Intro: Thanks for tuning in to the Sandals Church podcast. Our vision as a church is to be real with ourselves, God, and others. We're glad you're here, and we hope you enjoy this message.
Pastor Alfredo Ramos: The most beautiful life that ever lived was that of Jesus of Nazareth. And today on Good Friday, we actually take a moment to remember not just that beautiful life that he lived, but the way that his life actually came to an end. On Good Friday, we remember Jesus' crucifixion and his death. For those of us who follow Jesus, this is an important day. But I think for anyone who's maybe curious about Jesus or curious about God, this also is an important day.
Because like many of us, we come to this idea about Jesus dying and we're unsure of what to make of it. But today we're going to take communion in a moment to help us once again kind of gather our ourselves around the reality of what Jesus did for us. And for those of you who maybe are curious, I think this passage will help to provide some insight into the questions you maybe have around what Good Friday is and how it actually serves you in your life and how Jesus actually might meet you in this particular moment. And so with that in mind, let's read together from Matthew 27. Matthew writes this regarding that scene that happened while Jesus was crucified on the cross.
It says there in verse 38, 2 rebels were crucified with him, 1 on his right and one on his left. Now what I find so compelling about the life of Jesus is that it kind of ended the way it began. He was born in a manger among animals and he died on a cross between 2 thieves. And so if you're curious about where you can regularly find Jesus, the answer is you find him amongst the places and the people that we would easily disregard and dismiss. The kinds of places that we would not wanna be in and with the kinds of people that we probably could not stand.
That's exactly where you would find Jesus. In fact, I would go so far as to say his life was marked by being the kind of person who was in the places that we completely dismissed, The most difficult places of our life and the most difficult places of the world. Matthew goes on and says this, those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, you who are going to destroy the temple and build it in 3 days, save yourself. Come down from the cross if you are the son of God. In the same way, the chief priests, like the religious leaders of the day, they also were there watching this and saying to themselves, he he saved others, but he can't save himself.
He's the king of Israel. Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. Look. They want Jesus to operate according to their understanding, and then they'll begin to trust in him, and then they'll begin to follow him. Like many of us, we kind of place our demands on Jesus.
And then once he meets our demands, then we're willing to kind of consider following him. But we can't do that with God. Matthew goes on to say, he's the king of Israel. Let him come down. And then he says there, man, let god rescue him.
Let let God do something if he really is the one whom he wants for he said I'm the son of God. And then it says there that as people are insulting him, the rebels who were crucified on crosses next to him also chimed in as well. It says there in the same way, the rebels who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him. Imagine for a moment dying being completely misunderstood. Like, you and I know what it's like to be misunderstood.
In fact, it's one of the human experiences that deeply bother a lot of us. Oftentimes, it leaves us feeling anxious, frustrated because we feel like people don't accurately see us. They don't rightly understand us. And that's exactly what's happening to Jesus in this passage. Everybody is missing the point of what is happening here.
He dies as the most misunderstood person in the world. And so if you're thinking to yourself or maybe even asking what Jesus actually can offer you a whole lot. Like you, he knows what it's like to be misunderstood in life. He died in that position. I mean, many would say he lived his life in that kind of position.
So much so he's asking people, who do people say that I am? Right? We so easily can miss who Jesus actually is and what he's actually come to do, which is why we need Good Friday because it oftentimes helps us to reorient around the truth and and come to terms with what he's actually done for us and how that can shape and form us. And so the first thing I want us to consider on this Good Friday is that we remember the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom. By that I mean, when we lean on our own understanding and when we think we see the full picture like the religious leaders did, like those who are watching this whole scene did, we actually miss what god is at work doing.
The people said there, he can save others, but he can't save himself. Like, let him come down. They're they're missing the point of what God is actually doing. Right? The the foolishness of God is wiser than human understanding.
In other words, God in his wisdom is confounding the way you and I think this should actually happen. We wouldn't imagine seeing God actually at work in a scene like this. Like, God saving the world through someone named Jesus dying? The answer is yes. This is the foolishness of god at work and and it confounds and overtakes the way you and I come to to think about how things should work in our life.
