“I Will Adore Christ’s Sacred Name”
Good Friday – April 19, 2019 – Year C
Will you adore Christ’s sacred name?
George Macleod writes, “I simply argue that the cross should be raised at the centre of the market-place as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between 2 candles, but on a cross between 2 thieves – on the town’s garbage heap – at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek. At the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where Jesus died. And that is what he died for. And that is what the cross is about. And that is where church people ought to be and what church people ought to be about.”
Will you adore Christ’s sacred name?
Father Thomas Keating writes, “The cross of Jesus represents the ultimate death of God experience. The crucifixion is much more than the physical death of Jesus and the emotional and mental anguish that accompanied it. It was the death of his relationship with God.”
Will you adore Christ’s sacred name?
We stand at the foot of the cross and quietly weep with Mary, the mother of Jesus. Rudyard Kipling writes:
“If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole.
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
Will you adore Christ’s sacred name?
Studdert Kennedy writes:
“And, sitting down, they watched him there,
The soldiers did:
There, while they played at dice,
He made his sacrifice,
And died upon his Cross to rid
God’s world of sin.
He was a gambler too, my Christ.
He took his life and threw
It for a world redeemed.
And ere the agony was done,
Before the westering sun went down,
Crowning that day with its crimson crown,
He knew that he had won.
Will you adore Christ’s sacred name?
We live in a world that is all to comfortable with senseless death. Whether it be a shooting in Vancouver, a suicide in Summerland, a fentanyl death here in Penticton – we seem immune to the horror. Jesus’ death seems, on the surface, to be senseless. However, because we are Easter people, we know that God had great designs in revealing a resurrected Christ. We are adored in Christ’s sacred name. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Penticton United Church 