Good Friday – April 23, 2011Is 52:13-53; Heb 4:14-16; Jn 18:1-19:42

I’m told this is Earth Day. I thought it was Good Friday. I’m told that Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin pushed for the first Earth Day forty-one years ago. I thought Jesus Christ died on across for the sins of the world nearly 2000 years ago on this day. Earth Day is about human failure to care for the gift of the earth. Good Friday is about human failure into which God needed to step in the person of God’s Son Jesus Christ. Earth Day is about the possibility for people like you and me to care for the earth, to restore the earth, to partner with God the creator in caring for this wonderful creation. Good Friday is about bringing an end to our self-centered self-interest and finding life in the Christ who was lifted up on the cross.

I’m told this is Earth Day. I thought it was Good Friday. It is. God’s creation has been on the cross for centuries. The junkyard. The scrapheap. The “sanitary landfill” that pollutes the water. Modern day Golgotha’s on which God’s abundant gift of life hangs in the balance. Each spark that ignites another internal combustion engine, a nail in the coffin. Each bag of garbage, a spear thrust in the side. Each plastic bread wrapper and garbage bag and cup, a cry of pain. Every tree cut down in the rain forest, a cry of agony before death.

“My God, my God, why…?” Jesus cried. This is Earth Day. This is Good Friday. An earthquake and tsunami unleash nuclear radiation with a half life of 250,000 years. An oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico separates birds and turtles and fish and humans from God’s creative gift of life and livelihood. Is it only BP or Shell or Exxon or Mobil? Or is it you and me? With our own don’t-give-a-rip-leave-it-to-the-next-generation-to-solve apathy and complacency!

Is that enough guilt for this Earth Day? We protest. We are tied to fossil fuels, to our lavish lifestyles, to our waste, to our chemical preservatives that give our bread the shelf life of plutonium. And our children – the asthma, the autism, and the allergies that overwhelm us. We’re trapped. Caught. Ensnared. Can’t help it. Can’t stop it. Can’t change it. In fact, we are bound to it. We are on the cross with creation. This is Earth Day. This is Good Friday.

If we are on the cross with creation, God is there, too, because Christ is there, too. And because Christ is there, there is not only our guilt, but God’s grace. Is it anything but grace that allows creation to replenish itself, renew itself so miraculously after we have messed it up? God’s creation is most forgiving – and most gracious. Gracious enough to offer us opportunity after opportunity to change our ways. To replenish and renew our lifestyles to conform to Christ.

For when he cried, “It is finished,” he brought an end to human inability to do anything but mess up God’s creation. When he cried, “It is finished,” he drew us into a new way of relating to God’s creation and to one another. His cry rings out over a hurting and dying creation, rings out over human lives that brought the hurt and death, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, so that we need not deny our involvement but confess it. His cry welcomes us into God’s rhythm of confession and forgiveness, of repentance and renewal, of dying and living again. His cry declares for all time that we do not have to be at odds with God and creation, but that we have been made partners with God in caring for all that God has made.

Perhaps that’s the point in John’s Gospel when Jesus remembers his mother and commends her to his disciple. He said to his mother, “Here is your son,” and to his disciple, “Here is your mother.” Not only does that commendation by this one who hung on the cross move us to care for each other, it sets us free to care for our mother, the earth, and to receive its gifts with thanksgiving.

It’s Earth Day all right. But thank God it’s Good Friday. For in the beginning God looked at all that God had made and declared it good. On this day in the death of God’s Son for the wholeness and renewal of the world, God does it again. Redeemed by God’s grace in Jesus Christ, now we are made participants in the redemption of creation. We can join creation on its journey from Golgotha back to the garden.

We are all part of creation’s Good Friday. Jesus says we get to be part of its resurrection. Just in time for Easter! Amen 

Pastor George M. SchelterIn collaboration with his brother, Pastor John Schelter
Trinity Lutheran ChurchOur Savior Lutheran Church
Des Plaines, Illinois  Mesquite, Texas

 

Trinity Lutheran Church
Touching Lives for Christ