Good Friday Sermon
Pastor Wesley Howell

Well…this is the way it usually turns out, isn’t it. It’s what we’ve come to expect. A young man steps out of the crowd and speaks a word of hope, love, shows us a God who wants to reach out and touch…to walk with his children again, to surround us and fill us. But a man like that is a threat…and so here we are. It’s what we’ve come to expect.

But in the midst of this horror something strange is going on. He could have walked a different path. Lord knows there were a thousand opportunities to go a different route. But he called them temptations, pulling him away…

This is LOVE. No matter how dark, mysterious, and difficult life gets, Christ is there. He descended into Hell, we say in our Creed. I always wondered what that meant.

Here he is. Don’t you see….No matter what you do to remove yourself from the loving reach of God, you can’t do it. Even in hell, even there, there is God's loving reach. Because Jesus is there, even in hell, so is the love of God.

On the cross Jesus shows that there are absolutely no limits that he will not go to in order to get us, to grab us and find us and save us, to bring us home. That Jesus would descend even to hell to reach out to us is an affirmation that there is no place to which you can descend that Jesus will not descend to reach to you.

On Christmas, God found us by becoming born in a stable. On Good Friday, God finds us by descending to hell:

We had a favorite game when I was a kid. Late and long summer evenings, we played in a big yard, deep dark woods to one side, we played, "hide and go seek" There was always one kid who spoiled the whole game by being too good at hiding. Every kid ought to know that in lost and found, you want to hide well, but not too well. Eventually, you have to be found. But this kid, his name was Sam, was great at hiding. He went way out beyond the bounds, out into the dark woods. Or he would slither down into the crawlspace, where nobody would go to look for him.
Spiders…cobwebs…horrible stuff. But he didn’t care, because he was SO good at hiding. “Is Sam under there?” “I don’t know.” ”Go find him…” “NO WAY! I’m not going under there.” This kid would never be found.

And so we would go on…start playing another game.

He would come back, furious. "The game is hide and seek" he would lecture us, "Not hide and give up."

Do you know somebody who, even though not a kid, is really good at hiding? There are some people who are so good at hiding, so good at camouflaging themselves, so good at tucking themselves away where nobody would dare look, but they just ruin the game. Do you know somebody like that?

Well, tonight, you have been found.

On one sunny day Jesus' disciples said to him, "Teach us to pray." In response, he taught them, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . . " You know that prayer. Today, this dark, bloody Friday that we call "Good," Jesus teaches us another, more difficult, but perhaps even more consoling prayer: "Our Father who is with us even in hell, hallowed be thy name . . . "

On this somber day that we call "good," we see what lengths You will go to in order to save us. You reached toward us, suffered for and with us, stood beside us, shared our lives, died with us. While it would have been amazing for you to teach us, be patient with us, walk with us, and suffer for us; most remarkable of all, you died for us.

This is LOVE.