The Brokenness Before the Beauty

Today, much of Christendom will celebrate Good Friday, the day that remembers the Crucifixion of Christ. This is the day that no bread can be consecrated. Many Christians will fast today. Some will fast until Easter morning.

I have already heard a great Good Friday sermon.  At seminary chapel on Tuesday, we had a Holy Week theme, and our guest preacher preached on the crowds demanding the release of Barabbas, not Jesus.  Our guest preacher cautiously approached the substitutionary atonement theology that rears its ugly head on Good Friday and beyond.  He reminded us that this theology comes to us from Anselm in the 12th century, not from God.

He said that humans required the crucifixion of Jesus, in the way that human brokenness so often does.  God did not require the sacrifice of Jesus.  He talked about Jesus and the ways that Jesus sought to heal the world.  He ended his sermon by saying, "Jesus released Barabbas.  Let us have the strength to release Jesus Christ." 

Tonight I will go to a Good Friday service at another new church of mine, the one near my North Carolina house.  It will involve Stations of the Cross and walking outside.  I'm interested to see what they do with all the potential.  I have not done much with Stations of the Cross in the past, just a Good Friday service here or there, plus a few encounters with art that uses the Stations of the Cross.

from Mary Button's "Stations of the Cross:  Jesus at the Border"

It is good to remember how much of the world is stuck in Good Friday.  It is good to remember, as our guest preacher did, how we are called to stand in solidarity with those who are broken by the world.  It is good today to reflect on God, who can make beauty out of the most profound ugliness, wholeness out of the most shattered brokenness.