Good Friday 2012

+ In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti + Amen.

Text: John 19:18
Theme: Crucified Not Simulated

Dear saints of the Crucified,

The passion of Christ was relentless at every level. His suffering was physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual. It was gut-wrenching, agonizing, torturous, and excruciating. The Jews blasphemed Him. The soldiers beat and mocked Him. Judas betrayed Him. Peter denied Him. Pilate abandoned Him. Finally, the heavenly Father turned away His divine gaze. In this abject loneliness He was swallowed by death. It was a foul scene.

For some time now our virtual images of death have been sanitized. Cartoon characters are slain repeatedly but re-appear later in the script no worse for the wear. Movie heroes are mortally wounded but return to live happily ever after. Gaming conquerors are assassinated continuously yet start afresh with the next contest. That doesn’t mean the death scenes often depicted in movies and high definition gaming aren’t excessively gruesome and brutal. The negative effects of exposure to such violence- even for the intent of entertainment – are increasingly well-documented. Yet certain fundamental aspects of reality are being omitted or misrepresented. The inescapable finality of death; the sense of injustice; the termination of any opportunity or hope of restoration; the numbing sense of loss; the complex range of human emotion- all these are circumvented or anaesthetized by carefully controlling the parameters.

Real death is the decisive illustration of complete loss of human control. It is the stunning consequence of separation from God. “When you eat of it you will surely die,”1 notified the Almighty to Adam whom He had made in His own image. Death is not natural. It was not that way from the beginning. There can be no agreement between philosophies which view death as a biological necessity in a cyclical universe and the Christian doctrine of immortality. The two teachings are diametrically opposed.

That doesn’t mean the world doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of decay. The world seeks to mitigate suffering, and litigate injustice. It hopes to improve and make the best of circumstances as they are. Christians too pursue these goals. But the motive and perspective are different. Unable to completely deny the immortality of the soul the world consigns such concerns to private interests, pacifying its collective conscience with a blatant universalism or unapologetic appeal to complete annihilation. Either the human soul must somehow-at death- pass on to greater vistas or be completely obliterated in every sense of the term. Pure skepticism compels one to believe that life simply ceases to exist. This is the necessary end game of the modern ‘triumph’ of reason. For the pure materialist there must be empirical evidence. Nothing else will suffice. Few indeed are any creedal affirmations of any existence resembling hell.

Perhaps the simulations of fatality that saturate our society are the result of a culture of death? There are certainly liabilities. Think of how the mind is conditioned by those characters that so easily return. The ease of it all deadens the conscience and defers the need for a real Saviour. There are many ‘revivals’, but NO resurrections; many ‘resuscitations’, but no actual re-creations. The ‘resuscitations’ are so commonplace so as to skew the mindset of whole societies and completely alter it for individuals. Death becomes a game- of sorts- perhaps the ultimate game, but an amusement, contest, and diversion nonetheless.

Reality is something different and more daunting. Death reeks. It takes no prisoners. The death of Christ was not virtual; it was vital. There was nothing sanitary about it. Yet through it the world was purged of sin. The body of Jesus- His humanity and divinity swallowed up the accumulated depravity and decay of the world. Like a black hole that pulls in everything near and compresses it into a dark abyss, the crucified Son of God was a magnet for my sins and yours, the greatest and the least, the darkest and the most exposed, every ungodly thought, word, and deed and the corruption of our fleshly inheritance. At the cross sinners have reason to hope. There the darkest of powers is being overthrown.

But to remember the crucifixion as a matter of curiosity or even respect is not yet to be transformed by it. “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”2 We often tolerate the Word but because our hearts are elsewhere we do not receive it. We honour it formally but reject it inwardly. St. Paul commended the Thessalonians, “We thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.”3 Unless the Holy Spirit transforms through this Word we are only attendees observing rituals.

Jesus said, “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.”4 By this He meant not that we must atone for our own sins to enter heaven but that heaven is found in the sacrificial life of Him who triumphed on the cross. Our sinful nature is buried with Him in baptism. To live baptismally is to hunger ever more intensely for His righteousness while bearing the opposition and inconsistencies of the world. The world demands tangible evidence of Christ’s power; the Christian lives by faith not by sight.

It is said the measure of a person is how they handle adversity. Is it not the measure of Christians how they handle the prosperity of divine blessings which often appear to be burdens and sufferings to the world? When illness strikes there is suffering. When relationships fracture there is suffering. When grief is sprung upon us there is suffering. When dreams are shattered there is suffering. When our faith is ridiculed there is suffering. In suffering the Christian finds identity in Christ and solidarity in anguish. Yet not as a simulation or virtual reality but as the way of the cross; as the journey to our permanent dwelling. St. Paul writes, “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body.”5Jesus’ body held the sins of the world. Your mortal frame holds the life of Jesus.

You cannot go back to the event of the cross, but the blessings of the crucifixion come to you in the body and blood of His sacred meal. This wellspring of life flows continuously at Christian altars fusing time and eternity. There was one death that mattered, one crucifixion that counted. It makes unnecessary any simulated or sanitized revivals to our current state of fallen-ness. It makes possible our true resurrection. Amen.


Good Friday
6 April, 2012
Reverend Darrin L. Kohrt

1 Genesis 2:17
2 1 Corinthians 1:18
3 1 Thessalonians 2:13
4 Mark 9:34
5 2 Corinthians 4:10-11