Text
for the month:
“
But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was
hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For
it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a
tree.ӣ 14
_ Through
the work of Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles with the same
blessing he promised to Abraham, and we Christians receive the promised
Holy Spirit through faith.” Galatians 3.13-14
Thought for the month:
“The
showdown came at Gethsemene and Golgotha. When guilt, suffering, and death
began their painful encirclement, he could have broken out, he could have
been spared all that humiliation by a wave of his hand. But, although it
was possible for him to do it, that hand never moved. Instead, he let
himself fall, living and dying, into the hands of his Father.
He loved, literally until it killed him. For that reason, and for
that alone, we have the unbelievable chance to count on God's loving us,
knowing us, remaining true to us, and never abandoning us.”
Helmut
Thielicke, I Believe: The Christian's Creed, translated by John W.
Doberstein and H. George Anderson, William Collins Sons & Co., 1969,
page 84
Dear
Friends
As
you are probably aware, the Mel Gibson film “The Passion of the Christ”
has aroused huge public interest. Mel Gibson himself invested £20 million
of his own personal fortune in the film, and yet he managed to recoup this
amount through the box office returns just one week after the film’s
release in the United States. Churches both in America and in Europe have
been buying up huge numbers of tickets to give them away to non-churchgoers
as an evangelistic venture. Saddleback Valley Community Church in the
United States bought as many as 18,000 tickets for the film, and St
Luke’s church Maidstone and its sister churches in the town spent over £20,000
on buying tickets so that they can be given free to members of the public.
I, along with so many others, warmly welcome the arrival of this film. Mel Gibson, a devout Roman Catholic, has chosen to put his faith on the line by pouring so much of his own personal energies into directing the film. His motive - to show the world the true horror of the cross. This is a film which graphically displays the pain and torture of Jesus’ flogging and crucifixion. It is not a film for the faint hearted. It destroys any comfortable images we may have held in our sub-conscious and replaces them with searing pictures of pain, blood and agony.
However, showing the pain and gore of the cross is not in itself the important thing about this film. As we approach Good Friday, the film also helps us to ask the important question – “Why did Jesus have to die in this way?”. That is the question Mel Gibson is hoping we will come out from the cinema asking.
So
– why indeed?
One
non-believer, commenting on the film, wrote that it is a harrowing insight
into the “tragedy of the crucifixion”. This is to misunderstand
entirely the death of Christ on the cross. The point is this – the death
of Christ on the cross was not a mistake, not some dreadful
“tragedy”. It was all part of the plan behind why Jesus came to earth
in the first place. Jesus himself said “For I, the
Son of Man, came here not to be served but to serve others, and to give my
life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10 verse 45).
What did Jesus mean by a
“ransom”? We need to look earlier on in the Bible to fully understand
this. In the Old Testament, a system was set up under the Law of Moses,
whereby an animal, often a calf or a lamb, would be sacrificed and its
blood would be taken into the “Holy of Holies”, the very heart of the
Temple. This blood would act as a “payment” or a “ransom” for the
sins of the people. The idea behind this is that the people had offered up
the very best of their possessions – a healthy calf or a spotless lamb -
as a way of asking forgiveness for their sins. By this offering, God saw
that the people of Israel were truly contrite for their sins, and so the
blood symbolized the fact that forgiveness had been handed down by God to
the people.
Now, do you recall that passage in the New
Testament when John the Baptist described Jesus as “the Lamb of God who
takes away the sins of the world”? We sing similar words in church each
Sunday. What John the Baptist
meant by that is that in the New Testament Jesus became the equivalent of
the Old Testament lamb. He was the sacrifice for sin. His blood represents
the “payment” or “ransom” for our wrongdoing. This time, however,
it is not the people who are making the sacrifice, it is God himself, by
giving up his Son as an offering for sin. As our Patron Saint St Paul
wrote: “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at
just the right time and died for us sinners. 7Now, no one is
likely to die for a good person, though someone might be willing to die for
a person who is especially good. 8 But God showed his
great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still
sinners.” (Romans chapter 5).
What this means in reality is that the cross was
actually a victory over sin, not a meaningless tragedy. Through Jesus’
death on the cross we can have confidence that our sins are forgiven and
that our relationship with God has been restored.
Even when we sin now, providing that we confess our sins and turn
from what we know is wrong, we can be assured that God forgives us and
restores us to a healthy and right relationship with him. When we slip back
into sin, we still are given another chance, and another, and another….
for God’s mercy is endless, providing of course that we are genuinely
penitent and attempt to follow his ways following our repentance.
To conclude then, the cross is the central aspect
of our faith, it is the very fountain of grace and the heart of our
confidence before God.
In the words of the famous hymn
“We sing the praise of Him who died,
of
him who died upon the cross”
and
later in that hymn
“The
cross! It takes our guilt away;
it
holds the fainting spirit up;
it
cheers with hope the gloomy day
and
sweetens every bitter cup”
The focus of this article has been on the message of Good Friday. For the equally wonderful message of the resurrection – come to our services on Easter Day!
A
very happy Easter to you
Simon Tillotson
Old and thoughtful thoughts
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