A Rescue

Well good morning everyone and abig welcome to you, especially if you're visiting this morning. You could bevisiting from the other side of the world or you could be visiting from acrossthe street. It is so great to have you here. Today is a special day. I was alsogoing to say if you're planning on coming on Sunday just make sure you keep aneye on the clock, because I think we lose an hour. So if we see you turning uphere at 11:00 a.m. we'll all know you obviously don't have an Apple Watch oranything like that. Today's a special day is it not? For some it's a sad day.It's definitely a special day. My question is to you, what do you make oftoday? This morning as I looked out the window as I kind of normally do on aweekend, I could see the kayaks were out as they always are. Everything is justas it always is seemingly on a weekend. If you go traveling there are doubledemerit points as there are on nearly every other long weekend. Is this justlike another one?

I have a friend and he thinks thatEaster is the best holiday ofthe year. And I think the reason he thinks that is because youget a double long weekend, a Monday and a Friday, and you get rugby league onalmost every day. I know of another couple who I heard say, "We wouldn'tchange our plans for the weekend if it meant missing church on GoodFriday." There's two very different views, isn't there, of what today is?And it's kind of a strange thing in a lot of ways. I think we feel like we haveto feel something today. And the question is what am I supposed to feel? It'slike we don't want to race to the joy of Sunday, but we do know how it allends. So it's not like we haven't heard this before. We know where this isgoing this particular weekend. How do you negotiate the emotion of a day liketoday? I hope as you think on this event you'll see through the sadness oftoday to the promise ofChrist. And I hope it will bring you gratitude and happiness.

So as we think about that, whydon't I pray for us. Why don't we bow our heads and I'll pray. Heavenly Father,it is indeed a very special day, Good Friday. As we think on these events andthere is sadness mixed with joy, and it's hard for us to know exactly how tonegotiate each of these things. We pray this morning that you might help us todo so so that our grief may give way to joy and we may have gratitude andhappiness. And we pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. Well, just to let you know weare following a series and the series goes something like this: a great story has... andwe've had various elements that are part of the great story of Mark's gospel.On June 9th, 1993, John and Deborah Ford were scuba diving near Byron Bay. Theywere newlyweds on their honeymoon. They were only 3 meters below the surfacewhen they were confronted by a greatwhite shark. The fisherman who later hooked the shark andstruggled with it for about 90 minutes said it was the size of a combi van.

The reports of the incident at thetime said that John pushed his wife out of the way of the shark, placinghimself in the line of danger, and he was killed but she lived. When askingabout the experience of losing her husband she simply told reporters, "He gave his own life for me."Everyone loves a rescue.That's what we're thinking about today. Every great story has a rescue andeveryone loves a rescue. If I could go from the sublime to the ridiculous, whenI was in primary school I would race home from school just in time to get thelatest episode of Batman where invariably there would be a rescue. On aSaturday morning I'd wake up early, 6:00 am, to watch Jerry Anderson's The Thunderbirds. They wereeven called InternationalRescue. Every episode was based around a rescue. And we knowtoo that if you watch the nightly news and if it's too grim, the people who putthe news together often finish with a cat stuck up a tree that gets rescued tomake us all feel better.

Everyone loves a rescue but whenit comes to sharks and newlyweds the stakes are very high. It's a lifesaving rescue and thecost is a life. The cost is huge. And that's why we're not quite sure what tofeel today. How do I even process this? They call it Good Friday. In what senseis today good? It's a rescue. It's a great rescue. But what sort of rescue isit? Friedrich Nietzsche, the atheist philosopher and man of very largemustache, writing a few years before the end of his life, wrote these words:"Christianity has takenthe side of everything weak, base, ill-constituted. Christianity is called thereligion of pity. One loses force when one pities. Sufferingitself becomes contagious through pity. Sometimes it can bring about acollective loss of life energy. Think of the case of the death of the Nazarene.Pity thwarts the law of evolution, the law of selection. It preserves what isripe for destruction. It defends lives condemned. In every noble morality pitycounts as weakness. Nothing in our unhealthy modernity is more unhealthy thanChristian pity."

