Category: Good Friday

The Never Ending Story

‘Just as the weeds are sorted out and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the world.  The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will remove from his Kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil…Then the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s Kingdom.’

– Matthew 13:40-41; 43(a) NLT

‘We will shine like stars in the universe, holding out your truth in the darkest place.  We’ll be living for your glory.  Jesus, we’ll be living for your glory.’

– Matt Redman, from the song, ‘Shine’

Last Friday was Good Friday.  I spent it with a wonderful group of Holy mischief makers at a service and demonstration in front of the headquarters of the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.  Together we worshipped, prayed, and remembered both the suffering of Jesus and the suffering of his children.  We lamented the human cost of war, read aloud the names of children killed by the bombs and missiles manufactured by the merchants of death, and otherwise stood in solidarity, as Jesus had on the original Good Friday, with the victims of evil’s ongoing rampage against the life.  Some folks even took the step of direct action against such evil, crossing the line onto Lockheed Martin’s corporate property, where they knelt and prayed while awaiting arrest.  I’ve never had a more worshipful experience.  One of the organizers, who had brought her children, commented, ‘I told my kids we could do one of two things today: we can go to church or we can be the church.  They decided to be the church.’  That’s what being there with my brothers and sisters felt like for me as well.  Next year, I hope to cross the line myself. 

I am aware that not everyone sees this as I do.  Many may become angry at the thought that I bore witness to such shenanigans.  Others will scoff and dismiss such efforts as useless.   ‘Why do that?’ they ask.  ‘It doesn’t do any good.  Neither you nor those who were arrested stopped any war.  The bombs are still being made.  Why waste your time at such an event?  What possible good do things like this do?’

My response is two-fold.

First of all, I’m foolish enough to believe that such things do a lot of good.  It certainly does me some good.  Sometimes, as I watch the fires burning in the world, I feel alone and helpless.  But when I participate in such things, I no longer feel that way.  I become a part of something bigger than myself, something full of possibility.  I also believe that it is important to witness to the fact that another world is possible.  That things don’t have to be this way.  Certainly for my own sanity, but also because I believe that in doing so, there is always the possibility that someone else might agree; that someone on the other side might even change their mind.  It happens.  For example, there have been protests at Lockheed Martin for years, and over those years, people have turned.  Employees have repented.  Lives have changed.  Souls have been saved.  There is a power to loving, nonviolent protest that has the capacity to win enemies to the truth.  Just ask the Centurion who stood guard at the Cross on Good Friday (Mark 15:39).  Sometimes, nonviolent, loving protest can even change the world.    

But secondly, I admit that you sort of have a point.  You’re right: Lockheed Martin did not stop manufacturing bombs that day.  Indeed, decades worth of protests haven’t stopped them from doing so.  They’re still inflicting harm.   Still killing children.  Still lining their pockets with the proceeds of weapon sales.  The Trump Administration is still proposing an over 40% increase in military spending (much of which would go to Lockheed Martin), and even if they don’t get it, they will get at least a trillion dollars (think of that!).  What if it goes on like this forever?  What if it never changes?  What possible good then did it do for those folks to get arrested, and what possible good will it do for me to consider risking arrest myself some day? 

Well, I suppose if you live in the story of the powerful, then, aside from the things I mentioned above, it won’t do much good at all.  If you choose to live in a history defined by the powerbrokers, the presidents, the prime ministers, the war makers, and the merchants of death – the history as written by empire – then yes, it probably won’t change things much.  After all, even Jesus tells us that in the last days there will be wars and rumors of wars.  So yes, I suppose, our protests and arrests won’t end war entirely.  Even if they end one war, another will come along.  ‘We didn’t start the fire, it’s been always burnin’ since the world’s been turnin’, and when we are gone it will go on and on and on and on….’ (so says Billy Joel).  Such things will persist until Jesus comes again. 

But I contend that it’s still worth bearing witness to another way.  Because, you see, I choose not to live in the history of those folks.  I choose to live in a different story.  A never ending story. 

