CONFIDENCE FROM THE CROSS TO COME CLOSE
Hebrews 10:19-22
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, speaking
April 18, 2025 – Good Friday
Author/influencer Brené Brown has told of how “the whole Jesus thing” finally clicked for her and she returned to church. She noted how we all seek love, but we do so under the illusion it’s all “unicorns and rainbows”. In fact, she noted, love is hard and involves trouble and sacrifice.
For example, loving requires forgiving, and forgiving requires that something die – perhaps our expectations of a person, perhaps our false idea about who we are. Something has to die – or, maybe, someone has to.
Brown says that when people try to make forgiveness and love easy, “there’s not enough blood on the floor to make sense of it”. Jesus offers real forgiveness because Jesus has done the hard work and put plenty of His own blood on the floor.
Today’s scripture declares very good news on the basis of very bad news. It announces that we may have “confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus”. “Sanctuary” here refers to the place where God dwelt on earth: the inner core of the ancient Jerusalem temple. That holy place was marked off by a massive curtain, embroidered in blue and purple and scarlet. It warned everyone off – except the high priest on one particular day a year. Otherwise, everyone was to stay out and keep a respectful distance.
Three of the four Gospels tell us that, at the exact moment Jesus died, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom”. Today’s scripture says that Jesus’ death created a “new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh).” In other words, Jesus’ crucified corpse made God accessible in a way He hadn’t been before. God became available to everyone who has been cleansed by Him in the “pure water” of His grace through Jesus who died.
Though God remains as awesome and formidable as ever, thanks to the cross, anyone so cleansed may with confidence come close to God to know His caring heart.
And though God remains as mysterious and blindingly bright with glory as ever, anyone so cleansed may with confidence enter into His presence to know the comfort and fortification He brings.
A man named Kenneth Wilson tells of how as a child he slept alone in the family attic. In the dead of night, he found it a terrifying place of unexplained noises and haunting mysteries. To calm him, Kenny’s father would read him bedtime stories; but the time would always come when he’d turn out the light, close the door and climb down the stairs – leaving Kenny by himself with the rattling windows, the creaking beams and the fear.
One night his dad asked, “Would you rather I leave but keep the light on, or turn the light out but stay with you a while?” Kenny always chose presence with darkness over absence with light. More than sight, he needed assurance there was someone there for him.
When our house rattles and creaks and scares us, we need God’s presence more than either sight or rescue.
A doctor entered the room of an eight-year-old girl dying of cancer, her body disfigured by it and wracked with pain. As he took in her situation, he couldn’t see anything good resulting from her condition or any hope of healing, but he did see something holy. The girl was dozing in the arms of her grandmother who was lying beside her, looking after her with attentive determination and a resolve to carry the weight of the girl’s distress.
God is often with us like that. As He suffered for us that first Good Friday, so He suffers over us to this day. He sticks close by our side to carry our pain and fear, and to assure us that all will be well in the end.
Kevin pastored a huge and growing church. But the pressures and workload ate him up, until one day he wrote a quick letter of resignation and went AWOL. He drove his Buick up into Canadian snow country, without telling anyone his plans. He got a job as a logger and lived in a small trailer warmed by a single space heater. One night, when it was 20 below, the heater quit working and wouldn’t start again. Enraged, he grabbed it and chucked it through a window he’d forgotten to open – only to realize how stupid that was to do in 20-below weather.
Kevin threw himself on the floor, pounded on it with his fist, and screamed at God, “I hate you! Get out of my life! I’m done with this Christian game. It’s over.” Then, exhausted, he just lay there in a fetal position.
He says he was too emptied out to cry. But lying there, he suddenly heard crying and heaving breaths that weren’t his own. He soon recognized it as Christ crying and heaving away on the cross. Kevin says, “I then knew the blood He shed was for me: the Kevin who was the abandoner, the reckless escapee, the blasphemer. Then I heard words: ‘Kevin, I am with you, and I am for you, and you will get through this.’”
Kevin immediately rose to his feet, ran to his car and drove home – to start his life over again. And to this day he’s still growing to become a better man and pastor.
Such dramatic experiences of God’s presence are real, but they are rare.
While we do well to be open to however God wants to manifest Himself, we are fools if we insist on such mystical encounters or seek them first and foremost. We’d do better if we paused – say, every day or even every hour – to think about whether we’re acting in line with God’s will as we know it. We’d do better to be consistent in practicing the spiritual disciplines of worship, prayer and service, that we might instill in ourselves thereby a habitual attitude of being alert for, and present to, the presence of God however He wants to manifest it.
God is already involved in every aspect of our life. He does not pop in and out of our days. His love ever surrounds us. We live and breathe God just as we live and breathe air. The only question is whether we’re present to His presence.
To become more present to it, we don’t have to do anything impressive. We just have to be ready and receptive – even in our everyday mundane moments, and even in our embarrassing moments when all we see is our own emptiness.
But if we admit our emptiness, resist filling the void in us with the junk of insubstantial distraction, and dare to hope that God will pour His grace into the space we left unoccupied for Him, we can have confidence that we can come to know God’s closeness as never before – and get a better sense of why this Friday is called good. Let us pray!
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