good friday

How Much Does God Love Me?

How Much Does God Love Me?

Adapted from a sermon by Fr Elijah Iskander

Holy Week leads up to the crucial death of our Lord. If we were to summarise this week in one phrase, it is, The Cross. If the Cross was described in another way, that is love – The Cross is Love.

We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, ²⁴but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. – 1 Cor. 1:23-24.

To some, the Cross is foolishness, how could you believe in a god that would accept to be treated in this way? Others take it one step further and say that it is a stumbling block. I want to believe but I can’t.

To some it is weakness, agony, failure. Even some Christian denominations have this view; that Jesus was the victim.

To the Orthodox Christian, the Cross is victory and power, but above all the Cross is love.

If we knew how much God loved us, our lives would be different. If we knew the depth of His love for us personally, our lives would be renewed!

We meet so many characters in the Scriptures of Holy Week. All their thoughts and actions could be understood by asking one question – did you know how much God loved you?

We read about the Israelites in the prophecy of the sixth hour of Good Friday. After they saw the ten plaques, after the first-born of the Egyptians die, after the Red Sea is parted and they escape, after they receive manna from heaven, they then complain against God. We read, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us in the desert, For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.” The Lord Himself sent bread from Heaven to sustain them but even this, they did not like. (Numbers 21:5).

After everything the Lord had done for the people of Israel, the question becomes, did you forget how much He loves you?

If we look at Judas, a key figure of Holy Week, the question becomes, did you ever realise that Christ loved you? While other church fathers disagree, St John Chrysostom believes that Christ did wash Judas’ feet along with the other disciples. He did this to show him that He loved him. He wanted to give him one more chance. Maybe this would move his heart. Maybe this would have stopped Judas’ scheme. Maybe this would soften his heart.

If Judas knew how much the Lord loved him, would he have sold Him so cheaply for thirty pieces of silver? It would be impossible. If Judas knew how much the Lord loved him, would he have been able to go and betray Him with a kiss – an intimate, calculated and premeditated act? If Judas knew how much the Lord loved him then his life would have been very different. Perhaps the question for Judas becomes, did you ever know how much the Lord loved you?

If we look at the two thieves that were crucified with Christ, we see two different perceptions of the crucified Christ. In the right-hand thief’s creed of Good Friday, we say, “What did you see and what did you comprehend,” to be able to confess Christ as King?

The left-hand thief didn’t see or hear anything, we know this because we hear him blaspheme against the Lord when he said, “If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us” (Luke 23:39). If the left thief had known how much the Lord loved him, his words would have been very different. If he comprehended how much Christ loved him, perhaps he would have cried out like the right-hand thief, who could see how much Christ loved him. Even if every moment of his life had been away from Christ in not a negligent way, but intentionally for he was a robber, he was yet able to comprehend Christ’s love. He looked at Christ and saw how much He loved him. He saw that Christ could overlook what he had done. It was not too late for the boundless love of the Lord.

The sinner woman rushed into the Pharisee house uninvited, breaks the flask of alabaster oil, loosens her hair and wipes His feet with her. She made a spectacle of herself. She knew how much Christ loved her, she knew He would defend her, she knew He would honour her and say, “what this woman has done will be told as a memorial to her” (Matthew 26:13). Because she knew how much Christ loved her, her actions without words, were testament to her recognition of Christ’s love for her.

St Peter also, loved the Lord but in an impulsive moment he denied Him. If St Peter remembered in that specific moment how much the Lord loves him then it would be impossible for him to deny. There was a momentary lapse; a moment that his fear clouded his vision of Christ’s love.

Finally, St John the Beloved; the one whom Jesus loved. The one who knew how much Jesus loved him. He was unwavering in faith, standing at the foot of the Cross when all the other disciples had scattered. He could do this because he knew how much the Lord loved him, his words and actions were different. He was the one whom Jesus loved.

For us on Good Friday, we must reflect on these characters. I ask myself, in the midst of uncertainty, pestilence, plaque, setbacks in study or health, am I like Israel, forgetting what the Lord has done for me in the past? If I knew how much the Lord loves me, I will never be shaken.

Am I like Judas? If I know how much the Lord loves me, will I betray Him for a cheap lie? An inappropriate image or thought? An inappropriate relationship? If I know how much the Lord loves then my response to His love is an inability to do these things.

Am I like the right-hand thief? I know how much You love me, even if I have sinned and been far from You up until this day, I know it is never too late, I know You still have hope for me. I know that You can still accept me.

If we know how much the Lord loves us, our words, actions and lives will be different. Knowing the Lord is more than just information, we must have intimate knowledge of the Bible.

