Colossians 2:9-15
Good Friday, April 2, 2010
"Nailed to the Cross"
“Author and speaker Brennan Manning tells the story of a woman who visited her priest and told him that when she prays, she sees Jesus in a vision.
“He appears to me as real as you are standing here right now, Father,” said the woman. “And he speaks to me. He tells me that he loves me and wants to be with me. Do you think I’m crazy?”
“Not at all,” replied the priest. “But to make sure it is really Jesus who is visiting you, I want you to ask him a question when he appears to you again. Ask him to tell the sins that I confessed to him in confession. Then come back and tell me what he said.”
A few days later the women returned.
“Did you have another vision of Jesus?” the priest asked her.
“Yes I did Father,” she replied.
“And did you ask him to tell you the sins that I confessed to him while I was in confession?”
“Yes I did.”
“And what did he tell you?” asked the priest expectantly.
“He said…..’I forgot.’” Copyright 2001 Youth Specialties, Inc.
God forgive and forgets when we confess our sins. God forgives our sin and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
Tonight I am talking about how our sins are nailed to the cross and what that has to do with forgiveness and new life. What is the meaning of our scripture where Paul says about our debts, our sins, “He nailed them to the cross.”
In the ancient world when you took out a loan you yourself wrote and signed the debt note. The person who made the loan kept that note with all the rules and stipulations in it that had to do with paying it back. It was called a certificate of indebtedness and often in the ancient world people would take out loans at such a high interest rate that they could never pay them back. They then wound up in debtors prison, or being sold into slavery or selling themselves into slavery to pay for their debt.
In other words the debt was often more than anyone could pay.
In this scripture the thought is that we by our sin have incurred such a debt towards God that we on our own can never repay. We are slaves to sin being controlled by our debt, our sin and not by God.
Today, we talk about people having a debt to society for crimes they have committed and within our faith we often pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
The first verse I read tonight said the in Christ “the fullness of Deity dwelt.” All of God that could be stuffed into a human being was stuffed into Jesus. To look at Jesus and understand Jesus was to understand God. It goes on to say that we have been given fullness in Christ, which means in us we have the Spirit we through our baptism are in Christ. But we also have the sin that clings.
In baptism we are “in Christ” so we die with him and are raised with him to new life in his resurrection.
When Jesus hung on the cross all our sins hung there too, nailed with him to the cross. As the scripture says, “He became sin who knew no sin.” Our debts, our sins, our mortgage, our overcharged credit card of life incurred by sin hung there on that cross too.
But by Jesus’ death the debt, our debt was canceled. Debt does not follow one beyond the grave. God tore up, burned up the mortgage and set us free!!!!
Those who have paid off a crushing personal loan, or mortgage or credit card debt know the freedom of finally being debt free. You often have a big party and a ritual of burning the mortgage, or note. My former church in Mesa is having a big party now because a $225,000 debt that kept them from paying their apportionments and hampered their ministry was recently forgiven. My brother who attends that church had to call me with that good news!!!
Jesus does the same thing on the cross with our spiritual, moral and emotional life. Jesus’ cross sets us free from shame, moral corruption and spiritual death and grants us the freedom of new life, a life free of the debt of sin.
In Protestant churches the cross is bare like the one I stand next to tonight. There is no broken body of Christ hanging there. Crosses with Christ’s body on them remind us of the seriousness of our sin. Our sin cost our Savior his life, but the empty cross emphasizes that Christ is alive; our sins are burned up, forgiven, erased and forgotten. We have new life in Christ.
Tonight I invite you to be a part of this new life. I invite you to nail your sins to the cross and have them forgiven. I invite you to claim the power of your baptism. In baptism into Christ our sins are forgiven and forgotten, erased in His death. In baptism we are raised up with Christ into heavenly realms, into new life.
Tonight I invite you once again to be a part of this forgiveness and forgetting of your debt your sin. I invite you to nail your sin to the cross. I invite you to write down on the paper you received at the door when you walked in any sin for which you wish God to forgive you.
Write down any secret shame to be overcome, or moral problem to be confessed and overcome with new life. Write them down and while the choir sings “Alas, And Did My Savior Bleed” please come down and pin/nail your sins to the cross.
You can spell them out or use symbols to describe them. No one will see these but you and God for in a flash they will be destroyed, erased, burned up on the cross. After you have come forward please return to your seats and remain in prayer until everyone has come forward including the choir.
(People come forward) (Choir comes forward)
It’s time to burn the mortgage, our debt of sin and shame. It is time to receive new life in Christ and follow the light of Christ into the world.
(Light up the sins)
Exit in silence now following the Christ candle and join us on Sunday to celebrate new life in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
