Homily for Good Friday Tre Ore (2020)

"Favorable Time"
2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2

This homily was delivered for the concluding segment of the St. Louis South Circuit Tre Ore service held at Ascension Lutheran Church, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

When St. Paul speaks of “a favorable time,” he’s thinking back to the days of Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah had proclaimed God’s judgment on Israel. That judgment would come in the form of 70 years of exile in Babylon. But Isaiah also promised restoration for God’s people. “Thus says the Lord: ‘In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you’” (Is. 49:8). God’s time of favor is His day of salvation.

It turns out that Isaiah was also thinking back to former days. He was thinking back to the Year of Jubilee established in the days of Moses (Lev. 25). Every seven years was to be a time of rest for the people and the land. Then every seventh round of the seven years—49 years altogether—it was time for jubilee. On the Day of Atonement a trumpet would sound to “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants” (Lev. 25:10). The 50th year would be a year of freedom, rest and restoration. Every individual would return to the family property. The land itself would rest from cultivation for a whole year. The people would rest and God would provide for them.

Dear friends in Christ, we have just heard that trumpet call proclaiming liberty to us who are captive in sin and death. That trumpet call proclaims God’s favorable time of salvation and restoration. That trumpet call has just sounded in the seven words of our Lord from His cross:
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
Today you will be with me in paradise.
Woman, behold your son. Behold your mother.
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
I thirst.
It is finished.
Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.

His cross-won forgiveness brings us into Paradise with Him. Even as He is forsaken by His Father, He binds us together as His family, His people restored. And for what did He so deeply thirst? To finish, once and for all, our liberty from sin and death, to ultimately bring us back to the Promised Land of life with Him. And when He committed His spirit to His Father, He also committed us into the Father’s caring, providing hands. All of this is the favorable time.

And so the “old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” The old you has passed away; behold, the new you—yes, you, the new creation in Christ—has come. And this is not from you, not from your strivings to love Jesus more or live a better life. “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and give us the ministry of reconciliation.”

So the day Jesus hung on that cross and spoke His seven-fold trumpet call is God’s favorable time. The day He called you by the Gospel, enlightened you with His gifts, and sanctified and kept you in the true faith is His favorable time. Every day you receive His fatherly care, every day you rejoice in Jesus’ death and resurrection, every day you live in your Baptism—they’re all His favorable time. You see, it was “for our sake” that God made His Son “to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

We may wonder, then, why we have come to such a time as this in 2020—a time of plague and pestilence in our land. How can this be a favorable time? Shelter-in-place and stay-at-home orders prevent us from joining together on these most sacred three days. COVID-19 kills many and ravages many more in our city, our nation and around the world. Media reports and those ever-present tickers of how many people are infected and how many have died not only inform us; they also frighten us. How can this be a favorable time?

It IS a favorable time because our Lord has given us “the ministry of reconciliation.” “We are ambassadors  for Christ, God making His appeal through us.” He still sends us into this sick and dying world to proclaim His favorable time, His year of jubilee in Christ crucified and risen. No pandemic and no government quarantine orders can change that. Our Lord even puts the words in our mouths: “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

You see, when you have Christ and Him crucified, when the infection of your sin is washed away and healed by His blood, when you are enlivened in your Baptism, you have the ultimate healing. That immunity can then be shared with others who have the sin-virus. After all, it’s only the sick who need a physician. And the One who suffered, bled, and died on the cross is that Great Physician. His favorable time on the cross heals you, not only to receive the grace of God, but also to proclaim His time of healing from sin, liberty from death, and jubilee forever and ever. Amen.