Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Tonight is Good Friday. It is the night that we celebrate Jesus's death on the cross. And as much as we mourn over all of the suffering and pain that he goes through, we also know that it's good, because it's by his death on the cross, that we have eternal life.
Because He died for us. Our sin is taken away, our pain, our sickness, our hurt, and it's placed on him on our safe. Just a little while we're going to read through the whole story. We're going to see all Jesus's suffering and his death and his pain and the trail and all of that and when we look at the This story when we hear it, I think we see Jesus at his most human. See, we know that Jesus became just like us. God became man who lived in normal times. He had good days. He had bad days he, he was hurt, he was happy.
But there's something that everyone has in common. But there is only one thing that no matter what happens to us, all of us share. And it's that when we see Jesus being betrayed, judged, falsely accused, beaten, hurt, and finally executed. We see a savior who becomes just like us, and the only thing that unites us is death.
This is what it says. “Surely he took up our pain and our suffering.”
This is a Savior, who shows us that he came to be with us, even in that. So we could save us that because he came to join us in this pain, we can have eternal life with him. Right about now we are all reminded a little bit more of death in the world. We see all the difficulties around us and it just points it out to us.
If you watch the news, or read online or pay attention at all unless you've shot yourself inside your house and drawn your blinds, right now you're overwhelmed with reminders of debt. You hear about hospitals filling up. Everybody's told what they're supposed to do. I get frantic messages from people in my life telling me things like I need to sanitize all the groceries as soon as they come into the house, or if I don't go out with a mask, Hunter drones of virus will seek me out and find me. So panic, right? We're all scared of this thing. And as much as it is bad. Honestly, I don't think it's any different from any other day.
We in the church know that this is just how life is. We're not living in unprecedented times. The Christian Church has gone through epidemics like this and much, much worse. Martin Luther was alive during the black plague when 40% of people who got it died, can you imagine? Even in living memory, people who've gone through worse, Spanish Flu of the night 1918 I remember reading about a guy who was born during that time who just recovered from COVID. Even in the 1950s, there was something like this.
I hear other Christians getting excited because they think because the white horse of pestilence is riding. That means the end must be here. But of course not. We've seen it before. What we do know though, is that this just points us to the same thing the church has been preaching all the way from the beginning. That is the only thing that unites every human being on this earth. They asked, Where is God in all of this? Where is God in this terrible thing?
We see it in our reading from Isaiah. “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering.”
The Gospel of Matthew provides an even better example of this and applies it very much to our current situation. It says in Matthew chapter eight,
“and when Jesus entered Peter's house and saw his mother in law, lying sick with a fever, he touched her hand and the fever laughter. And she rose began to serve Him. That evening, they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our disease.”
Matthew applies that to our human condition, not just pain and suffering and sin, but that Jesus took on his body, our very death itself. And this isn't just when we see sickness, we see it in everyday life. When this when we weren't all stuck at home watching our services through a camera, there was death all around us. People would die in a car accident. They were heart disease and cancer, could even get hit by a bus or a train or whatever. Sometimes you didn't even know at all.
Right now it's no different. But we know that in all those times, and all those places, wherever we see suffering and pain, wherever we see death Jesus's there because he came down to be with us. He came down to be one of us, even in that. And when we see him on the cross, when we see him buried in the tomb, we know that he is with us. He will not abandon us, no matter what is happening. Jesus is here, even in death. That's why the Christian Church has never really gotten excited about the terrible things that happened in the world. Sure, when we see suffering and pain, we mourn with the people who more we weep with the people who weep. We want to be there to love them.
We don't panic. We're not afraid.
It's just like But we know because Jesus came, but it doesn't matter how we go. Doesn't matter what happens. Jesus is with us through it all. In his name, amen.