St Elisabeth’s
Reddish Preached by The Revd Ian M Delinger on Friday, April 6, 2007.
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[PLAY TRACK BEFORE READING]
Many of us are very familiar with the pipe & drum band versions of Amazing Grace. A piper is quite often used to play Amazing Grace at large funerals, and I believe a pipe & drum band did so for the Queen Mother’s funeral in 2002. I felt that it would be fitting to play a bagpipe version on Good Friday. A funeral dirge. That is what Amazing Grace has become. I don’t know why. The song is of immense elation at the realization of receiving the grace given by God. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” Even if this exclamation is upon entering the Pearly Gates of Heaven, it surely would be done with a bit of enthusiasm. But here we are, remembering Jesus’ death, and taking time to do our own standing at the foot of the Cross. Where does that amazing grace we’ve been talking about come in at the Crucifixion? That grace is here at the Cross. Christ offers Himself in the Eucharist, but only because He foresaw His Crucifixion, by which He was and is able to offer Himself to us. I hearken back to last night: Jesus Christ was the ultimate sacrifice, the Passover Lamb…but only by the Cross. That was the mechanism for the sacrifice. Jesus offered Himself in the Eucharist, from which our grace comes, as a foretelling of the sacrifice He was to make, by which the grace was achieved. So, we stand at the foot of the Cross, a reminder of the sacrifice for the amazing grace bestowed upon us. From Hebrews:
Here is our chance to effect our own personal enslavement to sin. Christ has freed us from the slavery of sin, but our own psyches keep us trapped in it, preventing us from realizing and knowing the full grace bestowed upon us. As you approach the foot of the Cross, you can lay your burdens at the foot of the Cross, and leave them there! Don’t trap yourself in self-loathing, self-doubt, or feelings of unworthiness. Know the love of God within you, and love as He loves you. You do not make yourself worthy; Christ did that for you on this Cross. That’s what this whole day is about!
Amazing Grace, the funeral dirge. Somewhere someone got it wrong. But that doesn’t matter. We listen to the drone of the bagpipes today, and we are reminded that Christ sacrificed Himself on the Cross for us, effecting the grace that will be with us forever. As if at a funeral, we come today to pay our respects, but instead of flowers, we lay at the foot of the Cross the barriers we build up that prevent us from receiving that grace, that love, that freedom from sin.
Amen.
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