What if I don’t know the Lord loves me? Knowing the Lord runs much deeper than facts, but having intimate knowledge of the Bible. How then, can I remind myself?

The Cross. Look at the Cross. Contemplate the Cross. Sit at the foot of the Cross. Pray, Lord, I just need to remember, I just need to know how much You love me. This becomes easy, for we love for He first loved us.

“He bows his head, as if to kiss you. His heart is made bare open, as it were, in love to you. His arms are extended that he may embrace you. His whole body is displayed for your redemption. Ponder how great these things are. Let all this be rightly weighed in your mind: as he was once fixed to the cross in every part of his body for you, so he may now be fixed in every part of your soul.”
St Augustine

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Not One Bone Broken

Not One Bone Broken

By Shery Abdelmalak

The climax of the greatest love story ever told with the ultimate sacrifice of the most perfect Bridegroom. Every moment of human history came down to this one fateful day. The final covenant between God and His creation, a promise of salvation and freedom for the faithful.

Every little detail on this day had profound meaning and a tremendous cost. Nothing was by accident, all the prophecies led to this final moment of the Lord’s crucifixion. Our God, the author of Love, orchestrated every little detail to show us His Love truly knows no bounds. While there were moments that seemed unnecessarily harsh, these were glimpses into His everlasting love. For it was in His affliction that we hear His call, “I am my beloved’s, And my beloved is mine” (Song of Solomon 6:3).

The Jews were relentless, but they stopped short in one instance. When they went to break the legs of the crucified, they found that Jesus had breathed His last and there was no need. Some early church fathers have contemplated the question, why the legs? Why not the head, for a swift death? Breaking the legs caused the greatest pain, while speeding up death slightly. They wanted them to die faster, but not without pain. They needed the bodies to be taken down before the Passover so that the stench of the dead bodies did not defile the atmosphere. God-forbid they appeared to be an unclean nation. They were completely blinded to reality and fixated on an honourable appearance, and so, our Bridegroom still had more ways of showing His love to soften even the hardest hearts.

To their surprise, Christ had died already. Could it be that this was a sacrificial death? Could He really be the Saviour they had waited for? We know He died out of free will, out of love. This was His choice to grant us freedom. By His death, He overcame death so that it could no longer have dominion over us. Through His victory in love, He gave up His Spirit at a time He chose, at the fulfilment of all the prophecies, and not at the expected time.

The Jews knew their prophecies and maybe it was in this moment that they recalled the sacrifice the Israelites offered in remembrance of their freedom from the Egyptians. The one sacrifice that the Lord commanded, “nor shall you break one of its bones” (Ex 12:46), was Christ the sacrifice of freedom;

He guards all his bones; Not one of them is broken. – Ps. 34:20

If Christ had endured the height of suffering already, why stop at the breaking of bones? Beyond the prophecies, there is more the Bridegroom has to offer to you and I, His bride. We are the bones of Christ. We may endure suffering, but we do not break away from Him. We remain in Christ and by His stripes we are healed (Is. 53:5). For it was in the crucifixion that we were freed from the death of sin and united with Christ for eternity, so how could any one of His bones be broken?

We may leave Christ, but Christ will never leave us. There were so many signs, calling out to the hardest of hearts. When we look upon the hidden brokenness of the heart, the pain almost physical yet unseen. The brokenness we experience, caused by our own accord or otherwise, represents a detachment from the Bridegroom.

When a bone is broken, modern medicine teaches us that it will never be as strong as it was before. If you repeatedly break the same bone, extra precautions are taken to prevent future breakages. To protect a heart that has been broken, we harden its surroundings, we don’t let people in, just in case it breaks in the same way it broke before – just in case that the next time it breaks, it is beyond repair.

Don’t show love. Don’t show weakness. Don’t show any sign of humanity that can lead to being hurt.

‘There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.’
C.S. Lewis

That is option one.

Option two, the option that Christ gives us on the Cross – choose love. Choose love that breaks. When a broken heart is given to God, He heals it so that it is stronger than it ever was before.

“I am dark, but lovely” (Song of Solomon 1:5). I may be tainted by mistakes, sin, brokenness, but this does not cause God to love me any less. On the contrary, He calls for the one lost sheep among the hundred. For every mistake I make and the subsequent hurt I feel, He heals my heart, He makes me capable of loving more than I ever could before. He helps me fight the reflex to harden against things that hurt me. To harden against pain is to choose a bandaid over the healing Hands of God. He can only heal wounds that are given to Him as they are, as wretched as they may be. May we always remember that on Good Friday, Christ endured all suffering but did not allow His bones to be broken, He did not allow His children to be broken away from Him. There is no hurt too great that He cannot repair.

