The continual development of technology and its dramatic increase in capability is simply astonishing. When I was a kid there were 4 channels on TV—our big black and white rank arena tube in the wooden veneer case. There was no internet and computer games were hand held electronics that required 4 C size batteries. My dad would bring home computer paper that was fed through rows of Telex writers for me to draw on. My first computer was a Commodore 64 which had about as much memory as a calculator, and mobile phones were a handheld receiver plugged into a brick that you clipped on your belt.
How things have changed—and technology is so rapidly changing all the time, into what is now a whole new world of Ai—artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence refers to computer systems that can perform complex tasks normally done by human-reasoning, decision making, creating, and so on, without significant human oversight. Computer systems and robots are now regularly deployed to think or act like a human.
The latest development? Last month, a church service designed and run completely by Ai. Where was this? St Paul’s Lutheran Church (well, not us!)—St Paul’s Lutheran Church in Helsinki, Finland. It was the first church service in Finland put together mostly by AI tools, in an experiment to see if it could attract more worshippers. Artificial intelligence wrote the sermons and some of the songs, composed the music and created the visuals. Computer generated images of the church’s pastors on a large screen in the sanctuary addressed the congregation, with even a former president of Finland who died in 1986, reading from the Old Testament. An avatar of Jesus took questions from worshippers and gave answers based on Scripture.
Despite the bold experiment, many who attended said that it didn’t feel personal. One person reflected: “It was pretty entertaining and fun, but it didn’t feel like [a service]. … It felt distant. I didn’t feel like they were talking to me.” Another said the service felt “more like a performance,” finding it more impersonal than “it would be with real people.”
Today, on this Good Friday, we can thank God that he is not distant and virtual—but real, and came to earth to be real with us. We do not have a computer-generated image, or a robot, but God in Christ became one of us. Although being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, and took the very nature of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (Philippians 2:6-7). He took on our human vulnerabilities as he grew as an embryo in his mother Mary’s womb. He was born in a messy stable surrounded by animals and their waste, laid in a feed box for a bed. Why would God do that?
Last night we heard how Adam and Eve brought separation between the whole human race and God…and one another. Through one man sin came into the world, and through sin, death reigned. All of God’s good creation was plunged into bondage to decay. All of creation groans, the Apostle Paul says, longing for its deliverance. Don’t we see that all around us?
Our life is fragile. Sickness leading to death is a part of our story. Humanity is broken and we cannot put ourselves back together again. Disease and death, aging and dying. God’s good created order impacted by sin, heaving and surging, groaning and collapsing. Evil seems to be triumphing everywhere. People fuelled by hatred, escalating violence with violence. World leaders parading their warheads like toys, nations blowing one another to bits. Refugees fleeing war torn areas, churches overseas burned to the ground. Corruption and injustice, greed, abuse, exploitation and selfishness everywhere. People desperate for hope and help, longing for food, longing for shelter. People crippled by a global cost of living crisis? People living in cars, choosing between heating or eating. Our life is fragile, our world is fragile. Life is short. Life is hard.
We need a real God to be real with us because our problems of sin and death, brokenness and frailty are real. We needed God to be real flesh and blood to save us because we are flesh and blood. And so, immediately after Adam and Eve declared independence from God in the Garden of Eden, and turned aside from him, God promised a Saviour, he who would bruise his heel by stomping on Satan’s head.
Jesus came to be real with us. In Christ, God really became one of us, to save us. The writer to the Hebrews explains that Jesus had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make payment for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:17-18). He became a human being to experience real human life—throughout his life Jesus was constantly in danger. He was tired and thirsty and hungry and wept. He knew pain, suffering, betrayal and abandonment. And because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. He was tempted in every way just as we are, yet did not sin. And in the most astonishing exchange ever, he who did not sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus came to be real with us and to be real about triumphing over sin, death and hell for us. God was committed to his promise way back in the beginning, in the Garden of Eden. He was committed to his promise all through history, unfolding his plan of salvation. It would not do for God to take the easy option, presenting an artificial, fake version of himself on a screen. But God stepped into our world and as he unfolded history, he worked through all the places, events and people in our text to unfold his plan of salvation for all people, and for you and me.
Before his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus considered the alternatives: his comfort now or the eternal comfort of others. He prayed: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.”
Commitment was at the cross-roads. Jesus made his choice: he would commit to his Father’s will: “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke 22:42-43). Jesus was determined to drink the cup which his Father had prepared. He would endure suffering on the dry, barren tree of the Cross, to bring humanity back to God.
