Looking for Love

       (I realized recently that I have not really addressed Easter in my blog this year.  Not only has it been very busy, but also I was really concentrating my energy on my preaching.  So I am going to share some of Holy Week's preaching with you.)

       During Good Friday worship, people are invited to spend time meditating upon the empty cross.  As it is carried forward in procession, you hear these words being spoken three times, “Behold the life-giving cross on which was hung the salvation of the whole world.”  The response is “O Come, let us worship him.”
       Let us worship him.  Him who?  We know the answer.  The one we worship is the Christ, our lord Jesus.  We will say these words knowing that.  And yet, what we are actually beholding, what we actually will see is an empty cross.
       The words are spoken as if Jesus is here on the cross and we can see him.  Behold!  See! It’s Jesus!

       But it is not.  The cross is empty.

       That is the conundrum, the puzzle of Good Friday.

We come to the cross.  We come to see and worship the crucified Jesus, the Jesus nailed to, bleeding, and dying on the cross.  The Jesus with the blood running from the welts of the whip-lashing and the thorns of the cruel crown on his head poking into his head. 

       We come to see the beaten Jesus, and many today will cry at the cross, to see that sight in their minds and heart.

       BUT --- and this is huge --- The cross we see is empty. 

       "Behold" the liturgy tells us.  Worship the cross, but Jesus is not there. 

       We are asked to spend time meditating, thinking, and praying on that empty cross.  What do you see in your mind’s eye when you gaze at that despised tree?

       When you look at a cross or a picture of one, you might see in your mind’s eye a bloody Jesus, or the empty cross in the darkness of that fell on Jerusalem that first Friday or you might even imagine the empty cross shining in the sun that first Sunday.  However you see the cross, this is what my prayer is for you.

       Behold the love of God.  Look at the cross and see the height and depth, the strength, and the richness of God’s love for the world  --- and for you.  That is the reason that drove Jesus to the cross; God’s love.

       Now there are a lot of people who will preach and argue us to the cross to scare us.  It’s as if to say that since God is willing to do that to the beloved Son, what will happen to those who don’t believe?  They will tell us that we had better worry about getting saved because if we aren’t saved their way, God is going to get us and not just once but forever and ever.

      There have many times in the church’s history over the last two thousand years when the focus of theology and preaching has been full of fire and brimstone talk of hell to scare people into Jesus.

       But that is NOT what Jesus said.

       I have had conversation recently about someone’s grandchild who is scared of God because God gets mad.  Is that true?

       My response to them is what I want you to reflect on today.  Jesus says in John 3:16 & 17: “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. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

       Jesus came to earth, gave himself up to betrayal and trial, hung on the cross, died on the cross, and rose from the dead, for one reason and one reason only.  For God so loved the world.

       And my response to those who would scare people into faith is what Jesus says: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save it – to save us.  God’s will and action is love.

       Today, I invite you to look on the cruel and even bloody cross, not to feel bad or guilty or to scare you into faith (as if that works), but I invite you to see the immensity of God’s love for you that Jesus did this, FOR YOU!

       Pray that you may see God’s love!  Read John 3:16-17