Our brokenness is a calling to love, to be reunited with Christ in repentance. When we come back to Christ in repentance, we are not just healed, but renewed. Let it break, let it be renewed, for this is the purpose of His Crucifixion. On the day of Resurrection, we are renewed. We put to death all that leaves us feeling broken and we prepare to be risen in Christ.

“A broken and a contrite heart, these O God, You will not despise.” Ps 51:17

From Palms to the Cross

From Palms to the Cross

Adapted from a sermon by Dr Adel Magdy

After the Lord entered into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we map every step He took in the hope that we see what He saw, we hear what He heard and we feel what He felt in this final week.

The ultimate aim is to reach His Cross, to stand at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday. We start with Palm Sunday where thousands of people surround Christ to get even a glimpse of Him. By the end of the week, there were only a handful that remained at the foot of the Cross. Even His disciples, His closest of friends, had deserted Him.

For the special few that made it all the way to the Cross, indescribable blessings were given from our compassionate Lord. If we consider what would’ve happened to St Mary after the death of her only Son, with no husband, life would have become extremely difficult for her in those days. He gave her John the Beloved to care for her. As for John the Beloved, the gift of having the Mother of God in his own household was a huge blessing and shows how much the Lord trusted him.

St Mary Magdalene received the honour of being the very first person that the gospels record the Lord appearing to after His resurrection. She was the first to see the risen Christ. Even those that were not at the foot of the Cross deliberately still received blessing. The Centurion, for example, had his eyes opened. It is even believed that this man became a martyr for the sake of the Lord.

There is power in being on the foot of the Cross on Good Friday. For us, we begin a journey this week. The ultimate aim is to power through right until the foot of the Cross.

There are a lot of tests and milestones along the way that we must pass to reach the foot of the Cross. The first milestone we encounter on the night of Palm Sunday. On Monday Eve, Christ asks the disciples a few questions – who do men say that I am? He then follows up with a more personal question – who do you say that I am? (Matthew 16:15)

It’s an unusual question. Why would the Lord care about what people were saying about Him? He knew that His disciples knew who He was. For us, we ask the Lord, “who do You say that I am?” Not what I think of God, but what does God think of me. It doesn’t matter what the world thinks of me. It doesn’t matter how I outwardly appear to the world. It doesn’t matter if people look at me and think I am a great ambassador of the Lord. What matters is what the Lord thinks when He looks at my heart.

Lord, who do you say that I am?

It’s not a comfortable question for any of us to ask. We’re not sure what the Lord will say of us. Will He say that we were like John the Beloved, loving Him and always drawing near to Him, or if He will say, you’re like Judas, someone that betrayed for any price. We don’t know that the answer will be. We fear so many hidden things in our life that if people knew, they wouldn’t want to know us.

As uncomfortable as this question is to ask, it’s crucial for us if we want to make it to the foot of the Cross on Good Friday. Even if we don’t ask this question, we will hear the Lord’s answer on Judgement day. The Lord will tell us what He thought, and we will either enter the joy of the Lord or we will be cast into eternal condemnation.

In His mercy, we are given the opportunity to ask this question tonight while we have a chance to fix it. On Judgement Day, there will be no further opportunities to change, but now we have a chance. We have a chance to ask the Lord what we need to do to fix ourselves and draw near to Him.

Monday of Holy Week is the cursing of the fig tree, this is where the thousands that surrounded Jesus on Palm Sunday begin to drop off. The Lord is hungry and He sees a fig tree from a distance, full of leaves. The Lord makes the effort to draw near to the fig tree but when He arrives He sees that there is no fruit, just leaves. Apart from its appearance, there is no good in it. The Lord curses the fig tree, the very next day it withers away and dies. The church fathers teach us that this is a symbol of hypocrisy. There is nothing the Lord hates more than hypocrisy. The Lord was only firm with the Pharisees and scribes because of their hypocrisy.

We get on our knees in Holy Week and beg the Lord to show us what we are doing wrong and what we can do about it. We ask for His grace to change our life this year. We can make a change this Passion Week.

A life changing sermon was given by Fr Matta El Meskeen that outlines the steps toward answered prayer. Beg the Lord day and night to reveal your sins and weaknesses that keep you from Him. Pray for nothing else in one month, but day and night repeat this prayer – reveal the sins that are keeping me from coming to You, Lord. We can only ask this question if we are prepared to act upon what the Lord teaches us, to learn to fix our hearts and to see through the Lord’s eyes.

Lord, may You grant us clarity to see what separates us from You so that when Good Friday comes, we may see You in full clarity. May we increase our love for You, that it becomes easy to stop the sins we once loved that block us from You. My Saviour, may You help me reach the Cross so that I may sit at the foot of the Cross all day and see the depth of Your love for me and the depth of Your sacrifice. May I hear You say, “Enter my Beloved child in whom I am well pleased.”