For Nietzsche, Jesus' death on thecross was simply weakness,something that we dare not embrace lest we die. Albert Camus, philosopher,writer: he shared Nietzsche's atheism, he did not share Nietzsche's mustache.He lived on the other side of two world wars. Nietzsche conveniently wrote inthe 1880s before World War I and II; Camus lived on the other side of two worldwars. He said this: "Christcame to solve two major problems: evil and death. His solution consisted firstin experiencing them. The man-god suffers with patience. Eviland death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies.The night of Gethsemane is so important in the history of man only because inits shadow the divinity abandoned its traditional privileges and drank to thelast drop, despair included, the agony of death." For Camus, the death ofJesus is not true but as a story it's a beautiful answer to humanity's deepestsuffering. Although it's hard to work out even from Camus what sort of rescueJesus' death was.

But I want you to look through theeyes of another. See if you can do this. About 28 lifetimes ago on a Friday morning there wasa Roman centurion.He would have woken up and done things probably as he did each day. He wouldhave done the same things. He would have had breakfast. Perhaps he would havegone for a walk. Perhaps he would have put on his armor for the day. He wasscheduled to be in the execution squad. That especially barbaric way that theRomans had of executing people, that of crucifixion. He would have gone off towork to a day he expected. He wouldn't have remembered. It would have been aday just like any other day, nothing out of the ordinary. But he could not haverealized that day that he would have been involved in an event that would change the world. Markrecords it for us in Mark chapter 15, and we're on page 1010 of the Red Biblesif you're following. Mark simply says in verse 24, "they crucified him."

It's all underplayed. It's allunderstated. He just sums it up in a word, a phrase: "They crucifiedhim." Simply matter of fact. There's no big emotional tugs. For those whoknew what it meant it would have been a highly emotional phrase. But Markseemingly plays down the graphic nature of the event. Perhaps this is becausethe physical pain is just light relief compared to what's happening to theinner man. Well let me read to you from verse 33. See it there on page 1010,"The death of Jesus." At the sixth hour darkness came over the wholeland until the ninth hour. At the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice,"Eloi, Eloi, lama Sabacthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"When some of those listening near heard this they said, "Listen, he'scalling Elijah." One man filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on astick and offered it to Jesus to drink. "Now leave him alone. Let's see ifElijah comes to take him down," he said. With a loud cry Jesus breathedhis last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Andwhen the centurion who stood there in front of Jesus heard his cry and saw howhe died he said, "Surelythis man was the son of God."

Picture the scene. Everything youwould usually expect is turned upside down. First of all it's 12:00 noon and the scene is pitch black.Just imagine an hour today at 12:00 noon and the whole of the city of Sydney isplunged into darkness. Now that would be notable wouldn't it? It's different toJesus' birth when it was dark at night and it was lit up by a star. So what doyou make of this? Well it seems pretty clear that this is a sign of God's disdain. Imean it's not the high point of humanity is it when a man as good as he iscrucified in that way? But I want to suggest to you there's something moregoing on here. It's not just humanity at its poorest. But on the cross God is turning his face away.In the Bible if God has his face turned towards you, that's good. And if he hashis face turned away from you, that's not good. On the cross God turned away.

Then at 3:00 two things happen.First of all they hear a cry. Look at verse 34, "Why have you forsaken me?"The man on the cross calls out, "Why have you forsaken me, why have youabandoned me?" And then secondly the temple curtain is split from the top down.Verse 38, the temple of the curtain is split from top down. Can you picturethis? In one scene you've got the temple in Jerusalem and the other sceneyou've got a hill outside of Jerusalem and there are three crosses on the hill.The temple, you need to understand, is made of lots of sections. There's thecourt of the Gentiles, the non-Jews. Then a little bit further in is thewomen's court. Then a little bit further is the court of men. Then is the placefor the priests. And at the heart of it is a curtain. And behind it is thetabernacle. And inside this no one could go except one person, the chief priestonce a year on the Day ofAtonement to sacrifice an animal for the nation.

