Good Friday meditation

Here’s the text for the Good Friday meditation 14/04/2022 at Enfield Vineyard. I tried to offer people an opportunity to reflect on the descent of Jesus from his heavenly abode into the midst of human life on earth, rather than concentrate on the awful physically pain of the last events.

If you would like to print you can download it as a pdf.

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Meditation begins

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Phil 2:5ff

Today is Good Friday. We don’t do a lot of the church calendar at Enfield Vineyard. If you were asked what is the most important day in the church calendar I wonder how you’d reply to that? I don’t suppose you could really say there is a most important day – you’d end up with a list, and certainly Good Friday would be on most people’s list

We have listened this morning to a few readings from the various gospel accounts. We have thought over something of the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain that was endured by Jesus. It can be hard to relate to the suffering – perhaps over time we grow a little immune to it, jaded even as we have heard it all before. It is good to wonder at what these final hours of this part of the act of the drama mean. They are deep, dark, profound and awful. There are endless levels of meaning to these events. Some say that the whole of history points towards this day. Events before moving forwards to Good Friday, and future events flowing forth from it.

For those who have ears to hear there is endless significance for our lives today.  

If the Christian life, and perhaps the lives of us all, can be compared to ascending a mountain towards the presence of God then Paul paints for us a detailed picture of a divine descent. A descent that was costly, but one that ultimately pleased the Trinity. This divine descent was a restoration mission, driven as it was by love. Key to this descent is the idea of humility.

Paul describes Jesus as being ‘in the form of God’ a thought so profound that it has quieted the fervent discussions of the most self-assured theologians. How are we to think of this, ‘in the form of God’ as we go about our normal daily lives? The early church worked hard to, if not so much to say exactly what it meant for Jesus to be in the form of God, but rather to try and express something of the beauty of it and to say what it did not mean. Jesus in the form of God.

A few lines from the Nicene Creed express this idea:

the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father.

We humans, beloved as we are, find ourselves to be limited. We are bound by time, and time forces change upon us. Picture if you can what it was like before creation. Given that creation includes the creation of time itself, even that word ‘before’ is wrong of course. I cannot find the words, so I must draw from my own experience.

One springtime, while walking in a park on the edge of London it occurred to me that sound of the birds singing was louder than usual – clearer, sweeter, more defined somehow. And the sky seemed a blue I hadn’t noticed before. Was this possible? Lockdown, with all its consequences, had caused the continual drone of traffic to be silenced, and had held back the exhausting pace of life – at least for me in that moment – but clearing the atmospheric haze as well? Glimpses through the veil

Picture a warm, sunny day, a crystal clear stream flowing over smooth stones. This water is so clear and so very cold. The sound of its flowing is gentle, childlike, emotive. But emotive of what? The stones seem so solid, and the detail on their surface which I can see through the water’s sparkle takes my attention. There is no-thing on my mind – I am at liberty to just ‘be’ in this place. No sense of time pressing in, no tyranny of urgency, no vague sense of unplaced dis-ease or uneasiness or threat or insufficiency. No fear of what is to come. There is no need of anything. I am still, in the moment and at peace.  Glimpses through the veil

You will have your own version of these “thin” places where something almost so other worldly you could miss it, called out to you. Such fleeting moments are pearls of great price, rare and ethereal They stir a longing, unrecognised and deep, a whisper of something more.

Now consider the purity in which the trinity dwelt before Jesus began his descent. My attempts at painting a picture fall away. There are no words for the blessedness of that state. Nothing of all the myriad of stresses that come against us to diminish the joy, the peace, the love. It is good for us to reflect on these things. They bring light to Paul’s words.

Jesus, Paul says ‘emptied himself’ of all this. What is this emptying that leads to a being which remains fully God yet becomes fully human. Most often an emptying of something implies a diminishment. An empty glass might be fine, beautiful even, but there is more to what the glass was intended to be. Here is the mystery. How does Jesus empty himself, yet remain fully God? How does the perfection of God walk among us???

And put simply, we struggle to comprehend this. And is this not how it should be: wonderful as the human mind undoubtedly is, some things one not meant to be understood.

The apostle does give us some insight though. This emptying of Almighty God necessitates Jesus taking the form of a servant, & being born as we are, leaving the clarity & splendour of his previous habitation & manifesting into human flesh to live out a life as ours.

Once in human form Paul tells us that Jesus humbled himself. Allow your mind to soak in this humility. What kind of God would take on a life of reduction?  Consider the life of royalty. Not for the Christ this style of life. As he moves toward the final stages in his human life behold the God-man, around whom the whole story revolves, takes up a towel & washes dirty feet. God from God, light from light of the same essence as the Farther in human form as a servant. The upsidedowness of the kingdom.

Previously Jesus declared to an astounded audience:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matt 5

This remains so counter cultural, so inverted, so upside-down. True humility is a step up the mountain towards the divine life. Jesus said so, & Jesus lived so.

The Apostle tells us that Jesus humbled himself as an act of obedience. This obedience led to the crucifixion.

The cross is many things. The events leading up to, & culminating with hammer & nails, spear, blood & water are weighty & mysterious. They speak of humility and descent.  They speak of emotional torment & physical pain. They speak of identification. Jesus, God, endured what we endure. He has known rejection, mockery, isolation. He has known physical pain, his body shutting down, life ebbing away. He has experienced the horror or the final enemy, death itself. Imagine that. The Lord, the giver of Life, the only source of life itself, humbles himself to the point of death. Let know one say, let no one say that God is ignorant of our the nature of our lives.

What kind of God would allow himself to be spat on? To be blind folded, hit & asked to name the assailer? What nature of being surrenders his head to thorns & his heart to such degrading mockery? How is it that the eternally blessed Creator submits his hands & his feet, & allows himself to be staked out, & suspended vertically? How does the uncreated one endure the life draining out of him? How far has this One descended? God from God, light from light of the same essence as the Farther.