Almighty God, look with mercy on your family

for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed

and given over to the hands of sinners

and to suffer death on the cross;

who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, forever and ever. Amen.

And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.

And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

–The Gospel According to St. Mark, The Fifteenth Chapter, verses 16-41

Painting: Tintoretto’s Crucifixion

Update: I confirmed the times with Church of the Resurrection and they will have a service at noon and another at 6 in the evening. No morning service.

Lent is fast approaching and that means Ash Wednesday services (2/25). It’s always frustrating to me that so few of our PCA churches offer this beautiful and meaningful opportunity for worship. The imitation of Christ tradition seems to me to be a weak point in Reformed practice. If you live here in St. Louis I would like to recommend attending one of the Anglican Mission in America congregations next Wednesday. I have gone to the Church of the Resurrection just west of I-270 off of 64/40 (at the Westminster West campus) for the last two years and found their noon service to be beautiful and moving. (So far they don’t have anything on the calendar, but I’m assuming they will have a service at noon and one early in the morning as usual. I’ll call to confirm that.)

ALMIGHTY God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer, Collect for Good Friday

Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”

From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.

So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, so they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.” This was to fulfill the Scripture which says,

“They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.”

So the soldiers did these things, but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe. For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken.” And again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.”

After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

The Gospel according to St. John, The 19th Chapter

Caveat: These are preliminary thoughts. Interaction is appreciated.

God works in mysterious ways. I have found it astonishing over the past few months the ways in which the Lord takes the most difficult and trying circumstances to shape us into the image of the Son. At one level this should come as no surprise. The nature of being a disciple of Christ is to take on a cruciform identity. One can only be made like Christ by being held up to scorn and mockery. Yet what I have begun to see is that if we will not deliver ourselves up to such ignominy, God will place us on the cross himself. My tendency is to have idealistic visions of self-sacrifice wherein I meekly lay my life down for the sake of the Kingdom. Continue Reading…