Oh, my goodness! Thanks to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ I have a crucifix! Someone in Edwardsburg, Michigan sent me one! While it is not exactly like the one I remember besotting me at Pastor D's house, but it is pretty darn close to my bungled description on this blog and to all the people I have talked with about wanting that crucifix. While the cross is brass, the body of Christ is copper, not silver/pewter. But is it simple, it has INRI inscribed up top, and it calls to me the same! And it came today, Good Friday!Call my crazy, but a part of me wanted to pull it down off the wall and bring it to church this evening when I left. After feeling a little foolish, I put the box in my bag and left for church. So excited am I that I have a crucifix!
Sitting in the service tonight, three words played in my mind and in my heart again and again and again: It is finished. They were on the cover of the bulletin. They were also spoken again and again and again from the pulpit.
The passion reading was interesting for the presiding pastor, the visiting pastor, and a lay reader (I think) shared the reading. The pastor spoke only the words of Christ, the visiting pastor spoke the "narrative" bits, and the lay reader spoke the quoted words for everyone aside from Christ. It was not a drama in any sense of the word. Truly, it was merely a three voice reading. But somehow their combined voices made the passion reading more real, more present.
Do you know that I have had the passion story poured out over me from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and now John? For all my fear and trepidation with regard to Easter for the memories it brings to me, I can honestly say that I have been humbled by sitting in service after service and having the pastor (and others) take the time to read this part of the Living Word to me. Each time, for you...for you Myrtle...rings in my ears.
Tonight was a bit hard because I started having problems with my asthma. Since I am not really sure about this church, I slipped out of the pew and sat behind this wooden screen thing that divides the pews from the back area to use my nebulizer. Doing so meant I could still have the Living Word fill my ears. But doing so also meant that I could not sing the hymns interspersed within the readings. Well, really, just one hymn. O Sacred Head Now Wounded...one verse at a time. To sing a verse, hear a part of what Christ did for me, and then sing again...my heart ached to be able to praise Him in song.
Of course, my heart started racing just minutes into the treatment and I was trembling like a leaf before it was over. The one usher who pays attention to my wobbling legs, my moaning and groaning as I get up after sitting for an hour, followed me up to the altar and helped me down the side steps afterward. There was a moment there I was convinced that I was going to fall, so weary was I from battling those darned drugs. I really should have just let the pastor come to me, but I have yet to see him do so for anyone else in the congregation and I feel a bit strange asking even though he has made it clear such would be perfectly fine.
Anyway, this was the second service where we were to leave in silence, so I simply remained in the pew. I couldn't really drive yet. At least I did not believe maneuvering a vehicle while distracted by my pounding, racing heart was the best course of action even though I was capable of doing so. Once everyone had filed out, I lay down and waited. First, though, I pulled out the box and tucked it beneath my head.
It is finished.
Do you ever think about what that means? I confess I never really have. At least, not beyond the crucifixion being done.
To digress a bit, probably the one thing that has stood out for me in hearing the passion story over and over is hearing each time that Christ gave up His spirit as He died. For years, I have marveled that Christ endured what He did. I mean, one blink and He could have smote everyone around Him into ashes. The man (men) pounding the nails into His flesh could have died the moment he (they) picked up a hammer. At any point along the arduous path He journeyed, Christ could have said, "Enough." He could have stopped it.
But it wasn't enough, was it?
So, He remained, purposely living each and every moment until the very last when He deliberately gave up His spirit. It was not taken from Him. Not once in His life was anything taken from Him. His freedom, His well-being, His hunger and thirst, and then His life...each was given up. In a sense, at the end, in that moment, Christ gave up His spirit to me. Miserable, wretched, sinful Myrtle. For me. For you!
As I lay there, my heart all too slowly calming down, I thought about that deliberate act and turned over those three words. The sermon was given by the new visiting pastor. And I admit the other sermon he preached truly disturbed me. I suspect it was my whole issue of "hearing Law where none was intended" as Pastor E put it so aptly, but still, when I saw in the bulletin that he was giving the sermon, I was a bit discouraged.
After weeks of Lententide sermons that brought such anguish, I have had a heavy dose of Gospel lately, with that wonderful bit of teaching on the Lord's Supper last night, and I was not looking forward to turning back. However, I was chastened as soon as I began to grasp the Word he was delivering tonight.
It is finished.
IT was not merely the crucifixion. I know...right now you are probably agreeing with me that I actually am the stupidest person on the planet to have not gotten that one either. Still, this is the gift God, in His infinite mercy, gave me this evening! IT was/is not just the crucifixion. In a sense, IT actually goes all the way back to Genesis 3:15, when God gave us the Promise of a plan to deliver us from sin, to defeat satan. IT finished the work of some 4,000 years. IT finished God's perfect plan of redemption of His creation from the sin we brought upon ourselves. IT restored us to our true birthright, our creationright. IT took our death and gave us life. IT was the fruition of all that God planned and purposed and worked and fulfilled and taught and revealed and prophesied and forged amongst His creation so that He might be joined with us as He intended us to be from the moment He first spoke the universe into being. For one brief moment, the enormity of Jesus Christ being the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, flashed before me.
IT means that while I am still a wretched sinner, whose life is an stench and an outrage to God, I am, in the beautiful words of Pastor S, a beloved and precious, delightful and well-pleasing member of the Bride of Christ. IT means that He has given Himself for me, and He has cleansed me by the washing of the water with His Word, so that I am dressed in Him and His beautiful righteousness. It means that there is no fault or flaw or wrinkle or blemish in me, nor any such thing. IT means that I am the bride of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has given me His Name, His honor, His glory, His life, and His own Body. That is what is true. Nothing else remains. Because...It is finished.
Finished. What a glorious word! What incredible armor to shield me from those fiery arrows! It is finished. I am baptized. I am forgiven.
Would that the lessons of Christ-not-faith and It-is-finished take root in me, fill my being, so that I might walk more in His light, shed more of the darkness. But even if the valley still looms large...now, this day, I know, I see, I understand...
It is finished!
Recently, Bettina asked me why it was again that Lutherans like to have a crucifix about when I had brought up again how much I wanted one. I gave her a long winded explanation when all I need to say that having such before your eyes is an ever constant reminder of the glorious Work of the cross...reminds you that...
It is finished!
Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!
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