The Gospel Truth
Good Friday 2023
April 7, 2023
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Not long ago a very experienced, committed and devout Christian friend was excited to tell me about an article he’d read by a Jesuit priest, which he summed up by saying, “You can reduce the Gospel to five words, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”
He was very pleased. He found that very comforting and it sounds like a badly needed tonic for this era of social media and 24-hour news, rife with political opinions, which I suppose it is.
That was very well-intentioned, but made me cringe.
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” is, of course, the second half of Jesus’ response when he’s asked to summarize the Law: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-38)
What could be wrong with that? It comes from the very best source; God the Father as quoted by God the Son. That’s huge. It is very, very important. It is the very best guidance the world has ever heard for the way we ought to live under God and with each other. It is the foundation of Christian ethics. Every time we are faced with the question, “What should I do?” that is the place to start. It may not seem to apply directly to your circumstance at the moment, but it will ground you, heart and mind, and thus avail you to Godly wisdom.
Why, then, did I cringe? This is a very important distinction, one that caught my attention as it was apparently missed by my friend who is one of the most faithful, committed and experienced Christians I know and apparently by the Jesuit priest.
Clearly, it’s not wrong, as far as it goes. But we must always be careful not to substitute part of the truth for the whole truth. This is the summary of the Law, not the summary of the Gospel.
Think of it this way: Jesus did a lot of teaching about the way we ought to live. We have the Sermon on the Mount, so many of the parables. Beyond that is his example of God’s love in action, the ways he looked at people not as they were but as God wanted them to be; healed, restored, repentant and forgiven. Jesus wants us to see with his eyes and to respond according to his will, aligned with the will of the Father and empowered by the Holy Spirit. All of that is life affirming, life giving and most importantly absolutely true in the highest and most Godly sense.
It is the first answer to, “How, then, shall we live?” But that question is in itself a response. What precedes the “How then?”
To answer that, we can turn to what is probably the most popular verse in the Bible because it summarizes the Gospel perhaps better than any other, John 3:16: “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.”
He didn’t say, “… sent his only Son” to teach us or to heal us, or to show us more signs. Yes, Jesus did all of that and more. But we have to keep the main thing the main thing. Today we remember the fullness of what Jesus means by, “…he gave his only son.”
Instead, the story goes something like this, “I love you despite the fact that you are fundamentally incapable of living up to the commandments and laws I set before you. Because I love you, I am giving a beloved part of myself as atonement for your sin. I am picking up your tab. I am paying off all of your fines. This is going to hurt terribly, the worst in every way possible – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually – and I will endure it all to enable you to be with me forever. That promise, along with my Word and example, will give you direction and endurance for the trials you face and most of all a sure and certain hope.”
It's ironic that the reason they killed Jesus, the Jews for a charge of blasphemy and the Romans out of expediency, to prevent a riot, have nothing to do with the reason Jesus died. He only told the truth about himself and he had no designs on political upheaval.
Jesus suffered and died to save us from our sin. This was anticipated in the prophets, as we heard from Isaiah among others. It is affirmed by the Apostles repeatedly, by Peter, John and Paul, and in the Gospels.
Just as he bore all our sins, together we bear necessity of his death, even all these centuries later.
It would be a very happy thing if we could console ourselves with merely recognizing that God is love and therefore everything is going to be ok. Those two points are true, but they are incomplete.
We must always remember the way love, God’s love, truly is – unyielding, resolute, unable to leave his beloved children to their just deserts. For God so loved the world that he submitted himself to be arrested. For God so loved the world that he went before Annas and Caiaphas to be judged. For God so loved the world that he went before Pontius Pilate to be sentenced. For God so loved the world that he physically carried his cross to Golgotha, the place of a skull, where they nailed him to that cross and he hung on that cross to die. For God so loved the world that they took Jesus’ dead body, prepared it with 100 pounds of spices and laid it in a tomb.
For God so loved the world that he made our pain his pain, our death his death. And that is why I can, as a priest in His church, look you in the eye and beg you to trust God’s judgment and mercy, His grace and His love, his light when all other lights have gone out, and to trust it’s going to be ok, because, “he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Now go forth. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
AMEN