Great (Hymn) One Liners 8. In man for Man

A vast array of memorable lines are on offer for Good Friday.  I am going for a line that, frankly, most people singing it probably do not grasp (here I am judging others by my own weaknesses, it is true).

The double agony in man, for Man. should undergo.

The line comes from 'Praise to the holiest in the height' by the Victorian Anglican-turned-Roman Catholic John Henry Newman.  The line describes the extent of the generous love of God in Jesus who died for us.  

The whole hymn is deep and dense, but here Newman uses the simplest of words - in man for Man - to describe the humiliation of God becoming human (Agony Number One) in order to save humans by his death (Agony Number Two).

Did you see what happened there? I took a long and complex sentence - Newman took four words totaling eleven letters. 

These agonies are the agonies of this day, and our good salvation.

(To see the whole series click on the hymnline tag)

Good Friday

From the “Holy, Holy, Holy, we adore Thee, O most High,”

Down to earth’s blaspheming voices and the shout of “Crucify.”

Good Friday defies metaphor or analogy.  

For all other human beings the glory of heaven is a future hope, scraping in through a mustard seed of faith a prospect beyond imagining that makes every earthly day a day of waiting and watching.

But for Him?

Heaven has loud voices.  No God so great, so totally, angel-mind-blowingly wonderful could be worshipped merely with a dignified silence or a quivering lip.  Shouts and trumpets, cries and echoes must have their place in the perfect song and the glorious sinless assembly.  This was his home.

But now this.

The savagery of soldiery, the clever mockings by the temple elite, the baying of the thoughtless crowd of copycats.

What did he do to deserve this?

No.  What did I do to deserve this.  What did he suffer that I deserved?

Haiti

The earthquake in Haiti makes Christians think.  Mostly it makes us think, 'How can we help?'.  For some, young in the faith, it rocks their confidence that God is Love.  That is not easily answered on a blog but a big clue comes from the Biblical statement that the greatest demonstration of God's love to disobedient human beings was not a new baby, a wonderful meal, a fine climate or the end of a great war.  It was a crucifixion.

Earthquakes are not easy, either, for people who oppose faith.  The people of Haiti might be feeling very angry with their Creator just now.    Better, though, to be a bewildered believer than to think of oneself as a self-contained blip among billions of others on an accidental fabric of meaningless history where incidental earthquakes take tens of thousands of other blips, including your family, out early.

If you click on to the Disasters Emergency Committee website you find that almost every charity there owes its existence to people of Faith.  As it happens several of them, including ActionAid and Help the Aged, owe their existence in some measure to one man!  CJC's legacy is helping Haiti 30 years after his own death.