God's Friday

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The cross must be raised again at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am claiming that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap, at a crossroads so cosmopolitan they had to write His title in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. At the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble, because that is where He died and that is what he died about and that is where churchmen ought to be and what churchmen should be about.

George MacLeod on Where Jesus Died

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“HE WAS A GAMBLER TOO.”

AND, sitting down, they watched Him there,
 
The soldiers did; 

There, while they played with dice,

He made His Sacrifice, 

And died upon the Cross to rid 

God's world of sin. 

He was a gambler too, my Christ,

He took His life and threw
 
It for a world redeemed.

And ere His agony was done, 

Before the weltering sun went down,

Crowning that day with its crimson crown, 

He knew that He had won.


Geoffrey A Studdert Kennedy.