Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion
Previous Years: 2021 || 2020 || 2018
Preached at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/betraying-god/
Transcript
Thank you to R.M. for editing this transcript.
I find Dante’s Divine Comedy very helpful. It’s not dogmatic, it is not the doctrine of the church. But as a Christian, to read it is to understand in a far more profound way the spiritual life. He builds on the wisdom of the Middle Ages, an age that was completely Christian. Certainly with sinners, but they understood, they imbibed, they took upon themselves the Gospel, and they lived it out. And Dante took that wisdom and he gave us the Divine Comedy. And we see in that a beautiful structure for how God works and how this world works.
His description of hell gives us levels of sin. For example, the level of sin least punished is sins of the flesh. He knows that we’re all corrupted. He knows that we all struggle, and he knows that it’s powerful. He lets those folks off not without punishment, but with lighter punishments. But the deepest depths of hell, he reserves for betrayers. Those who would betray another human being. And if I remember it correctly, there are three levels within this final layer. There are those who would betray their peers. Again, the deepest level of hell, but better off than the next two. Those who betray their peers. We think, for example, of maybe two shady business people who then betray each other. We don’t feel as bad for them, although betraying another human being is still horrific.
And then below them, in the second worst punishment any human being could ever receive for all eternity, we have those who betray those for whom they are responsible. So, a parent who betrays their child. There is a responsibility given to these people by God, and they have betrayed that responsibility. And we can imagine how horrific that is for a parent to betray their child, or for somebody, a priest, to betray a member of their congregation. A responsibility given to me by God, to betray that responsibility would be horrific. But worst of all, in the deepest level of hell, are those who betray their benefactors. Somebody does something for you, sacrifices for you, something that you don’t merit, that you didn’t earn, something that is freely given. And then if you were to betray that person, this is the worst possible sin that Dante can imagine. It’s the worst possible sin that any of us can imagine. Betraying a benefactor, receiving freely, and then turning around and stabbing that person in the back.
My friends, that’s what each of us has done to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We can imagine how horrific it is if we betray a parent, somebody who sacrificed for us, who built a life for us. Not every parent is perfect, which means not every act of rebellion is an act of betrayal. But in so far as somebody has given their life for us, for us to turn around and betray them is truly horrific.
They play off of this in popular culture. You see it in Les Misérables. In the play and movie, Jean Valjean is taken in by the bishop. He needs refuge and he turns around and he steals all of the silver from the house. Horrific. But this is nothing compared to what God has done for us. The Lord Jesus Christ is God, our Creator. He took upon Himself our weak and feeble human flesh. He loved us so much He chose to be present with us, to take upon Himself debility, weakness, everything in our nature except sin. He loved us so much that He wished to be with us. As the Gospel of John says, He came to His own. The Creator became a member of the created. He walked among us. He taught us. He prayed with us. He loved us. He healed us.
And then what did we do? We put Him on the cross. We couldn’t handle Him. We couldn’t deal with Him. Our corruption, our desire for pleasure and power and gain said, we can’t have this man here. He is a threat to everything that we want. He is a threat to this world that we love so much. In order to preserve what we have built on our own, we have to kill Him. We have to remove Him from this world. He has to die. And not just to be gotten rid of. Not just exiled, not just arrested. He has to be tortured and killed.
Because we are so profoundly corrupt. We are so incredibly broken. The one who gave us everything, more than we can ever imagine, more than any human being could ever give us. God Himself, who chose to live among us. We had to kill him.
And yet, because this is who God is, He never stops giving to us. From the cross, in incredible pain, He gives us His mother. The only other person besides Himself without sin. And He says, we are now entrusted to her and to her prayers. We have incredible love and protection. I can tell you, I love my mother deeply and profoundly. And if somebody were to send me to the gas chamber, there’s no way that I would give her into their power, that I would commend her to them. And yet that’s exactly what Jesus did. He said, I don’t care that you’ve put me on the cross. She’s now yours. A gift for you, for all humanity. Even after He died, He gave us blood and water from His side. Of course, any theologian will tell you it represents baptism and the Eucharist, the sacrament of our salvation, and the sacrament of the presence of Jesus Christ.
Hanging on the cross, His lifeless body could not stop giving to us because that’s who God is. Even when we and our corruption turn around and betray Him, the one who gave us everything, He continues to give us everything. There is nothing we can do to pay Him back. There is nothing we can do to undo our sins, to take the nails out of His hands. We cannot un-betray the God who wished to live with us. But we can receive His love. We can receive the gifts that He gives us. We can go to Him even in our sin. And we can say, Lord, I am sorry. I am sorry for sinning against you. I am sorry for the corruption that I carry in myself. I am sorry for all of the ways in which I have ignored you, I have walked away from you, I have denied you. I am sorry for all of the people that I have hurt, all of the things that I have done wrong, in my weakness and in my sin. We can say that I am sorry and then we can receive the forgiveness that He gives us from the cross.
We can’t un-betray our Lord, but we can make sure that He didn’t die in vain. We can receive the gifts that He continues to give us.
Fr. Moore 