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Lead me to the Cross

Good Friday

by Bethany Kaldas

‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.’

Genesis 2:24

When we think of Good Friday, we do not tend to think of it as…well, good. The closest we come is in acknowledging the fact that it is because of the Crucifixion that we have been saved from sin. But even so we do it in a sombre, regretful tone, the same way we talk about the deaths of soldiers on a battlefield. We shed tears for a horrific and tragic event that happened to Somebody else, a long time ago, very far away.

But Good Friday is about as far from the commemoration of a terrible misfortune as you can get. It is not a commemoration at all. Good Friday is the resolution of the greatest love story in all Creation. And it did not merely happen. It is happening to us.

It is a story that begins with the fitting words, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ (Genesis 1:1). The world is created—marvels upon marvels that had yet to be seen in the universe! Substance where there was once nothing! Light in a cosmos which had been blind! Water to a land that had never tasted a drop! Living creatures of boundless forms inhabiting a once lifeless world! Each day something more and more wonderful!

…And yet it was incomplete.

Then came the sixth day of Creation, and something… Different happens.

‘Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”’

Genesis 2:26

We know this story well. This is the creation of the first humans. But this is not just some distant tale about Adam and Eve. This is the beginning of us.

As Fr John Behr puts it, this is the announcement of God’s own project—humanity—a project that, unlike His other countless wonders, ‘is not completed by His word alone’ (Becoming Human, p. 35). God has said that humanity is to be in His ‘image and likeness’ (Genesis 1:26), and yet the creature that is formed of the dust falls away. Broken and confused, mankind comes to barely resemble the Being it was made after. Of all of Creation, humanity is the only work which is begun but not yet finished.

Fr John goes on to claim that through all of history, from the sixth day of Creation, not one human being has been seen on Earth. Until Good Friday. Until the Creator Himself came down to His Creation, and hanging on the Cross, on the verge of death, declared with utter finality:

‘It is finished.’

John 19:30

And finally, the sixth day of Creation comes to its end.

Good Friday is the day we are completed. It is the day we become the glorious Bride of Christ. It is the day we become the Church—we finally fulfil that image and likeness we were made for. This when we become the True Eve, who is to the True Adam, ‘of His flesh and of His bones’ (Ephesians 5:30). With the sacrificial death of the first True Human in all the universe, Christ Himself, human kind is finally born and finally united with Her Creator.

‘Thus the day of Jesus’ crucifixion is His wedding day, when He, the new Adam, is ‘joined to His wife’, the Church, in an everlasting marriage covenant.’

Brant Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom

But it is not enough to know this happened—we must see that it is happening.

In his book, Jesus the Bridegroom, Brant Pitre describes Christ’s sacrifice in this way:

‘Jesus is united with His bride through the sacrifice of His own flesh and blood, poured out literally on Calvary and then miraculously in the sacraments of the Church.’

Whenever we partake of the Eucharist, we are participating in the very same sacrifice that was given on that Cross, the Cross we too often feel is only a distant historical event to be commemorated in ritual.

But it is even more than that. Through this sacrifice, the sacrifice that birthed humanity and wed us to our Maker, we see a reality that the saints before us realised centuries ago. An uncomfortable reality, perhaps, captured so perfectly in Romans 6:8: ‘Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.’ It is the reality that we can only live if we first die.

We see this reality portrayed most potently in examples such as Saint Ignatius of Antioch. In his letters, he begged his friends not to do anything that might prevent his martyrdom. He pleads to them with all sincerity, ‘Do not hinder me from living.’ He realised that one cannot really have a life by trying to preserve it for oneself—true life comes through unity with Christ, and that through death with Christ.

Martyrdom seems like a radical idea to the modern, western mind—and by no means am I suggesting that we cannot be real, living Christians unless we hop on a plane and find someone who will kill us for our beliefs. We need not travel so far for martyrdom. For true martyrdom is not mere physical death, but the sacrifice of one’s whole self for the sake of Christ.

‘Until you have given up yourself to Him you will not have a real self.’

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

And it is in this that we find the goodness of Good Friday.

God’s greatest work—the human race, the Church, His Bride—was completed and wed to Him through the voluntary sacrifice of His whole self. In precisely the same way, we can only be wholly ourselves—that most glorious creature, that image and likeness of God—if we give our whole selves away for His sake.

Good Friday is not a commemoration of a tragic event. Good Friday is when we find life in the giving up of life, when we die with Him in order to live with Him.

‘Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.’

Romans 7:4