It is Good
Friday. The Sabbath has already begun,
for darkness has fallen here tonight.
But at the hour of his death, on the day of preparation for the Sabbath,
on the day when the Passover lambs were slaughtered in Jerusalem, it was still Friday
and the sixth day of the week. According
to the story of creation, the sixth day is the day we were born. On the sixth day, God said let us create
humans in our image. In the image of
God, God created them. Male and
female. And God said, “it is very good.” On the sixth day, human kind comes into
existence. It is the final creative act,
according to Genesis. For on the 7
th
day, God rests. The work of creation is
completed and yet, there is a deeper reality at work that threatens; the
darkness and chaos press against the goodness and the light. They threaten to drown what God has made in
the struggle for power and control. Made
in God’s image, we imagine ourselves too much like gods. Selfishly greedy, with
insatiable appetites for more than our fair share that must be protected by violent
opposition toward any human threat to our liberty. The current debates in our culture over guns
and gays is about power and control. Who has it? Who should have it? Me, you, them, us, the government? In our superior egotism, we forget our
vulnerability, our fallibility, our mortality collectively earned and
evenly distributed to all. We forget
that what we do unto others, we are doing to ourselves. We let the chaos and the darkness in. In our politics, in our private thoughts, in
our foolish games, we let the darkness overwhelm us. We let the chaos of a thousand mass shootings,
of unending war, of intractable poverty, of tyrannical injustices too many to
name, too painful to ignore and too entangling to fight overwhelm us. To avoid the nakedness, we cover ourselves in
shame. We say “there is no God” while we
play and work and self-medicate with toys and sex and food and drugs and
treadmills and unworthy, vain pursuits.
We run from the light like blind moles emerging from winter’s earthen depths
only to retreat at the touch of the sun’s rays. We shop and watch and drive at the expense of
hungry, dying children. We take sides
and blame and judge to protect ourselves and hold our own power over them. We cast out, we oppress, we abuse and
neglect. We lash out and ignore. What have we become but the shadows of our
true selves? No longer innocent babes.
We have grown up, but we have not matured. We have not embraced the
truth of our identities. When faced with
the reality of the God who dwells with and in us, we put him to death.
On the sixth day, the man of God, the son of God, the
Word of God who was with God in the beginning, is put to death on a cross. It is no surprise. He is shamefully executed by the government and
religious powers. Their authority was established
by the will of the people who cried out, “Crucify him.” He was betrayed and abandoned by those who knew and loved him best. On the sixth day, the crowning achievement of
God’s good creation goes the way every single one of God’s children has gone;
by the way of death; death that is the fruit of human sin; turning away from
God to serve ourselves. “We have no king
but Caesar,” is to admit total infidelity to the creator God and full allegiance
with Tiberias—who called himself son of God. On a Friday afternoon, the sixth day, darkness
and chaos close in and push God out, swallowing Him up and ending His
life. They extinguish the light of the
world. They lay waste the bread of life
and pour out the living waters. And as
he hangs on the cross, life draining from his broken and pierced body he says, “It
is finished.” That which God started on
the sixth day of creation, divine fellowship with humankind, is completed in the death of Jesus. God enters creation and loves creation so
completely that God dies with creation; so that creation can be fully restored,
healed, made whole. On the cross, God
makes peace with us. The darkness and chaos, so close at hand, has been overcome by the one who is closer; for God is in the breath, the water, the food, the human bonds of kinship and love we give and receive every hour of this mortal life. We are not alone in our living or our dying. Jesus finishes the
work of creation by claiming death as the portal out of the darkness and chaos
and into the light and life of God. Tomorrow, we must rest. Because, on the 8th day the new
creation begins.
