Good Friday - April 18

Worth Saving

The headline in a newspaper of our day might read something like Young Firefighter Sacrifices his Life to Save Couple.

The article might go on to talk about how the young man had only fulfilled his dream of being a firefighter a year earlier. He was just embarking on a vocation he was passionate about. And maybe he had young children. And the guys on his local softball team would miss him at second base, although he wasn’t much of a hitter. His parents were disconsolate. To them, he was special, but they hadn’t seen him as extraordinarily courageous. On that day he had a chance to save lives. But lots and lots of people in all sorts of different settings show similar strength and courage every day. On the whole, he was an ordinary young man.

In their book on Jesus’ last week, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossen use the image of a firefighter to talk about sacrifice. In the book, the context is not Good Friday, but the image has stayed with me.

Partly because it helps highlight the humanity of Jesus. The ordinary humanity of Jesus. He was just a young man.

The theological paradox that he was fully human and fully divine is really an unimaginable mystery. We’ll see the results of his divinity tomorrow night and Sunday.

But today the man who is dead is just a young man. Just a normal young man. Not super human. Not more than human. Just human. Younger than most of us, but otherwise just like us. Notwithstanding the hymn, we don’t know that he was particularly skilled with the plane and the lathe (he may have been a mediocre carpenter), or that he was unusually strong, or unbelievably heroic. He was a normal, ordinary human being.

Today we reflect on the fact that that young man died on the cross, not because he was a one-of-a-kind, extraordinary human being, but because we are worth saving. A young man, Jesus, died on the cross because we are worth saving.

That imaginary firefighter was just a young may who died, sacrificed his life, because the lives in that burning house were worth saving. Even if it was their indifference or negligence that started the fire. Even if, against all comprehension, they knowingly set it. Or maybe it was a tragic accident unrelated to them. Regardless, their lives were worth saving.

In God’s eyes, our lives are precious and worth saving. That’s the Good News on Good Friday.