Have you ever watched a movie or a
TV show where you already knew the ending? Maybe you’d seen it before, or
maybe you’d just read about it or been talking to somebody about it and they
told you how it ended. And now, you’re actually getting a chance to watch
it for yourself.
When you watch a show that way,
nothing ever has quite the same impact, does it? I mean, we still might
enjoy it. We still might think it’s a good show. But it’s just not
the same. Nothing about the show grabs us the way it was intended to.
The plot twists don’t surprise us. The scary parts don’t scare us.
Because we know how it’s all going to come out. We know how it
ends.
That can be the trouble with reading
the events of Jesus’ crucifixion. We know how it comes out. We
still read the story. We still think it’s a good story. But it does
not grab us the way it was intended to. It does not surprise us. It
does not scare us. We know how it comes out--with Jesus rising from the
dead. We know how it ends--with Jesus ascending into heaven.
That’s too bad. The story of
Jesus’ crucifixion is not supposed to be treated as a ho-hum story. It’s
not supposed to be greeted with yawns. This story would’ve been an
amazing, a stunning thing to the people who first heard it or first read it.
Put yourself in the place of someone
who was living in the first century A. D. The gospel of Matthew was
written, as far as we can tell, sometime around 70 A. D., so say you came
across it not too long after that. Maybe you’d heard a little about this
Jesus character, but after all, he’d died about forty years earlier.
That might’ve been before you were born, or maybe you were just a
little kid at the time. For me, it’d be sort of like hearing about the
Kennedy assassination. I was four when that happened. For some of
you who are older, it might be like hearing about World War II or the
depression. For those of you who are younger, it might be like hearing
about the Iran hostage crisis. For those of you who’re still in school,
it might be like hearing about 9-11. The point is, it’d be like something
you know is an important historical event, but it’s something that either
happened when you were not born yet or when you were too young to understand
what was going on, so you don’t really know much about it.
So you start reading about it, or--because the written word was
not easy to come by and all they had was scrolls--you have someone read it to
you. You read about this guy who could do miracles. He could change
water to wine. He could make food appear out of nowhere. He could
heal people. He could drive out evil spirits. He could even raise
the dead. In fact, even his birth was a miracle, born from a woman who
was a virgin. They call him the Son of God. They call him the
Savior. They call him the King.
You read about how people flocked to him from all over. You
read about how he taught the people. You read about how he wanted people
to love God and to love each other. You read about what an incredible,
powerful, and yet humble and loving and caring person this guy, this Jesus,
was. He sounds wonderful. He sounds perfect. You start to
wish you had been around when Jesus was walking the earth, so you could’ve
experienced all this first-hand.
And then, you come to this part. You read about how Jesus
was arrested. You hear about how he was put on trial. You read
about how all these people, the same people who had been so eager to see him,
now all wanted him killed. You read about how when they had the chance to
choose between Jesus and another prisoner, they chose to have the other
prisoner released and have Jesus killed.
Then you read about how Jesus was tortured. You read about
how he was humiliated. You read about how he was the subject of insults,
the worst insults anybody could think of. And then you read about how he
died.
It would’ve been shocking. It would’ve been horrifying.
You would not really understand it. Why would people do this?
How could they have let it happen? I mean, maybe you can understand
why the authorities did not like Jesus, but what’s up with the other people?
Why did they not stop it? How could they all turn on Jesus so
quickly?
And then you check, and you see you’re almost to the end of the
scroll. You figure, this must be about it. This stunning,
incredible, terrible plot twist has happened, and now, the story’s about over.
That’s what the disciples thought. They were miserable.
They thought the story was over. That’s what the Pharisees thought,
too, although they were certainly not miserable. They were pleased.
They thought they’d gotten rid of a nuisance, a troublemaker.
Everyone involved in the story thought the story was over at that
point. They had no idea what was going to come next. In fact, they
had no idea that anything was going to come next. They thought things
would just get back to normal and life would go on.
You and I know better, because we know what’s coming next.
And in a way that’s good, but in a way it’s not. Because we know
that Jesus rose from the dead, it’s easy for us to not think too much about his
death. Because we know Easter Sunday came, it’s easy for us to not think
too much about Good Friday.
And that’s too bad. Because if we don’t feel the pain and
misery and despair of Good Friday, we cannot really feel the incredible
excitement and joy and happiness of Easter Sunday.
If we jump over Good Friday straight to Easter Sunday, Easter
becomes just another day. We may still like it. We may decorate our
house or hide some Easter eggs or buy some chocolate bunnies. We may
spend some time with our families. We may even decide to get all dressed
up and come to church. We may have a wonderful day. But that’s all
we have. All Easter is for us is a wonderful day.
It’s not that any of that stuff is bad. It’s okay.
There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. But when all Easter
is for us is just another day, even if it’s a wonderful day, we miss out.
It’s not that we’re doing something wrong, exactly. It’s that we’re
cheating ourselves. We deprive ourselves of the real meaning of Easter.
And so we deprive ourselves of feeling the excitement, and the joy, and
the happiness, of Easter Sunday.
The only way Jesus could get to the resurrection was to die.
He could not take a short-cut. He could not skip over part of it.
Jesus could not get to the joy of Easter Sunday without going through the
pain of Good Friday.
That was true for the disciples, too. The only way the
disciples could get to “He is risen!” was to go through Jesus’ death.
They could not take a short-cut. They could not skip over part of
it. The disciples, too, could not get to the joy of Easter Sunday without
going through the pain of Good Friday.
And it’s true for us as well. The only way we can get feel
the joy and excitement of Easter Sunday is to go through the pain and misery of
Good Friday. We cannot take a short cut. We cannot skip over part
of it. If we do, we won’t really understand what Jesus did for us.
And we’ll prevent ourselves from feeling the true joy, the unbelievable
joy that comes from knowing that Jesus died for our sins, that Jesus rose, that
Jesus lives even today, and that our salvation can come from our belief in
Jesus as our Savior.
We’d like to skip over the story of Good Friday. We’d like
to skip over the story of Jesus’ death. It’s unpleasant. It’s sad.
It’s no fun. It’s something we don’t like to read about, even two
thousand years later. But it’s something we need to read about. And
more important, it’s something we need to feel.
So this year, let’s not skip part of the story just because we
know how it ends. We’ll have a wonderful celebration on Easter Sunday.
But for tonight, let’s focus on Good Friday. Let’s focus on what
Jesus did for us. And let’s be grateful that Jesus Christ did not skip
over Good Friday. Let’s be grateful that he endured it all, so that our
sins could be forgiven.
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