Over the next 8 days, I’ll be traveling with my family through many of the lands where early Christians lived, suffered, and died for their beliefs: Rome, Athens, Ephesus, among them. I’m scheduling some posts on faith and hope for while I’m gone. Please keep checking back for new posts, or why not use this time to subscribe, here or on Facebook?
For today, from an oratorio on Easter written by N.T. Wright, author of Surprised by Hope.
Thomas, like a good historian wants to see and touch…Thomas begins with doubt:
The sea is too deep
The heaven’s too high
I cannot swim
I cannot fly;
I must stay here
I must stay here
Here where I know
How I can know
Here where I know
What I can know.
Jesus then reappears and invites Thomas to see and touch. Suddenly the new, giddying possibility appears before him:
The sea has parted. Pharaoh’s hosts –
Despair, and doubt, and fear, and pride –
No longer frighten us. We must
Cross over to the other side.
The heaven bows down. With wounded hands
Our exiled God, our Lord of shame
Before us, living, breathing, stands;
The Word is near, and calls our name.
New knowing for the doubting mind,
New seeing out of blindness grows;
New trusting may the sceptic find
New hope through that which faith now knows.
![Have you ever wondered why it’s called “Good Friday”?
‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Matthew 27:46
Tear-wiping God,
Many people have asked through the years,
“How can we call it ‘Good Friday’
when it’s the day our Savior died?”
In the same way, grieving friends may ask
if there is anything good in these days,
the days of shootings, sickness, war, and death.
Your answer to why Good Friday is good
is your answer to all who mourn
and to all who hate the brutality of sin and death.
The Good in Good Friday comes from you,
the through-and-through good Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Yes, Jesus was wrongly convicted in a mock trial.
Yes, Jesus was beaten and bloodied by Roman soldiers.
Yes, Jesus was mocked by many who previously praised him.
Yes, Jesus was subjected to the brutal death of crucifixion.
But God. But through it all, you were in control.
Through it all, you were carrying out the plan
that you, the triune God made from the beginning of time.
It was a good plan.
It was the only plan that could finally and forever
restore your people to you.
And in the moment that Jesus cried from the cross,
“It is finished,”
it became a completed plan.
You had won victory over sin and death,
and just three short days later,
the “Son of Righteousness” would rise
with “healing in [his] wings” (Malachi 4:2).
Yes, it’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.
In the worst of our days on this earth,
may we never forget the great hope of Good Friday.
In Jesus’ victorious name. Amen.
Read Matthew 26:57-65; Matthew 27:1-61.
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