April 22, 2011 - Good Friday

Victory at the Cross
John 18:1-19:42
Good Friday – April 22, 2011

When I was a kid, my brother got the original Nintendo video game system (or as my mother always called it, an “Intendo”). Kind of funny now to look back on how basic those games were, how low-end their graphics were, but still, we played for hours on the little 13-inch television that it was hooked up to. Mostly I liked to play games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. The object of both of those games was ultimately to save the princess, but in order to do that, you had to battle your way through the different levels, facing ever-stronger opponents along the way. And as I recall, you always started the game off with 3 lives, and a bunch of hearts that monitored your health level; the less hearts you had left, the weaker you were. And when your hearts were empty, your character was done for.

Now of course, along the way, there were chances to refill your hearts, to prolong your life; you even had chances to gain hearts and grow stronger so that you could survive longer. But inevitably you would come up against an enemy that was bigger and stronger than your little character, something more powerful than you that you really weren't sure you had the resources to fight against and still survive. Sometimes you could choose between running away or staying to fight. If you stayed, you just hoped that your hearts were filled up and that you'd gained enough skills to win the battle. Other times, if you were at the end of a level, you were locked into the fight. There was no running away from the big boss, who was always way bigger, and way more powerful than you, and you could just hope that you could last long enough to defeat it.

What was frustrating about these games is that if you lost (which happened to me a LOT of the time), you either ended up going back to an earlier part of the game, and had to fight back through the same things you'd already defeated, or if you were at the end of the level, you just got dumped back into the same room, forced to fight the big boss over and over again – and you usually started off weaker than when you began.

I have to tell you, this is where I decided the game wasn't that much fun any more. I'd often just give up. It was beyond me. Sometimes I'd just give it a break. Other times, I'd hand the controller off to my brother or my cousins and let them fight the big battle for me. I just didn't have the skills to win the game, and I got sick of fighting the same fight over and over and over again without making any headway.

Sometimes the world reminds me of those old video games. Sometimes it feels like we are facing the same struggles day in and day out, like we make some progress one day, but without fail, we end up facing the same foe again, the same big boss who is bigger and stronger than us. It often feels like we are up against forces that are more powerful than we are – sometimes in our personal lives with our personal struggles, but especially as we look at the world around us. For all the advances we have made as human beings, it so often feels like we have taken 1 step forward, only to take a step or two back. We've made huge strides in science and medicine, and yet diseases like cancer and malaria and AIDS continue to claim lives. We've come so far in our knowledge and ability to produce huge amounts of food, and yet even here in America in 2009, almost 15 percent of households experienced food insecurity – which means that there wasn't enough money to buy the food to meet a family's nutritional needs every day. We fight wars to gain peace, the oppressed rise up against injustice – only to be pushed back down and beaten. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. These kinds of things have gone on all throughout history, and some days it just feels futile. It feels like we'll never be able to beat the big bosses that battle against us.

It certainly seemed that way on Good Friday. Jesus found himself face to face against the big bosses of his time – the Jewish leaders, the Roman establishment, the crowd that had heralded his arrival in Jerusalem with hopeful, happy cheers now turned against him. Once again, we see a showdown between one valiant hero and all of the powers that be, trying to shut him up, trying to shoot Jesus down before he could rise to power on his own and win the game once and for all.

And so Jesus stands, locked in the room in the final stage of the game, facing off against the big bosses of sin and evil and darkness and death – not just one to contend with, but all of them at once – Jesus with no one else to help him fight, for all of his friends have deserted him. And what he does is hard to believe – he doesn't try to run away, but he doesn't exactly try to fight either. He just stands there and takes what they have to dish out. Judas leads them to the garden, then it's off to the high priest, and then to Pilate, and finally, to hang on a cross. And there he spends his life; his life is poured out. There are no extra heart refills, no extra lives waiting to power him back up once this battle is over, no escape. On that Friday afternoon, facing the big bosses of the world's powers, Jesus dies. Hanging there on the cross, giving up his last breath, then laid in a tomb, it seems to all the world that it's game over for Jesus.

But we know the rest of the story. We know that it's not game over forever.

It's there on the cross that the final battle is won – not just for Jesus, but for all of us, for all time. In the face of sin and darkness and death, by refusing to fight back the way the world fights, Jesus reveals his true power, more powerful than all the big, bad bosses of this world. It is the power of love triumphing over hate and fear, light shining out of darkness, life winning out over death. It is the power of a love that gives itself up so that we might live, so that we no longer have to hide from darkness and death, no longer need to fear the battles and bosses in our way. There on the cross, in Jesus, we have the final victory.

I know that there are days when it feels like we just can't win, that our problems and the troubles of the world seem insurmountable. It's then that we may be tempted to give up, to give in. But the struggle isn't ours alone. Jesus is right there in it with us. So when the fight seems more than you can handle on your own, remember what I used to do playing video games with my brother, and partner up with someone who has what it takes to win the game – Jesus, who fights alongside you. Jesus who fights for you. Jesus, who has already won the game for us all.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.