And there were often elaboraterituals that had to go with that. What's going on there is this is to convincepeople, to explain to people, to make it clear to people that to approach God is no easy thing.Most people today think God is desperate for friends. He just wants someone,anyone, to be his friend. But you can't just walk up to God. I know egalitarianAustralians think we can. "God's my friend," but you can't approachGod any more than you can approach the sun. It was a former prime minister GoffWhitlam who was asked how would he meet his maker. Goff said, "I'll treat him as my equal."Of course. No one will treat God as their equal. Now put these two versestogether, verses 34 and 38. As Jesus hangs on the cross two things happen. Hesays, "My God, my God, why did you abandon me?" He is saying,"My God, my God, why?" Heis being separated from God so that we need never have to be separated fromGod. The only time Jesus ever calls God "God." He'salways calling him Father but this is the only time he calls him God.

It's like God the Father isdriving out God the Son. They've been perfectly related from the beginning oftime. And now the relationship is broken. It's like God is saying to the Son,"Away."And Jesus is not just feeling this. Plenty of people have felt estrangementfrom God. It's not he's just feeling it. He's really experiencing the realityof it. And then secondly the curtain is split down the middle from top tobottom as if God is saying to anyone who listen, "Come in." The way isnow open. There is no barrier. And what does it cost him? What is the cost?Well it costs him his life. For all this happens at his expense. The stakes arevery, very high. And the cost is very high. The expulsion of one, the invitation to many, and it's anexchange. This is the absolute center of Christianity. When Godsays to Jesus "Out," that was the cost he paid so that we could beinvited in. Or perhaps I could put it this way: God created the universe with a word but he can't forgive witha word. Something has to be done. He can't just say"forgiven."

Something has to be done. And thatthing was Jesus dying for us. You and I can come into God's family today and bewelcomed today because at 3:00 p.m. on the first Good Friday Jesus was castout. And so the cross, his death on the cross, is the door into the family of God.And so the message of Good Friday is: stoptrying. Stop trying to meet God on your own terms. Just go toJesus. Take what he offers. The way ahead is to come to God and say verysimply, "I've been outside and I want to come inside and I understand thatmy entry into your family is because Jesus died on the cross." And theinvitation is free. You just come. It doesn't happen by osmosis. It's not justbeing part of the human race because you actually need to come to him. Howwould you do that? You would say something like: "God, I have been on theoutside. I want to come on the inside. I know that I can come to the inside ofyour family through what Jesus has done through his dying for me." Itneeds to be taken though. Jesus won it. We simply take it.

When Andrew Jackson was presidentof the United States of America there was a man in prison on death row. Hisname was George Wilson.He'd robbed a train. He threatened the driver with death. He had an accomplice.His accomplice was executed. It appeared that Wilson was less culpable and manyin the Justice Department lobbied so that George Wilson would be pardoned, andPresident Jackson intervened and gave a pardon. George Wilson received thepardon and tore it up. The US Supreme Court was asked to rule on it: USA versusWilson, 1833. Their conclusion was: ifthe pardon is not accepted the court has no power to force it upon him.The pardon was given but it was not accepted. At the very beginning of Mark'sgospel we discover that it's the good news of Jesus Christ the son of God. It'slike our little secret because we've read it and we know the answer. We knowwho Jesus is. We know it's Jesus Christ the son of God.

And as we're reading Mark's gospelwe're finding other people discovering this but no one really works it outuntil the centurion right at the end. This is the first time anyone calls Jesusthe son of God. It's right at the very end. And it's the centurion, the one weleast expect to be able to work this out. This is his rescue. This is ourrescue. It's very great. It's very costly and it's very good. There is a prayerin the Book of Common Prayer and it goes like this: "Grant we beseech thee, merciful Lord, tothy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all theirsins and serve thee with a quiet mind through Jesus Christ our Lord."Guilt is taken away. Shame is taken away. The penalty of sin is taken away.Death is taken away. It's all taken away. It's answered in the death of Christon our behalf. And that’s what is good.

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