Good Friday
By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there are captors asked us for
songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy. How can we sing the songs of the
Lord in a foreign land?
In the year 587 BCE, Jerusalem was sacked and Israel sent into exile to
Babylon. It was a complete disaster. Israel had lost the marks of her national
identity, the land, the temple, the king, and psalm 137 expresses deep sorrow
and lament. It’s not that God had abandoned Israel, but that Israel had
abandoned her covenant with God, as the prophets warned over and over and over
again. The prophet Isaiah in chapter 65, for example, spoke God’s word this
way: All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people who walk
in ways not good, a people who continually provoke me to my very face.
Do you not think this makes God weep? If psalm 137 cries lament to God
over the disaster, I should think God cries lament towards Israel over that
disaster. Perhaps it might be expressed this way: By the river of Babylon God
sat down and wept when he remembered Zion. There on the cross he hung his harp,
for there his executioners demanded a sign. They shook their heads in
disbelief, he saved others but he can’t save himself.
The cross was God’s cry of lament and sorrow over his people. Mankind in
general does not express godly sorry for sin, does not care about a
relationship with God, and wants to replace God with himself as God. And that
is the essence of sin by which mankind crosses the boundary of his own
limitations, grasping for all knowledge of good and evil, grasping for all
moral discernment without reference to God, mankind’s creator.
How terrible it was when the creature turned in disobedience against his
creator, as told to us in Genesis chapter three where Adam and Eve coveted
God’s place for themselves so that they could be like God. And the act of
rebellious disobedience was done. The horror and blasphemy of it is
unbelievable! That’s why sin is so dreadful. It cannot be glossed over as if
she’ll be right mate. God is holy. His holiness is provoked by sin, and it must
confront sin until it is destroyed. Otherwise God is not a god of justice, and
is in contradiction with his own nature. God is holy equals God is love, and
love has no truck with sweeping sin under the carpet as if doesn’t matter.
Now having set forth
the seriousness of sin, and noted that God, in his holiness, must confront it
for what it is, we are also given a picture of God as a waiting father. God has
not abandoned his creation, as some might think. He waits with outstretched
hands. All day long I have held out my hands. And the parable of the
prodigal son that Jesus spoke epitomizes the waiting father. God waits; God longs
for us to return to him in faith, trust and obedience. Let’s look at this a
little closer in the context of Good Friday and the cross.
The cross is the place
of exchange where the awfulness of sin is dealt with in a way that allows God
to judge and condemn it as he must, yet at one and the same time to save and
forgive because he so loves his world. It’s a beautiful solution to an
otherwise impossible conundrum. And so long as a person looks at that by faith
and says yes Lord it’s my sin that is judged and condemned for what it is, then
blessed is that person whose sins are covered and atoned for. By faith the
merits of Christ are transferred to him or her.
The logic of the cross, the beautiful
solution, will never be understood by those who cannot say, Woe is me for I am lost. I am a person of
unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a world of unclean lips and unclean
hearts; for my eyes have seen the Lord of Hosts! Or as St Peter exclaimed
when his eyes saw the Lord of Hosts, depart
from me O Lord, for I am a sinful man. In other words, the logic of the
cross will never be understood by those who are righteous in their own eyes. Only
when we see ourselves for who we really are before a holy god, will Christ’s
acceptable and perfect offering of himself touch our lips and set us free. Only
then will we hear those wonderful words, be
not afraid, for I have overcome the world.
I mentioned earlier that God is a god who weeps and laments for his
people. A god who cannot bear pain and shed tears
over lost humanity is a god who cannot love, and is not a god I want to believe
in. But a god who I see grieving for my return to him as a long-lost son, is indeed
a god who I want to believe in.
I am also encouraged by these words
from the letter to the Hebrews:
We do not have a
high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one
who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore
approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and
find grace to help us in our time of need.
What this means is that we have a God
who knows what it is to be human. He knows what social isolation is; to cry
tears of grief over the death of a loved one – Lazarus. He knows our weakness
when confronted with temptation – Jesus didn’t succumb to it himself, but he
was nevertheless confronted with its power and subversiveness; and he
understands our worries and anxieties, often speaking to his disciples about
it.
Therefore, let us approach his throne
of grace with confidence that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in
our time of need. And don’t we all need help at this time. At the outset of
creation, God paused and reflected on his work saying, it is not good for
man to be alone. And that not only means man and women sharing a life
together, but people needing people, and especially people needing God.
So can I encourage you all this morning to
reflect on your own need for God and approach his throne of grace, which is the
cross, with confidence, knowing that God loves you, and by the merits of his
son’s death (and only by those merits), are your sins forgiven.
Philip Starks
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