Tag Archive | forgiveness

A Different Kind of Black Friday

Mar29

It’s Friday in Holy Week. Peter has denied Jesus three times, the rooster has crowed. Judas is overcome with enough remorse that he has hung himself. Altars are stripped of anything celebratory or covered in black cloth even. This is a dark day.

Around the third hour (roughly 9am for us), Jesus has withstood false accusations, endless beatings, and has been sentenced to crucifixion. For what crime? He committed none. Even Pilate agreed with that. Jesus was literally headed to die for the crowd that chose to spare Barabbas. Why? I love the way The Message answers the why for this part of Jesus’ story.

But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
    our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
    that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
    that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole. (Isaiah 53: 5-6, The Message)

Jesus takes on the worst form of capital punishment because of my sins. Yours too. He’s spit on, tormented, has a crown of thorns pushed into his skull, and then gets to carry His own cross. A wooden cross. That’s what he’s hung on, between criminals. Only faultless man to ever exist and He gets to die between two criminals. Most of us would say the two on either side deserved it. Jesus didn’t deserve it though. Jesus is hanging there exhausted, bleeding out. And He’s there out of LOVE.

And, because He is love… He asks God to forgive us. “Forgive them for they know not what they have done” (Luke 22:34). Forgive them he says. Where were the people who had been following Him around for years? Where were the people He had healed? What about the children? Oh, please tell me they weren’t around! Luke tells us that “anyone who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things”.

About 3:00 in the afternoon, Jesus takes His last breath.

I imagine that’s when even those closest to Jesus went home. Maybe there are women hurrying up to prepare meals for Mary and Joseph for there’s been a death in the family. Maybe there are friends crying in kitchens together or men shaking their heads in solitude.

And then there’s Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Council, a good and upright man. The NIV says “He had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea, and he himself was waiting for the kingdom of God.  Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body.  Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid.  It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.” (Luke 23:50-54)

Things are dark. Jesus is laying in tomb. Everyone believes this is the end for Jesus. The world feels incredibly dark.

It’s so tempting to hide out today, isn’t it? To be part of the crowd that denies Jesus. We sure do live in a Good Friday kind of world. Today, my prayer has been for you and me. Maybe a little bit of “forgive us, we don’t know what we’re doing, Lord”. I think, mostly, though it’s been “help us not to be quiet at the cross”.

When Grace Begins to Fill the Cracks

Oct24

Note: the names have been changed to protect the innocent guilty ones needing to go unidentified.

I don’t know about you, but when the phone rings in the middle of the night—I automatically assume that something is terribly wrong; even when I was a kid.  My first question was always “who died?” when anyone would call our house after 9:00.  So, when my phone rang about 8:15pm—I just assumed it was someone looking to make a Cook-Out run or something.  I wasn’t ready for the news on the other end of the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”  I could hear the fear in the quiver of his voice.  “You need to come to the hospital.  It’s bad.  I don’t know if he’s gonna make it this time.”

“What? If who is going to make it?”  I was grabbing my keys and trying to make sense of the broken details.  It didn’t really matter who.  I heard it in his voice that I needed to come and come right now.

“Joseph.”  I almost dropped the phone.  “His little body.  I just,”

“I’m on the way.”

Joseph.  A competitor who rarely lost, but this was a battle he could have never trained for.  Yet, it looks like his opponent never stops practicing on his face.

I was in the ER sooner than I probably should have been able to arrive, but when that name shows up on my phone—I drop what I’m doing and go as fast as my car allows.

“Can we see him?”  I asked while he hugged me like, if he let go, it would only mean that this was all really happening.

“Two at a time.  It’s bad.”

“Go with me?”

He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and my heart sank as I considered what all of this could mean.  How on earth would we talk about God’s love and healing when the person who first taught this little man about God and the person who put him in this hospital bed are the same?

Black.  Blue.  Bruised.  Bleeding.  Bad.  Yes, it was really bad.  The foundation of his whole world was cracking.  His safety, his home life, his faith.  Our champ looked frail.  And small.  And my friend was right.  This was bad.  I didn’t have to find the right words to say to this little guy; he never woke up while we were there.  We stood there crying and praying and knowing.  Knowing that we felt certain how Joseph really got to this bed in the Emergency Room, despite the story being shared.

“There’s gotta be a special place in you know where for a parent who does this to their own kid.”

“Nope.  There’s room at the cross for them too, if they want it.  Jesus loves that parent and you the same.”

“Yeah, really good thing God loves us in ways we don’t deserve.  And that he doesn’t ask my opinion when it comes to how to handle people like those parents.”

What on earth were we gonna do?  How would he sit next to them in Sunday School next week?  How would I help him to teach this kid about forgiveness and a Heavenly Father when the word father probably made him scared for his life?  The foundation of his entire world is crumbling beneath him.  Lord, show us how to be there when Grace begins to fill the cracks…