Good Friday, March 29, 2024… “Broken”

Hymns: #437 “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed”; #543 “What Wondrous Love Is This”; #430 “My Song Is Love Unknown”; #550 “Lamb of God”; #878 “Abide with Me”

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.

Did Adam and Eve have any idea what they’d done? The Lord had warned them about eating from the tree in the middle of the garden. They’d been told that the consequence of their disobedience would be something God called ‘death’. But did they have any idea what death was, or what it would look like?

What the two of them did broke the world. Their one act of sin caused creation to be “subject to decay,” as St. Paul says. The Lord had told them, “On the day you eat of it, you will surely die” (whatever “die” meant). They did eat, and they didn’t die, at least not right away. The breakdown and decay of creation that their sin had begun was only the beginning of a process. Maybe the breakdown wasn’t evident right away. They’d been expelled from the garden, but they were still alive. God still cared for them. They were blessed with children, two fine sons named Cain and Abel. Maybe everything was going to be all right…

Until they came upon the body of their younger son Abel, lying in a pool of blood. Their son was… broken. What were they to make of it? Was THIS what their sin had done? They’d never seen death before, or understood the awfulness or the sorrow of it. They knew nothing of what to do with a lifeless body, or how to bury someone, or how to have a funeral. This was all brand-new to them, awful and terrible. And they’d lost not one son, but two. Their family was broken. Their firstborn son, Cain, was now a murderer; he’d killed his own brother. He’d been sentenced by God to be a restless wanderer upon the earth. His parents wouldn’t see him anymore.

You and I know about death well enough. It’s something common and ordinary here on earth these days, something we’re all too familiar with, to the point where people call it “natural” (although death isn’t natural at all, but a result and consequence of sin). We know how broken the world has become; but death for them was new. Did they know what the passing years would bring? The Bible tells us Adam and Eve lived for hundreds of years after the fall and had other children. They must have seen how the brokenness got deeper and more and more terrible with each new generation that came along. Abel’s murder was the first, but it wouldn’t be the last. Abel’s death was only the first, but today the whole world is a graveyard.

You and I can watch the news and be all but immune to what we see. Isn’t that so?

Deaths by the hundreds and thousands and millions. It’s horrible that we’ve grown so used to it. Anyone who says human beings are getting better, or somehow “evolving” into better people, has to be out of their mind. St. Paul wrote about people going from “bad to worse” as the day of the Lord’s return gets close, and it’s true; just look around you. And unlike Adam and Eve, we know all too well about funerals, much more than we care to. We’ve all buried loved ones and dear ones and friends. We know the customs, the ceremony, the ritual, how to act and what to do at those things. It’s a familiar thing now, much more than we’d like it to be.

Did Adam and Eve know what they’d done? Did they know their sin would one day put God up on a cross? God had promised them a Savior, right from the beginning, even as He was sending them out of the garden and into the world their sin had broken. But did they know what their Savior would have to go through? God promised that one day all the brokenness in the world would be repaired, that God would fix and mend all the things sin had broken - the broken bodies, the broken families, the broken relationships, the broken hearts. But did they know the cost of their sin would be the Son of God hung up on a cross to die?

God sent His Son into a world full of brokenness, meanness, and death. When Jesus walked through Israel, there was sickness, sorrow, hatefulness, and murder everywhere He looked. (Our world today is much the same). He touched everyone He could as He walked the road to Jerusalem. He was full of love and mercy, and He spent His days on earth healing people in their bodies, hearts, and souls, because He loved them, and because He was good. And for that, they hung Him on a cross, to pour His blood into to the ground, like Abel did. That blood of His paid for the sins of every human being - for every sin done in this broken world, from the beginning of it to the end of it, from the first sin to the last. The “universal atonement”, we call that; Jesus died for everyone.

If you are broken (and all of us are), let His blood be the binding and mending and comfort for your soul. All of us are broken; the grace of God to us is glue. Sin has us all broken; but in the end we can find our rest and peace, and our hope, in this holy sacrifice that Jesus made. And there’s a resurrection coming soon, and a day when a broken world will be “liberated from its bondage to decay” and be made brand-new. Come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly, and come soon. In Jesus’ name; Amen.