God Would Like To See Us Laughing
Good Friday is a sad day. In German it is called ‘Karfreitag’, ‘Kar’ meaning
mourning. On that day Christians remember the death of Jesus on the cross.
This year it is on 25 March.
It is indeed hard to contemplate suffering, sin and death, but – as Lesley-ann
said in her sermon for Ash Wednesday- we should also laugh since we have
been released from sin and death, the cross bringing the message of
healing, so this day is also ‘good’ and even Luther spoke of a Good Friday.
Good Friday these days is an ecumenical feast day. I remember from my
childhood, that it was seen as a special day for Protestants, with Catholics
demonstratively pegging out their washing and working in the fields that day,
while Protestants did the same at their feast of Corpus Christi. ‘Good Friday
Christians’ were lazy parishioners who made an effort to go to church on that
day, and the radio only played classical music to emphasise mourning.
These days all Christians found that Good Friday and Easter belong to all of
us, and together they find it rather difficult to make the redeeming, releasing
power of the cross understandable to our secular society. To think about
suffering, sin and death requires a special kind of mind.
Dorothea Sattler, a professor for ecumenical theology, wrote about this in an
article in the magazine ‘Andere Zeiten’. She thought it was most important to
ask; ‘Who is it that is dying on the cross?’ The answer lies in the effect that
the person of Jesus had and still has on mankind. Many have experienced a
change in their lives by meeting him, and they see that change as a healing.
Jesus lives with people in a relationship which enables them to accept
themselves as being valued. Jesus asks people who turn to him what they
want of him -he encourages us to recognise our personal wishes for our
lives and sensitively acknowledge hurts which life has inflicted on us. Jesus
seeks companionship with those at the margins of society, his willingness to
sit down for meals with outcasts gave them dignity and demonstrates to us
the lasting love and kindness of God toward those who sinned against him.
Jesus is the visible appearance of God in time and history. In Jesus, God
can be experienced today making visible, how God is prepared to remain
committed even to those who want to annihilate him, to those who live as
His enemies, to all living beings. Jesus lived the love of God, even unto
death, a death which is horrifying. The hope that comes from it comes from
the experience that God does not give up on his creation even in death.
We must not think that we are redeemed by the brutality of that death. That
death is as nasty as every cruelty that man can do to man, the same as that
afflicted on many these days. But in that death, which Jesus didn’t want,
didn’t look for, at times tried to avoid and yet suffered we can see the
goodness of God and His willingness for reconciliation. From us who want to
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