"Good Friday is not the darkness that must necessarily yield to light. It is not the winter sleep that contains and nourishes the seed of life within. It is the day on which human beings — human beings who wanted to be like gods — kill the God who became human, the love that became person; the day on which the Holy One of God, that is, God himself, dies, truly dies — voluntarily and yet because of human guilt — without any seed of life remaining in him in such a way that God’s death might resemble sleep.
Good Friday is not, like winter, a transitional stage — no, it is genuinely the end, the end of guilty humanity and the final judgment that humanity has pronounced upon itself. . . .
If God’s history among human beings had ended on Good Friday, then the final pronouncement over humankind would be guilt, rebellion, the unfettering of all titanic human forces, a storming of heaven by human beings, godlessness, godforsakenness, but then ultimately meaninglessness and despair. Then your faith is futile. Then you are still in your guilt. Then we are of all people most to be pitied. That is, the final word would be the human being."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his Good Friday sermon of 1928
That day, most horrid, most terrible of all days. Humanity rejected God. God rejected his own Son. Good Friday ends there. The disciples' only hope was killed on the cross. Hope Gone. Savior Dead.
But God had promised a plan of redemption! I've learned that even when everything seems at its bleakest, God is somehow working things out to a perfect end. And no story had a better ending than the story of The Resurrection!
"The cross was the end, the death of the Son of God, curse and judgement upon all flesh. If the cross were the last word on Jesus, then the world would be lost in death and damnation without hope, and the world would have been victorious over God. But God, who alone effected salvation for us all — ”all this is from God” (2 Cor. 5:18) — raised Christ from the dead. That was the new beginning following the end as a miracle from above, though not like the springtime according to a fixed natural law, but rather according to the incomparable freedom and power of God that shatters death. “Scripture has proclaimed to us how one death devoured the other” (Luther). Thus did God commit himself to Jesus Christ. Indeed, as the apostle is able to say, the resurrection is the day that Son of God is begotten (Acts 13:33, Rom. 1:4). He receives his eternal divine glory back, and the Father receives his Son back. Thus is Jesus confirmed and glorified as the Christ of God who Jesus was from the very beginning. But so also does God acknowledge and accept the vicariously representative, atoning work of Jesus Christ."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from his Theological Letter on “Easter”, Berlin March 1940
One Death shatters Death forever. Because of our risen Savior, we will all rise to be with Him when we die. No longer do we have to fear death. Now we can have Hope, and Peace, and Joy! Hallelujah!!
Quotes from: http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/you-killed-the-author-of-life-preparing-for-good-friday; http://hopeinexile.com/2012/04/08/the-resurrection-and-easter-reflections-from-dietrich-bonhoeffer/
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