And so I want us to consider on this good Friday, maybe there's things that are happening in your life that you don't understand. That you would say, man, if god is real or god is actually at work in my life, then this should not be happening. But be open to the possibility that what doesn't make sense to you is precisely the way that god is at work in your life. It's what he's actually doing to transform you and change you and make you new. The second thing I want us to consider on Good Friday is that we remember the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
As the people said, he can save other people, but he can't even save himself. Right from the beginning to the very end of his life, he was marked, Jesus was, not by self preservation, but by self sacrifice. For a lot of people, Good Friday doesn't make sense because Jesus dies in weakness. People knew him to be a miracle worker. People knew him to be someone who can, raise the dead and and and feed thousands of people.
And yet in this moment, he can't come down from the cross. And so it's hard for us to imagine God actually displaying his power through weakness. And so on Good Friday, we think about this simple sentence, god died. God god died. That's an astounding thing for us to consider, the all powerful one, the the one who exists outside of time, the one who made life allowed himself to succumb to death.
And this looks like a complete failure. It it is weakness, but there's a power to this weakness. And I say that because as we look at good Friday, it's hard for us to imagine the kind of power that is actually at work here. The the power that's not, again, marked by a self, self preservation, of control, using power over others, but we see a kind of weakness in which Jesus is sacrificing himself to save sinners like you and I. And in that sacrifice, there's a grand power.
There's a beauty at work here. But, again, this challenges our our notion of thinking because many of us believe that the world's issues, the issues that you and I face every day are solved not by weakness, but by power, by human strength. They're solved by military power. They're solved by human intellect and and, human strength. Right?
When you think about sports, we celebrate not weak athletes but strong ones. When you think about people who are leaders, the ones who we elect, we want to find people who are strong and well put together and so this scene on the cross doesn't make any sense at all. In fact, even on a personal level, we struggle just to acknowledge the areas of our lives where we actually are weak. Right. If you're like me, a a a parent of young children, I sometimes find myself saying, like, why are you crying?
Like, I struggle to even give my kids space to display a weakness and emotion because it's not generally the way I think things should go. And we have a hard time confessing our own weakness, whether it's confessing, our habits, confessing our addictions, confessing the things that we feel somewhat just stuck in in life. And so good Friday actually invites us to name our weaknesses as we consider the way that God was made weak on a cross in order to save us. And, actually, in saving us, we find a different kind of strength and a different kind of power. I love the insight from, Will Willimon.
He's a scholar and he had this to say on the crucifixion. He says, what kind of sense does it make to worship a God who instead of rescuing us out of trouble rescues us by entering into the trouble with us? A God who instead of helping us to avoid pain, heals us from pain by entering the depths of our pain with us. He goes on, a god who instead of fixing things for us, I would like a god who could just fix everything for us, addresses them by becoming weak with us in our weakness. This is the God of scripture.
This is the God of the Bible. This is the God of Christianity. This is the real true living god who is willing to enter your life, enter your mess, enter your weakness, and allow what destroys you to also destroy him. So let it in that happening, you'd actually might find a way out and be rescued from it. This is a kind of divine weakness that is so much stronger than human strength.
Thirdly, I think also on good Friday, it helps us to remember that new life can actually come through suffering and death. If you're trying to imagine what you would want in a god and in a savior, at some level you would prefer a god who just saves you from your pain rather than one who's willing to actually enter it and deliver you through it. And so when you think about the human experience, the things that we can avoid in our life, in your life, and in my life would be, number 1, suffering. It's unavoidable. And the fact that people misunderstand you all the time.
It's beautiful that on Good Friday, we see Jesus living life like you and I so much so that he experiences those two things himself. He's willing to be misunderstood to save you and to save me, and he's he's willing to allow suffering to destroy him, to take his life. And he's doing that so that through the act of death, life might come. This this is the way that Christianity kinda flips the world upside down. It's the way that god really does it.
