Atonement

I don't know the last time I stayed home on Good Friday. It feels disconnected and disjointed. It feels, a little bit like I'm a disciple hiding, having run scared from the garden when my Lord was arrested. In years past, we have performed dramatizations or hammered a nail into a cross, metaphorically leaving our own sins there. We've joined together in worship. We've contemplated what the Savior did for us on that bloody, awful, beautiful tree.

And we will do that again, tonight. It will just look different.

It will look like my family taking communion together. A smaller gathering than we're used to. It will look like a bunch of disciples hunkered down, afraid. It will look and feel and seem weirdly broken.

But, perhaps, there is beauty in that. Maybe, even, I had gotten comfortable with the traditional way we acknowledge our Savior's execution. We use that word, crucify. We use it because that is the method by which He died. The criminals on the crosses next to Jesus were put to death for their crimes. But our Lord was perfect. There was not a single sin to speak of. And so, maybe, we will begin to connect to the awfulness of it all if we say what it was. An unwarranted execution.

Killed at the hands of Pilate and the Romans. Execution, called for by the Jewish leaders. Murder, by you and by me and our persistent sin.

But from the beginning, a plan. The way. The truth. The life. Jesus. Born to die that we might live.

That day, the land went dark. The earth shook. The veil tore. The rocks split. The blood ran red from the body of God the Son. Atonement. It is finished.

At the wonderful, tragic, mysterious tree
On that beautiful, scandalous night you and me
Were atoned by His blood and forever washed white
On that beautiful, scandalous night


Or. A little more accurately...
At the wonderful, tragic, mysterious tree
On that beautiful, scandalous day you and me
Were atoned by His blood and our sin washed away
On that beautiful, scandalous day