Who has believed our message
   and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
   and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
   nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
   a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
   he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
   and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
   stricken by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
   he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
   and by his wounds we are healed.

The prophet Isaiah wrote these words about Jesus before he was ever born. He wrote them about the Messiah, the one who would come to free Israel from their oppression and lead them to victory and peace. What they got instead was a carpenter and a rabbi, one who did miracles and told those he healed to tell no one. They got one who challenged the law, who rebuked the Pharisees for their legalism and healed even those who were considered too dirty, too sinful to touch. Jesus came pronouncing forgiveness and healing, and for that he was crucified. He challenged the social order and said that rules are not important, as long as you love God and your neighbor. He was hung on a cross, he was pierced through his hands and feet, through his side. He was spit on and rejected and mocked, and he died. That is a sad story.

That is the Good Friday story, but that is not the end of the story. If Jesus had only died for our sins, he would have been a great and loving man, but not a savior. Only one who is stronger than death can truly remove its sting, and so Jesus rose. The tendency on Good Friday is to be sad for Jesus and to mourn his suffering, and we do mourn that he suffered, but that's not the end of the story. The end of this story is much better than that one; this is a different story. He went to the cross a willing sacrifice for us, and he rose again. Not because of what he did, but because he took on our sins, all the sins of all the world, all that had ever been committed and that would ever be committed. He became sin for us, and took it on and descended to the dead, and left it there, returning. And through that, we are given life. I am not talking in the abstract about heaven or "salvation."

I'm talking about this life, the one we have right now. We were estranged from God because of our pride, because we thought we could be God, but that arrogance stripped us of the essential relationship we once had with God. It tore us from God like two best friends in a terrible fight, who never speak again. But God wanted to speak to us again, because God loved us so much, but we had walked away and changed our number. God didn't create us for death, to flounder around hopelessly and be miserable, so God decided that somehow that wounded relationship would be healed, and Jesus went for God to carry out that mission, which was also his mission. And he died, and he rose.

So now we celebrate in freedom, not freedom of people who are sure of our ticket to heaven, but we celebrate in freedom as people who have been reconciled to God. We celebrate as people who are driven by our own knowledge of our pride and failings, to go to the cross, to cling to Jesus so that we can give our old friend a hug, and a kiss, and cry on our friend's shoulder. We celebrate as people who, no longer wandering aimlessly, have a wise friend with a map to walk with us, to talk with us, and show us the right path. We celebrate as people who were sick, who were dying in our loneliness and estrangement, and who have been healed in body and in spirit.

This is a happy story. We celebrate Good Friday in remembering the immense and incomprehensible love that allowed God to humble God's self to become a man for us, to take on our sin, and to beat it back. And we look forward to Easter not only in a remembrance of Christ's resurrection, but of our own. Because we were once dead husks, but we have been raised with Christ. Amen.