Good Friday - a day good beyond all telling because of the goodness of Christ revealed on the Cross.
But how can one man's death 2000 years ago be an act that saves us today? I have found very helpful the way that C.H. Dodd reflects on Christ’s death.
The creative, loving purpose of God is everlastingly at work in his world. It meets continual resistance from hardened human hearts and wills. But if at any point human history should become entirely non-resistant to God, perfectly transparent to his loving design - then from that point God’s creative purpose would work with unprecedented power.
That is just what the perfect obedience of Jesus affected. Within human nature and human history Jesus established a point of complete non-resistance to the Father's will, a 'moment' of total transparency to his saving purpose. The love and obedience of Christ expressed to the utmost on the Cross is a point of entry that releases God’s creative power for the perfecting of human life, indeed for the transformation of creation.
As we believers connect in faith and trust with the 'Christ event' - existing eternally in God - it becomes contemporary and we are laid open to the creative energy and love perpetually working to recreate us.
All our moral choices have an impact. Christ’s ultimate moral act is the equivalent to splitting the atom.
Jesus' death split the moral atom, and its effect lasts forever. The power, grace, light, life and divine energy released by that action of absolute love and self-giving pour out unceasingly.
This is what we celebrate in Holy Week, what we encounter in the Eucharist, and what we live from each day of our Christian discipleship.