In Revelation, we read about this tome called the Book of Life (see, e.g., Revelation 20 and 21).  A lot of people think it’s nothing more than a list of names of those who believe in Jesus, but it’s so much more than that.  It’s the book that reveals history from God’s perspective.  And history, from God’s perspective, looks quite different from the perspective of the empire.  The empire believes that it is writing history with its armies, guns, and bombs, with power plays and games without frontiers.  But all the while, God is writing a different, better story.  It is the story told through the lives of people at the fringes, the marginalized, those of no account.  The wandering Arameans, the imprisoned prophets, the persecuted apostles, the martyred saints.  It is the history in which conscientious objectors who refuse cooperation with empire, such as Franz Jaggerstatter, who refused to fight for Hitler for the sake of his faith in Christ, and die for it, are hailed as the true heroes and given places of honor.  It is the history defined not by those who carry swords, but by those who take up the cross.    

And in that book of history, on Good Friday 2026, there is an entry about a little  band of holy mischief makers who worshipped together, who stood in solidarity with the suffering, who took a stand by kneeling and praying on the property of the warmongers, who bore witness, who pointed, even if few saw where they were pointing, to another future and another way.  Some may have seen it, and perhaps, as a result, they too will one day find their names written in the Book of Life.  And one day, for sure, their story, along with millions of other unsung stories, will be the only stories told in the universe.  Theirs will be the songs that will be sung forever.  The merchants of death will be gone, while the ‘righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s Kingdom.’ 

What happened last Good Friday doesn’t matter?  Oh my goodness, it matters more than you or I can imagine. 

And so I say to you that today, you have a choice.  You get to decide which history you would like to be a part of.  The history that will be forgotten, that will come to an end, or God’s history that will never end, the history that is, in fact, determining the course of eternity even as we speak. 

The power brokers will surely continue to laugh if you live on the right side of things.  As you kneel and pray while the nations rage.  As you bear witness to another world.  But that’s okay.  For one day, their laughing will be forever silent.  One day they will know they were wrong.  One day when they fall to their knees and hail Jesus as Lord, they will know that ours was the true history, that ours was the never ending story. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

All I Need to Know

Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty.

I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp.

Instead, I have quieted myself,

like a weaned child who no longer cries for it’s mother’s milk.

Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me. 

– Psalm 131:1-2 NLT

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

– 1 John 3:16(a)

What is the message of the Cross?

This is the question I must address every year at this time.  Weeks before Holy Week, it rises amidst all the other things I must think about.  I’m plugging along, embracing each week as it comes, spending time with God and creating space for inspiration for the messages and lessons I must impart each Sunday, while in the back of my mind some manic voice shouts, ‘Have you thought about Holy Week yet?’  And so the pressure begins to mount. 

I’m not sure what that pressure is, really, other than the massing of my own insecurities and perfectionist tendencies.  I think a lot of pastors feel it.  Somehow or other, we once again have to talk about the Cross, and not just as we do throughout the year.  It’s Holy Week, for crying out loud, and so you have to talk about the Cross in a special way!  This is the big time.  The show.  People who don’t normally come to church may show up on Palm Sunday.  They probably won’t on Good Friday, so you need to get the message of the Cross right then.  Oh sure, you can talk about Palm Sunday itself sometimes, the Triumphal Entry and all that, but not every year, that would be too repetitive, so at least every other year, on Palm Sunday, you need to deliver a whizz bang message about the Cross.  And remember, most of the people you’ll be speaking to have heard this story before.  Many times.  So you have to come up with something new.  Something original.  Something…clever. 

Fortunately, there are all sorts of ways to talk about the Cross.  The New Testament writers, tasked with expressing the most extraordinary event in the history of the universe, were inspired to paint various word pictures that help us capture the Cross and it’s meaning.  The Cross is a place of victory.  It’s a hospital where humanity’s wounds are healed.  It’s the place where the price was paid for the forgiveness of sins.  It’s our ransom.  It’s our moral model for how we are to live.  It recalls us to our true identity in God’s sight.  It restores our union with God.  It is the place where God enters into our suffering.  The list goes on and on.  There are any number of entry points to the message of the Cross.  So there shouldn’t be any problem coming up with something to share. 

