Today's Scripture Readings
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (NRSV)
See, my servant shall prosper;
he shall be exalted and lifted up,
and shall be very high.
Just as there were many who were astonished at him
--so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of mortals--
so he shall startle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him;
for that which had not been told them they shall see,
and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.
Who has believed what we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain.
When you make his life an offering for sin,
he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days;
through him the will of the LORD shall prosper.
Out of his anguish he shall see light;
he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.
The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out himself to death,
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
Psalm 22 (BCP, p.610).
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 (NRSV)
The Holy Spirit testifies saying,
"This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds,"
he also adds,
"I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more."
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
John 18:1-19:42 (NRSV)
Blog Reflection
Thomas Keating in his book The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience wrote the following about Philippians 2:6-9.
To become sin is to cease to be God's son-or at least to cease to be conscious of being God's son. To cease to be conscious of being God's son is to cease to experience God as Father. The cross of Jesus represents the ultimate death-of-God experience: "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" The crucifixion is much more that the physical death of Jesus and the emotional and mental anguish that accompanied it. It is the death of his relationship with his Father. The crucifixion is not the death of his false self because he never had one. It was the death of his deified self and the annihilation of the ineffable union which he enjoyed with the Father in his human faculties. This was more than spiritual death; in was dying to being God and hence the dying of God: "He emptied himself, and took the form of a slave...accepting even death, death on a cross!" The loss of personal identity is the ultimate kenosis (page 62).
All of those things that we think make up who we are, today, meet the Divine Reality. Even our emotional comforts through which we claim our identity are not an end in and of themselves. If Jesus Christ did not claim any thing to be the source of His greatness as being God, then our false-selves are really baseless.
The path to being our true-selves is found in letting go of our false-selves. Our true-selves are not caught up in useless labels, our belongings or even the things we enjoy. Those things are all temporary, and they are means to our true-selves. But, they are not an end. They are evidence of God's presence in our lives. However, the moment they become our god, or lead us to making ourselves a god, that is why they are false.
On this Good Friday we remember that Jesus was crucified for us. In that agonizing death, with all it's humiliation and injustice, Jesus surrenders everything including His relationship with God into God's hands. "Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit." In these words that we pray every night at Compline, we surrender ourselves into God's hands with confidence, because Jesus prayed these words from Psalm 31 on the Cross.
Jesus gave His life out of love for every human being. One of my favorite prayers I use during Matins (Morning Prayer) so very often is the one found on page 101 in The Book of Common Prayer.
Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on
the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within
the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit
that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those
who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for
the honor of your Name. Amen.
The crucifixion and death of Jesus is our reason for loving and including all people in the life and ministry of the Church. There is no justification to scapegoat any person for any reason, if we take seriously what this day means. All efforts to even suggest that the Jews killed Jesus are nothing more that an attempt to blame others for the fact that our sins are what killed Jesus. Our refusal to love others as Christ loved us, which by the way is a commandment of Jesus we heard last night; is why Jesus was crucified. If anyone seriously believes that Christians should lord ourselves over any person because we are Christians, then we have missed the message of Good Friday. It was not Christ's divinity that He held on to to die to save our sins. It was His divinity that He crucified and handed over for our salvation and redemption.
In the crucifixion and death of Jesus, our false self meets the divine love of God in Christ. Because Jesus Christ is our Lord, Savior and Redeemer. God's love for us in Christ was so strong, the God did not even spare God's own Son, but handed Him over for us all. (See Romans 8:32). May God's love for us in Christ, be our reason to love others in Christ's Name.
Amen.
Prayers
Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your
family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be
betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer
death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and
the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer. p.221).
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but
first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he
was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way
of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and
peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, p.100).
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