Our Blessing and Gift is Christ Himself

Long ago I knew an elderly woman named Nancy. She had the most severe case of scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, I have ever seen. Her body, as you looked at her straight on, looked like a question mark. Her chest was way off to her right, but her spine curled back. It’s hard to describe, but if you saw her, you would wonder how she even walked. Once, as she was leaving church, a big gust of wind caught one of the big, heavy front doors of the church, the doors I showed you last night, and blew it right into her, knocking her into me.

Thankfully I caught her, and in that moment, as I held her up for just a moment, I could feel how bent and frail her body was. Nancy once told me that it took her two full hours to get ready for church. That’s how important church was for her.

So I’ve always appreciated the effort people make to come to church.

When I say effort, I mean young parents and the effort it takes to wrangle the kids into readiness, and I mean laundry and breakfast and baths and outfits and, Lord help them, the occasional attitudes. I think about the sore backs, the bad hips, the chronic illnesses, the grief and sorrows people bear. There is a whole range of circumstances and conditions people have, some of which you would know or expect, some you would not guess. But I know.

That looms even larger for me now during this time when people cannot gather. But it begs the question: Why? Why do people place such a high value on church?

Most often when people talk about their church and why they love it, they will say, “It’s a family.” That is a very apt description. The church is very much a family, a family of families, of couples and singles of all ages and conditions.

What makes a family a family? We could say biological and legally binding connections, and on one level that would be true. But that scarcely describes it and we’ve got an infinite set of examples of how people have configured into what they regard as family. Today, for many it comes down to who you care about most. The church is, after all, one of those types of family.

So I’ll ask again, what makes a family a family? It is love. Whether it’s the bonds of family or friendship or how all of that gets mixed together with tradition and ritual, the heart of it is love. That’s very powerful and I think essential to our humanity. But that doesn’t quite explain why Nancy would spend two hours getting ready for church, and not just on Sundays.  She came every Wednesday too. And she’s not, by a long stretch, unique. She makes a fine example because she is representative of what drives a great many hearts to gather.

It is the love we have, the love we share, of Jesus. And it is the love he gives, the love he shares, with us.

There is no greater display of Christ’s love for us than these steps we remember on Good Friday. You remember that John quoted Jesus as saying, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

On Good Friday, we see the depth of God’s love. We see what it meant to God to give his only begotten Son. We see the cost of the gift of eternal life.

And we see what Jesus did to get ready to meet us on Sunday mornings, and Wednesday mornings; in our morning prayers, our evening prayers, our prayers in distress and our grace at meals, while we are awake and while we are asleep, whenever two or more are gathered in his name, or when we are all alone.

We just heard the account from John’s Gospel. Remember this is his eyewitness account. He was there in the garden.  He was there at the trial. He was there at the cross, and every step in between.

The rift between God and humanity was the ever-eroding chasm of our sin. As Jesus took that on in a cosmic way, we see it shockingly clear as His Passion unfolds.

Consider the pain of betrayal. The radiance of Jesus’ goodness is apparent even to the soldiers who come to arrest him. They drew back and fell to the ground.

Peter still doesn’t understand what it will mean for him to lay down his natural instincts and obey Jesus, obey the Father. And he will famously betray him three more times in denying that he is a follower of Jesus. But let’s not leave Peter alone in this.  All of the disciples except John slipped away.

Consider the pain of the authorities, religious and civil, looking to their self-interest rather than his life. Caiaphas thought it “expedient” to have him die. Pilate was uneasy but gave into the pressure of those leaders and the crowds.

Consider the pain of the physical beatings he suffered, the mocking and jeering by the soldiers, and of the crowds and he carried that heavy cross. The pain of the nails piercing his flesh and those terrible wounds bearing the weight of his body.

Worst of all, consider the pain, the loneliness he felt at being forsaken by his Father, even for a brief time. No one could help him. He had to go through with it all the way.

He did all of that to fill in the chasm created by our sin.  He did all of that so that he could invite you into his family, forever. He did all of that so that he could meet you here. And he will meet you here when it is safe for us to meet here. He did that so he could meet you in your home, at your work, in your prayers and in the times that you feel alone.

And he did it so that he could meet others through us. Our witness right now is reaching people in ways we could not have guessed just a few weeks ago, online and in tangible acts of love and mercy.

All of it because he loved us so much that he went to that awful cross.

AMEN