But sometimes, there is.  And I know that sounds crazy.  But when you’re the pastor, you tend to remember everything you’ve every said about the Cross.  Every sermon.  Every illustration.  Every clever approach to make it sound new.  And you can’t help but think (hope?), even though you’re certainly wrong, that everyone else remembers too.  And so, the pressure.  How do you come up with something new, something original, something clever, in speaking of the Cross this year during Holy Week. 

I felt this pressure this year.  Big time.  The week before Palm Sunday, I sat down to write my sermon, and hours into it, felt as if I’d written nothing more than four pages of theological gobbledygook.  And so, a couple days later, I started from another angle.  I didn’t even finish a draft of that one.  I couldn’t seem to capture what I was trying to say.  And so, my brain hurting, I abandoned the project for a while. 

I eventually completed the sermon (I returned to my original, modified it slightly, and realized it wasn’t so bad).  But even so, I felt as if this whole exercise, this whole exhausting effort at trying to capture the message of the Cross in a single message, was ridiculous.  And, of course, it is.  Because the truth is that all of our efforts to capture that message are destined for failure.  How can you possibly capture the meaning of the Cross in a single message, or even in a lifetime of messages?  At the end of John’s Gospel there is a telling notation: ‘Jesus did many other things.  If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that could be written.’  How equally true is that of the message of the Cross!  For all our theories, all our word pictures, all our attempts to capture the meaning of the Atoning work of Jesus Christ, all our cleverness, we have never, will never, come close to capturing its essence or fullness.  What happened there is beyond words.  There’s a reason theologians refer to the events of Holy Week as the paschal mystery.  The message of the Cross, the meaning of the Cross, the elusive understanding of the Cross will forever remain just that – a mystery.  Trying to explain it with words is like trying to contain the whole of Niagara Falls in a tea cup. 

Hence, the pressure. 

And so, here’s a message that doesn’t try so hard. 

What is the message of the Cross?

It is that we mean everything to God. 

And here is where, despite my earlier comments, I risk being clever. 

I recently finished reruns of The Office, a comedy that features one of the great love stories of the ages.  Yes, besides Romeo and Juliet, Captain Von Trapp and Maria, and Heathcliff and Catherine, you have to put Jim and Pam.  Their story captivated audiences for nine years running this century.  But if you know it, you know that near the end of that run, they hit some bumpy times. 

Pam, who struggled with self-esteem, was really having a hard time when Jim attempted to start a new business.  The time away, the time apart, made Pam feel as if she weren’t enough for Jim.  At one point, she tells him so, and Jim, well, Jim is just crushed.  After all he has done to show Pam how much he loves her, he realizes that he hasn’t done enough. 

And so, he asks the video crew that has been filming their story for nine years (that’s the premise of The Office) to help him out.  The crew assembles a montage of key moments in their love story, moments that highlight just how much Pam means to him.  Pam watches the video and then Jim hands her a letter.  It’s a letter he’s had for a long time.  He had almost given it to her once before they started to date, but chickened out.  But now, in the fullness of time, he shares it.   

As he hands the note to Pam, he simply says, ‘Everything you’ll ever need to know is in that note.’  Pam reads it, and with tears in her eyes, looks at Jim, who simply says to her, with a heart full of love, ‘Not enough for me?  You’re everything.’ 

And just like that, Pam knows she’s enough. 

She knows that in Jim’s eyes, she is everything. 

Here’s the funny thing: we never learn the contents of the note.  It remains, and still remains all these years later, a mystery. 

And that, more than anything else I can say, is the message of the Cross.  It’s God’s love letter to us.  The note that tells us everything we will ever need to know.  That no matter who we are, where we’ve been, or what we’ve done, we are, in God’s eyes, everything. 

When I was a kid, my Mom hung a plaque on the wall that said, ‘I asked God how much he loved me.  ‘This much,’ he said, and he stretched out his arms, and died.’

No matter what else the Cross means, no matter what theories we might propose or explanations we might offer, in the end, they really don’t matter much.  In the end, all that can remain a mystery. 

What matters is that God loves us. 

What matters is that we’re his everything. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent