There is a prayer for mission in the Episcopal rite of Morning Prayer that begins like this:
Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace.
It is a lovely thought, to take the brutal image of a man nailed to a cross beam, his arms spread wide, and call it an embrace. Or it’s a horrible thought. Or both. A child once asked me, “Why do they call it Good Friday? How can it be a good day If Jesus died?” We call it “good” because we believe that we are drawn into that saving embrace, whether or not Jesus chose the position of his arms.
And, in part, we believe that because of what he said, at the end of this passage we read on Sunday:
“Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die."
By “ruler of this world” he means Satan, the personification of corrupting, life-sapping evil, whose power to tempt humanity away from the love of their Creator gained him authority over this world, this limited, created realm. Satan, not the authorities with whom Jesus so often tangled, was Jesus’ adversary. He was the one from whom humanity needed saving. His weapon of choice has always been death, and Jesus had to put death to death.
In using this language, Jesus anticipated the horror ahead and framed it in the context of his mission in this world, his Father’s mission to reclaim, restore, renew all of creation to wholeness. In being lifted up on that cross, the very picture of powerlessness, Jesus would exercise all the power that created worlds to break “death’s fearful hold.” That’s why the earth shook and the sun was blocked out when he died. Because he’d broken the power of evil and death, once and for all. All of creation.
This was to be the way God would draw all people back to himself. Yet we know that all people have not come within reach of that saving embrace. Some have come near and chosen not to; others have grown up around this tale and never knew it was a love story. And some have never heard, because we haven’t told them.
We are approaching the powerful mysteries of Holy Week, when we tiptoe closer to this awful love story than we really want to. “Did you really have to go through that to save me?” we think. I hope you will choose to walk closely the way of the cross this year, along with your faith community.
Jesus' embrace on the cross was wide enough to include people who don’t believe in him, or are hostile to him, or don’t know anything about him. It was wide enough to include those who had him killed, and those who did the killing. It was wide enough to include every enemy, every stranger. And it was wide enough for you and me, even when we allow the things of this world to claim our focus. Can we turn and receive the love God has poured out for us in Christ? Come into that saving embrace and find Life.
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