Who Shoul Die?

Good Friday

April 18, 2014

Michael Rothenstein
The Crucifixion, 1937

Most of the religions in the world

have a lot to say about death.
It seems as if death and dying

are an important part of our understanding of God.

There must be something that we need to learn about death and dying.

Unfortunately, throughout history, religion has mostly

learned and taught the wrong lessons about death.

We started with human sacrifices and animal sacrifices,

the very pure have been killed in the name of God.

God was seen as any angry God who demanded a blood sacrifice.

As time wore on,

the people of religion have placed themselves in the role

of the more pure and more holy and have set out putting to death

those who were seen as less pure and less holy.

This is the system that Jesus got caught up in.

Religions kill those who cause trouble or break religious laws.

We’ve killed those who try to change religion.

Those who don’t believe the right things.

Or those who have a different faith all together.

We’ve projected the evil in the world outside ourselves

and said that that, over there, must die.

The lesson that people have often learned is that

God was a demanding God and wanted to do away

with those who didn’t worship God the right way.

Others have to die for our religious experience to be pure and good.

In order for the world to be sacred, the unsacred must die.

Someone else has to die.

But Jesus showed us another way.

Not just by telling us, but by example.

Someone else doesn’t have to die,

it’s us that have to die.

Maybe not literally, on a cross by the hands of another.

Jesus gave us the most giving example.
But parts of us die.
Our egos, our selfishness, our need for security,

our pasts, our false selves, we let these, or make these die,

so that the kingdom of God can come be born in us.

Jesus died to show us the way.

Jesus died to show us a God that loves.

A God that loves us more than anything or any one.

A God that was not willing to lose us to the powers of this world.

Jesus death is not just a death for us

it’s not just an atonement for our sins

it’s not a just gift that Jesus gave to us.

It is the way of the cross.

The way to live.

“Take up your cross and follow me”, Jesus said.

We are asked to offer up our lives,

to others, to something else,

Sacrifice what is precious, give ourselves away.

But even as we lose our lives, we gain something better,

the life of the kingdom, lives transformed by the power of death,

new lives lived in Christ.

Let us now hear the way that Jesus

gave his life for us,

followed the way of the cross,

and offered us new life.