Celebration

Good Grief Gone

eejoseph, ,

You can stop thinking that Good Friday is a holy season that comes with the authority of Scripture or even has the accuracy of an annual festival.  Picking the Friday before or after Passover is another convenient avoidance of the facts.  Since no truth or spiritual value exceeds the passion, and no act of Christ outranks his death it is time to consider good grief gone to ground an established fact.

Good grief assured Abram

God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. (Genesis 15:13)

This was in answer to Abram seeking assurance that the land of Canaan was going to be his home and his descendants’.

7. And He said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” 8. He said, “O Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?” (Genesis 15:7-8)

It is not that we need holy days, weeks, months.  They are all juvenile toys.

9. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? 10. Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. 11. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. (Galatians 4:9-11)

Truth gone to ground with Good Friday

Is it not a deadly myth that God saved eight people and all the animals, clean and unclean from the flood, and saved the people from Egypt only to kill all of them except two in the wilderness?

This holiest of moments that we can pin almost to the hour is not subject to sectarian opinion or manipulation. 

No Tabernacles for the Prophets

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Matthew 17:4-8 shakes up the world of the prophets and the disciples. In this version of the story the two prophets do not get a briefing about Christ’s atoning sacrifice and I am loathe to try and harmonize the evangelists’ intentions. Luke alone (9:31) seems to have inquired about the conversation between the three and learned that the two prophets had been talking about (most certainly the meaning of) Christ’s death.

Who appeared in glory, and spoke of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.

The narrative freezes any attempt to honour the prophets, even these two towering figures. It also denies the equality of Christ and the prophets.

Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if you will, let us make here three tabernacles; one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah. While he yet spoke, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear all of you him.

Hear and Fear

Two things bring on the reverence due. The disciples are wrong about the prophets and wrong about Christ. They go from being excited about the prophets’ association with the Rabbi to sheer terror and to the stark reality that Yeshua is all there is.

And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid. And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only.