Friday, April 10, 2009

Reflections for Good Friday

Here are some quotes for reflection of Jesus' death (the quotes are in the 1st comment, I can't cut and paste from Word into the blog for some reason):

1 comment:

M Crane said...

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act. (Mahatma Ghandi)

The sign by which the Christian makes sense of the world is the sign of the Cross. (Lesslie Newbigin, Trinitarian, 20)

How can the sinner become righteous without impairing the righteousness of God? The answer is that God justifies himself by appearing as his own advocate in defense of his own righteousness. And it is in the cross of Christ that this supreme miracle happens. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship, pp. 273-74)

O strange and inconceivable thing! we did not really die, we were not really buried, we were not really crucified and raised again; but our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality. Christ was actually crucified, and actually buried, and truly rose again; and all these things He has freely bestowed upon us, that we, sharing His sufferings by imitation, might gain salvation in reality. O surpassing loving-kindness! Christ received nails in His undefiled hands and feet, and suffered anguish; while on me without pain or toil by the fellowship of His suffering He freely bestows salvation." (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures XX.5)

The Powers have been defeated not by some kind of cosmic hocus-pocus but by the concreteness of the cross; the impact of the cross upon them is not the working of magical words nor the fulfillment of a legal contract calling for the shedding of innocent blood, but the sovereign presence, within the structures of creaturely orderliness, of Jesus the kingly claimant and of the church which is itself a structure and a power in society. Thus the historicity of Jesus retains, in the working of the church as it encounters the other power and value structures of its history, the same kind of relevance that the man Jesus had for those whom he served until they killed him. (John Howard Yoder, Politics of Jesus, p.158)

It is finished. (Jesus, John 19:30)