In the message of allowing suffering to overtake you, to allowing pain and the things that we experience in life to actually just happen as they do. And then to imagine that through those things, not avoiding them, something new can come. For so many of us in the modern world, we would prefer to live the kind of life in which your personal happiness and your personal desires are most protected and pursued. And I think on Good Friday, we're invited to consider that the ultimate aim of your life ought not to be happiness and desire fulfilled, but sacrifice. Sacrificial love, actually.
And so if you're wondering if there's anything out there that goes beyond just my happiness and me wanting to do what I desire most to do, consider for a second that the life you were designed to live and the life you actually deep down inside your soul want to live is a life that comes through sacrificial love. You see, Good Friday reminds us that it's through that kind of sacrifice, it's through that kind of suffering that something new can come. And so I would imagine right now, many of you are facing losses. You're processing, a kind of grief, and maybe it's an actual, like, death of a loved one or maybe it's just the the passing of a season, a friendship or a relationship. Like, something in your life just feels like it's fading away.
And I want you to consider that Good Friday invites you to imagine that through that loss, new life can actually come because that's what we discover on the cross. God saves the world, saves sinners like you and I and allowing death to overtake him. And so as we think about what that means for our lives, we now come to this moment of communion where we get to take bread and take the cup as we remember what Jesus did. And you can grab whatever elements you have at your house right now for those of you who are watching. Maybe you don't have bread, you don't have wine, you don't have juice, that's okay.
Grab something. Jesus instituted this meal not to give us specific directions on the kinds of things we should eat when we take communion, but just to say, hey. As often as you gather and eat, you can do this in remembrance of me. So grab whatever you have available and allow those things to serve as reminders. 1st, as Jesus took bread and broke it and said, this is my body broken for you.
You see, as we think about suffering and loss and you imagine, okay, how is it possible, Fredo, that life actually comes through death? Well, it's just like bread. Bread has got to go through a process in which it's put under intense heat. It's grinded down and then it's baked so that it actually can rise into something new. And then as Jesus said, it's broken.
Imagine for a second that what nourishes you and I must be broken. That's how new life comes. Right? And so we take the bread and we are reminded that Jesus's body was broken for us and so let's take this in remembrance of him. At the same meal, he took a cup of wine, he passed it around and he had his disciples drink and he said, this is my blood shed for you for the remission of sin, for the forgiveness of sin.
And so the good news for us today on Good Friday is that we get to consider how the life we used to live is no longer the life that we need to live. Like you are a forgiven person today. Good Friday is a moment for us to reflect, yes, to consider all that Jesus endured to save us, but it's also a reminder that there's a new life for you to live. You no longer have to be bound by the things that have bound you. Jesus broke those things when he died on the cross for you and I.
The chains are gone. Forgiveness is available. New life is fully available to you. And so we take this in remembrance of him as well. And as you do, as we bring this moment to a close, I want us to consider, what's on the other end.
And what I mean by that is this, today's Friday but Sunday is also coming. It's a phrase that Christians have used over many years, it's Friday, but Sunday's coming. Meaning today we remember death, but we do so in hope knowing that Sunday, new life, resurrection is coming. And for us as a church, we have been over the last several weeks, reframing Jesus' life around miracles. Believing that he saves us, but he also does the miraculous in our lives.
And the beauty of Good Friday is that it sets the stage for the miracle of Sunday, for the resurrection that is coming for all of us. And so as we remember sacrifice, as we remember loss, as we remember what Jesus did in dying for us in the cross, we do so not as those without hope, but with hope that Sunday is indeed coming. And so with that in mind, let's close in prayer as we prepare for resurrection Sunday. Heavenly father, we thank you for the gift of Good Friday and the opportunity to remember the way you loved us in giving us your son, Jesus. And so would you lead us now to a moment where we might once again experience your power through weakness, and where we might be able to identify places in our lives where things are fading and even dying, and would you help us to know and to experience the new life that you are bringing out in us.
We thank you for this time. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.