The Triduum: Good Friday

The Price of Home

Over the Triduum as we journey with Jesus from the table of the Last Supper to the Cross to the empty tomb we are doing so alongside the theme of home. Yesterday we looked at how we entered into a covenant, into a mortgage with Christ at the Last Supper, and today we are looking at Jesus paying the price of that covenant with His own body on the cross.

When we think of our home, that sense of home is nearly always associated with a building. Think of your childhood homes, I am willing to bet if I gave you all a piece of paper and a pen, you could accurately draw the floor plan of your old homes with very little help. Know where all the rooms were, what furniture you had in each room and decorations etc. You will probably be able to tell me various memories of the things you did in that home. Somehow, our homes are seared into our memory and even for someone like me, who has had a lifetime of moving home, I could tell you the layout accurately of at least 23 of the 26 homes I’ve lived in over the years with the 3 I can’t remember well because I was a baby or toddler.

But why is that? The most memorable homes we have were not more memorable because they were big or impressive or even recent. The most memorable homes we have lived in are due to the people we live with. Whether that is family as a young child, whether that is the home we have made with a loved one or partner, whether that is a home we have had where memories with friends were made, whatever the building, it is the people that make a home. In fact, you may never live in a building but still have a home that is shaped by the people you love. That is why this church is a home too. It is built by people acting as the stones, held together by the mortar of fellowship and love all upon the cornerstone of Jesus.

Jesus, of course knows all this. But as we discussed yesterday, there is a price, a cost, an expense to buying a home. Jesus, who loves everyone of us completely, who wishes to build out of us a home that will be forever, built through love and forgiveness and the end of death, to build that home Jesus had to pay a price to build with us and for us. So, voluntarily, He gave His body to be broken on the cross. He gave up His divine dignity as He was betrayed, beaten and bruised. He gave Himself completely for a world that hated Him and collectively screamed and continues to scream in acts of callous violence and hatred ‘crucify Him!’ or ignore Him or mock Him to this very day. He gave everything knowing that some would still reject Him, knowing that sin would continue for a time, knowing that wars and rumours of wars would continue, that people would continue to hate, to despoil and to kill. Knowing that despite the cost to Himself, people would still prefer the darkness to the light. Would refuse to be part of the body, to be part of the home building, to be part of His church that He paid so much for. Knowing all this, He went to the cross anyway, He suffered His ignoble death anyway, He did it all because He loves us with a passion beyond telling. ‘No one has greater love than this, then to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’. And so Jesus, loving us to the end, gives up everything on the cross. And He died. His friends wept as others continued to mock. But their taunts can do no more harm. Their nails can no longer cause any pain. The deed has been done, the price has been paid. Evil seems to have won the day. The whole of creation waits, with an intake of breath to see if the building made up of His friends who He saves, will be made into a home.    

The Passion of Christ ends, all is quiet. Jesus is taken down; He is buried in the tomb. The stone is rolled across the entrance and in the stillness of the tomb, in the devastation of our hearts, in the brokenness of a world soon to be redeemed – in that silence, we wait.