Good Friday, 2003

 

What Did You Do To Deserve This?

Good Friday Meditation

April 18, 2003

 

What did you do to deserve this, Lord Jesus?  The angry shouts of a crowd that, only days ago, cheered you; the mocking scorn from your accusers, and the deathly silence from your closest friends.

 

What did you do to deserve this, Lord Jesus?  What did you do to deserve the steel cold nails that pierced your flesh, the Roman whips that flayed you, the roughly hewn cross that scraped and dug into your back?

 

What did you do to deserve this, Lord Jesus?  The agonizing hours hanging alone for all the world to see, the labored breath of lungs afire, and the heart-breaking moment your Father turned his face away.

 

What did you do to deserve this?  What did you do to deserve this?

 

The answer?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  That’s what makes the cross seem, to the wise and well-healed, utter foolishness.  So why then?  Why would the Son of God, Jesus Christ, have to face such an inhumane and humiliating death?  Why?

 

I believe that it is incomprehensible, the grand mystery of the cross, given the constraints of our minds.  But there are manageable clues, signs and statements about what God was up to with the death of Jesus.

 

God is holy.  This means that he is awesome in his perfection, unalterable, unblemished, and unable to share space with sin.

 

We are not holy.  This means that we are feeble in our imperfection, easily swayed, and wallow in our sinfulness like hogs in mud.  

 

But way back, shortly after the crack of the first dawn, this great and holy God created us, for his pleasure, no less!  He delighted to create us, giving us life from his own breath.  He showed his love for us through the gift of freedom—freedom to create, freedom to rest, freedom to feast, and the freedom to choose him, or not.  We chose against him, to our great peril.  And for a thousand generations, that choice, that sin, has wrecked havoc in our world, on our relationships, and on our relationship with Him.

 

In our rebelliousness and disobedience, we claim to know better than God, making wider the chasm between Him and us.  (Remember, this Holy God cannot co-habit with sin.)  Yet still, this great and holy God kept on loving his people—wooing us, correcting us, yearning for us to turn from our sinfulness.  But still we were deaf to his voice.

 

Enter Jesus.  For God so loved the world that he sent his son, Jesus, into it as a gift.  In the world, Jesus told the story of His loving and holy Father.  He taught that the sick, sinful, and sightless could find hope and healing by giving their life over to God.  That anyone who believed in Him would never perish but have everlasting life.  Jesus was God in the flesh, the physical presence of the Holy One, Jehovah, YHWH. 

 

Still we did not see him.  We had all sorts of expectations for Jesus, ideas about him that were only partly true.  And yet he was undeterred.  He knew all along that his journey on earth went through persecution, and pain; to the splintered beam of a Roman cross, to the depths of Hell, and out again. 

 

Our Jewish forbearers practiced the tradition of sacrificing a lamb to make amends for sins against God.  We practice the tradition of works, rules and right behavior to try to make things right with God.  We think, subconsciously or otherwise, that we can somehow repay God for his forgiveness.  But as we’ve come to know too well, rules only produce more rules; good behavior is always tempered by bad, and what’s left behind is the putrid residue that is guilt and shame.

 

Because we are offspring of the Most High God, we are loved as His children.  What parent, when their child reaches adulthood, would submit a bill for all expenses accrued during childhood and adolescence?  Every dime ever spent in room and board, medical treatment, emotional support, holiday expenses, and clothing, Christmas and birthday gifts.  It is inconceivable.  So too is the thought that God would expect his children to pay.  No child could ever repay what they’ve been given.  Neither are we, as God’s children, expected to pay.  That, however, doesn’t change the fact that someone had to pay.

   

This is where the cross comes in.  Jesus became the sacrificial lamb.  He paid what humanity couldn’t.  And though we want justice, we want to repay evil, hurt, resentment, bitterness, hostility, prejudice, rape, murder, and abandonment.  We haven’t the wherewithal to begin to cover what those cost.  Only Jesus, as God’s Son, God Himself, had enough, and has enough to pay the cost of our sin.  Only Jesus.  Only Jesus.

 

And so today we look at the cross—I suspect the one Jesus was pinned to was less neat and square, with a rougher finish than the one we see before us.  But we look anyway, trying to feel, struggling to comprehend, fighting to come to terms with such a hideous, yet lavish, act of love.  We look up and say, “What, Lord Jesus, did you do to deserve this?”  But now we know the answer: nothing.  Jesus did nothing to deserve this, yet chose it for His sake, and for our salvation.

 

When we look at, or think about, the cross (and we absolutely must look at the cross for it is the cross that best describes Jesus’ purpose, his motivation: grace).  Grace must be the word that comes to mind.  Grace, the truth that all debts have been paid, all sentences reversed, and all guilt atoned for by someone innocent in place of the guilty.  

 

Now listen to Jesus’ words from the cross: “Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.”  In other words, “Father, look at me, at what I have done.  You sent me to pay the price, to act as the sacrifice in their place, I’ve done it, now please, will you forgive them?”  And then later, just before the last breath escapes from his holy lungs, “It is finished.”  In other words, “Debt repaid, costs covered, blame, accusation, punishment wiped away.”

 

What did we do to deserve this?  What did we do to deserve such an extravagant gift?  Again, the answer is nothing!  Nothing.  If there was something we’d done to warrant this gift, then grace is neutralized, and we could claim some responsibility, take some credit.  Romans 12:1 says, “Therefore, because of God’s mercy…worship Him” (emphasis, paraphrase mine).  In his letter to Titus, Paul writes, “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (3:4-5, emphasis added).  Only God gets the credit because only God did this.  Only God deserves thanks, only God deserves our worship.

 

If there were any other way for us to be made right with God, then either God didn’t know about it, or didn’t try it.  Either way we could reason that God is a fool.  For if there was any other way than the cross, then God is an idiot for sacrificing his own perfect son for us imperfect people.  But since God is neither foolish nor idiotic, it has to be reasoned that this was the only way.   

 

All we can do, all you can do, is respond.  And you do that by declaring, again or for the very first time, your belief in the one who hangs there on the cross.  You can say, “Yes, Jesus, I believe you died for me to pay the penalty for my sin.  Help my disbelief.”  You can say, “I believe that your way is best and it is the way I want to go for my life.”  “But”, you say, “I’m full of rage, resentment, bitterness, hurt and loneliness.  And I try coping with it on my own, but it doesn’t work.  I believe that only you can take it away because only you had enough to cover the high cost of that sin.  You did nothing to deserve this cross, but I’m so thankful that you endured its shame for the sake of my salvation, for grace, and for the sake of your great name.” 

 

Amen.

 

 

 

Copyright © Shaun Dyer, 2003, Zion Baptist Church of Kensington