(GOOD) FRIDAY.
I don’t like to always call today, ‘Good Friday’. What a horrid day! But your love conquered that day. Greater than any fear you had over death or your body or pain, you didn’t come to rule like the rest.
You came to rule the opposite to every authority we’ve seen and every leader we’ve followed. You came to rule in a way that all people who choose to follow you, choose to follow out of choice, autonomous choice, autonomous joy and autonomous freedom. There was no catch. Not even salvation. Yes I did just say that.
It wasn’t “follow and I’ll save you”. As it was just…“follow and you’ll experience a love like no other.” Because when you’re with the Father, you’re in the place of love, of safety, of home, of belonging. The house isn’t ruled by exchanges and bargain and “I’ll give you this if you give me that”.
On this day I don’t see a God who conquered in the way we expected him too. I don’t think Jesus needed to die for the Father to forgive us. The entire premise of forgiveness is that there can be NO PAYMENT, nothing that could ever pay back or make it so that it basically never happened. If someone needs to be punished… It’s not forgiveness. Forgiveness is the choice not to punish. And that’s maybe why forgiveness is so hard for us. Because there’s nothing f**kn token about it. IT’S COSTLY. There is a price to it…. but its never a price to be paid so we can have salvation… that again is an exchange. If that’s confusing, go to the shops and buy something… that’s literally how it works.
I don’t see a Jesus who needed to hang on the cross make forgiveness happen. I see a Jesus who in the greatest moment of evil that humanity could ever enact (to murder the only perfect human who ever lived, who also is God, the Creator himself), chooses to display non-violence, to display love, to say “Father they don’t know what they do.” Then to pour out His Spirit so that we’d never have to go another day, thinking he was far away.
Jesus on the cross is not so much changing the father, or paying for our shit SO THAT, he can now love us. He’s revealing that the father HAS ALWAYS loved us. The horrific nature of the cross is not the father getting out his anger onto Jesus so that he doesn’t need to take it out on us. It’s HUMANITY taking out our anger on God, and even then him saying…
”Even in this evil moment, even as you kill me. I am declaring my love for you. THIS is how much I love the world.”
This is my prayer for today.
Today I feel thankful that we all belong even when we don’t feel like it. Thankful that even when our eyes get filled looking out at the world for the security of this and we see absolute chaos and evil acts, that no one is ever outside of the house of You, but that what we’re seeing are bits of life where love hasn’t been chosen back yet.
We can’t remove ourselves from your love. Not even those who openly reject it, we merely just get lost looking through the windows when the party still goes on next to us. Your love goes on whether we feel it or not. Your example of reigning love is still a true story over all our lives today, no matter how far away we stand from that awful (Good) day.
May we never forget you, Abba. Even as we see certain kingdoms and powers still rule today that don’t rule like you. We CAN depend on the safety and truth of who you are and the way to interact with us... because we see it in Jesus. Jesus as You, Father.
You are safe, you are love, and not even with your own death will you force the hands of humans to choose goodness, because yours is the kingdom of freedom, of the safest attachment, of the deepest love and the wildest of homes. You’re the family we’ve all been dreaming of. Perfect in every way. Never changing. A good God.
So maybe today is Good after all.
