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Saturday, April 19, 2014

No Short-cuts

The message from the Good Friday service at the Gettysburg United Methodist church April 18, 2014.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 27:27-54.

            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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