Led to Jesus by information from Judas, a detachment of soldiers bearing torches and weapons arrest Jesus. They bind him and bring him to Caiaphas the High Priest, and then to the palace of the Roman governor Pilate. They have no power to execute Jesus, but under Roman law, Pilate does. All of a sudden the Romans, so hated by the Jews, become trusted allies. Yet Pilate himself finds no charge against Jesus. The Jews make a mockery of their own law that says a charge must be upheld by the testimony of two or three witnesses. They make it up as they go along. They make a mockery of justice with their obsession to have Barabbas, an insurrectionist go free, and Jesus suffer crucifixion. They are relentless in their quest. Pilate is afraid. He tries to set Jesus free but public pressure is too great. The soldiers take charge of Jesus. He carries his own Cross, to which a notice is fastened: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. The chief priests even want this changed: “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews’ but ‘This man claimed to be the King of the Jews’.
Jesus received into his hands whatever his heavenly Father gave him, even when it was death. Jesus did not try to escape or deny the reality of impending death. And Jesus didn’t just die. He didn’t just drift away in his sleep. He experienced death in the most unjust and unfair of circumstances. He winced at the piercing of the nails. He absorbed the blows of the hammer that should have been ours. He stretched out his hands to receive our sin. He carried guilt and shame. He looked death in the eye. He left nothing undone.
Why? Because of his great love for you. Because of his Father’s great love for you, who worked through the various people involved: Judas, Caiaphas, Pilate, the frenzied crowd who didn’t even recognise Jesus as their Saviour. Their urgency to crucify Jesus, to put him to death, was the Father’s own urgency, to save the world from sin, death and hell, that you might be his own treasured possession, redeemed by the blood of Christ, that nothing could anymore separate you from his love—not even death itself.
On the Cross, Jesus fulfilled Psalm 85: “Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” Where is the wrath of God satisfied? Where is the love of God magnified? Both, on the Cross, in the flesh and blood of the Son of God, who spared no treasure from heaven, but gave everything he had in reckless extravagance, so that you would be his and he would be yours. Every single cell of your body is in his care, he has numbered every single hair of your head and saved each one. It is on the Cross where God’s unwavering, unconditional, selfless and complete commitment to you and to the whole world is seen.
Jesus said to his Father: “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” Jesus entrusts his life to his Father. His was a total commitment to God, that even in the face of death, God was in total control of his life. “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” This is his spiritual commitment to you.
These words of Psalm 31:5 were originally set in a situation of deep distress. Jesus was in a situation of deep distress as he hung between life and death on the Cross. There he was expelled from the presence of the Father (like Adam and Eve) to bring us to paradise. There he experienced the exile that we deserved to bring us back home. The light of the world was thrust into darkness—but the darkness could not overcome him. Jesus still trusted his father—”into your hands I commit my spirit”—a profound conviction that God could deliver the suffering one. Now Jesus, the suffering and dying one speaks these words in their fullest meaning, with no hope but trust in God, no help but the Father in heaven, no resources except those given him from above. As he breathes out his last, he dying breath has brought us life, even as it did in the beginning, when God breathed into the man’s nostrils and he became a living being (Genesis 2:7).
Jesus did this out of his great love for you. His Father did this out of his great love for you, that in Jesus’ death we might have life, even in our time of dying. Death is no longer final. It is conquered. Our sin is paid and washed away by the blood of Christ crucified. We have personal access to God’s grace and peace. Jesus did this not just so we would believe a concept but to know him in personal relationship and therefore know the Father just as closely as Jesus and the Father know each other.
The climax of Easter is our Lord’s resurrection. The hope around the corner for us is that as surely as God raised Jesus from the dead, he will also raise everyone who trusts in him to eternal life. He will bear you up in his everlasting arms as you begin the fall into your own death. It was for this that Jesus faced death head on and overcame it. You shall not be lost or destroyed for the Christ who overcame death for the world has rescued you from the world and is with you. In this confidence we face our own death—and each day of our life—that we might also say: “Into your hands I commit my spirit”—as Luther said: “In your hands I place your body and soul and all that is mine. Let your holy angel be with me, that the evil one may have no power over me.”
On their wedding day, a couple being married pledge their allegiance to one another and vow their commitment to one another in the sight of God: to love, comfort, honour and protect one another, and, forsaking all others, be faithful, to death do us part.
As you look to the Cross, may you see that you matter to God—that he is deeply committed to you. May you know that in Christ crucified, God has vowed his allegiance to you—to love and protect, honour and serve you as long as you live. He has pledged himself to you so that not even death will part you from his commitment to you. He wants to be yours alone. He will never forsake you, but be faithful to you as long as you live. That is why this Friday is Good. That is why God is good! Amen.
