A Named Rescuer and an Unnamed Christ: The Thin Theology of a Slick Good Friday Sermon
This sermon, preached by Andy May at Bundoora Presbyterian Church, begins with the story of a hero. His name is Austin Appleby. We are told his age, his story, his rescue, and even that his name sounds like “a great name for a hero.” He is the unlikely saviour in a remarkable rescue in an event last summer in Western Australia.
Then we come to Jesus.
Not so much to the name Jesus, mind you. Not to “you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Not to Jesus as the eternal Son sent by the Father, the last Adam, the promised seed, the covenant mediator, the curse-bearer, the true Israel, the Lamb of God, the great High Priest, the propitiation for our sins, or the risen Lord.
No. Jesus is mainly introduced as another unlikely saviour in the most remarkable rescue mission ever undertaken by God.
And there, in miniature, is the sermon’s problem. The opening illustration has more texture than the Christology. The human rescuer is named with colour. Christ is flattened into the sermon’s rescue motif.
It is all very smooth. It listens well. It moves briskly. It has the neatness of contemporary evangelical communication: strong opening story, simple big idea, two responses, personal appeal, emotional landing. But once the shine is wiped off, the sermon is surprisingly thin.
The controlling metaphor is “rescue mission.” That is not wrong, exactly. Christians may speak of salvation as rescue. Scripture itself speaks that way. But as the governing frame for Good Friday, it is too small.
A rescue mission implies danger. It implies helplessness. It implies gratitude toward the rescuer. But Good Friday is not merely about people in danger needing extraction. It is about sinners in Adam standing under the curse of the holy God. And it is about the Father vindicating his righteousness.
The sermon’s frame makes the congregation feel like people swept out to sea. Genesis makes us see that we are covenant-breakers east of Eden. The sermon gives us peril. Scripture gives us guilt, wrath, curse, exile, and death in Adam.
That is a considerable difference.
Good Friday requires more than superficialities. Jesus does not merely swim out to save the drowning. He bears the judgment of God. He stands under the curse. He obeys where Adam failed. He fulfils the covenant. He sheds blood. He satisfies justice. He brings his people from death in Adam into life in himself.
“Rescue mission” is a useful doorway. In this sermon it becomes the house.
The sermon does eventually reach Isaiah 53. That is good as far as it goes. The preacher tells us the cross was not “plan B,” and then goes back to Isaiah as a 700-year-old prediction of Christ’s death.
Again, this is true. But it is also thin.
If you want to show that the cross was God’s plan, you should not start seven hundred years before Christ. You should start in the garden.
Start with Adam. Start with covenant. Start with command and transgression. Start with the serpent, the curse, the exile, and the promise of the woman’s seed. Start with the first blood shed to cover shame. Start with sacrifice. Start with Abraham, Passover, priesthood, covenant curse, and the long groaning of Israel under sin.
Isaiah 53 is not a loose prediction waiting to be matched to Jesus. It is the prophetic concentration of a story that begins in Genesis. The Servant is not merely the one who was forecast by Isaiah. He is the promised seed, the true Israel, the obedient Son, the last Adam, and the substitute who bears the iniquity of his people.
The sermon goes back to Isaiah for God’s plan. It should have gone back to Genesis.
The sermon does mention sin. It mentions guilt, shame, pride, anger, rage, lust, and deserving punishment. It says true things. But its doctrine of sin remains shallow.
Sin is mostly treated as personal wrongdoing and inner disorder. We do bad things. We feel guilt. We have shame. We get angry. We lust. We reject God. We need forgiveness.
All true.
But Reformed preaching must go deeper. We are not merely guilty individuals who have made poor moral choices. We are fallen in Adam. We are born under guilt and corruption. We are covenant-breakers by nature. We are spiritually dead. We are under wrath. We do not simply need a second chance, a moving rescuer, or a deathbed invitation. We need resurrection.
That is precisely why the New Birth in Exile series presses the question of regeneration. Does the sermon confront the hearer with death in Adam and summon him to life in Christ through the new birth?
This sermon does not do that. It asks people to rely on Jesus. But it does not press the inability of natural man. It does not tell us that the heart must be opened, the will renewed, the dead sinner made alive. It gives us decision language without much doctrine of regeneration.
The dying criminal becomes an example of the right response. But the deeper Reformed question is: how did a reviling criminal become a praying penitent?
The answer is not, “He made a better choice than the other man.” The answer is grace.
The Father is mentioned. He is addressed in prayer. Jesus’ cry, “Father, forgive them,” is quoted. So the Father is not verbally absent.
But he is functionally absent.
He is not substantially preached as the holy Judge whose law has been broken. He is not the covenant Lord whose justice must be satisfied. He is not the one who promised the seed of the woman. He is not the one who sends the Son. He is not the one who lays our iniquity upon the Servant. He is not the one to whom the Son offers himself. He is not the one who justifies sinners because satisfaction has been made.
This matters. Good Friday is not Jesus freelancing a rescue operation while the Father watches from a respectful distance. The cross is the work of the triune God: the Father sends, the Son obeys, the Spirit applies.
When the Father is functionally absent, the atonement shrinks. It becomes the moving heroism of Jesus rather than the Father’s holy love and just mercy displayed in the Son’s curse-bearing obedience.
Judgment is present, but it does not govern.
The sermon mentions God’s judgment in connection with the penitent criminal. He knows he deserves punishment. He fears God. He recognises that death and judgment await him.
But judgment mainly serves the sermon’s deathbed urgency. It is not unfolded as the covenantal and forensic backdrop of the cross. We do not get the holy wrath of God against sin. We do not get the curse of the law. We do not get Adamic condemnation. We do not get Christ satisfying divine justice.
Judgment appears. It just does not stay long enough to make anyone tremble.
Blood is mentioned once too. The preacher quotes Jesus’ words: “This is my blood poured out for you.”
Then the sermon moves on.
But Good Friday blood should not be a passing quotation. Blood is covenant blood. Passover blood. Sacrificial blood. Atoning blood. Cleansing blood. Purchased-the-church blood. Propitiating blood. Blood by which sinners draw near. Blood by which peace is made.
A Good Friday sermon that mentions blood only briefly has missed an opportunity to take the congregation into the sacrificial heart of redemption.
The blood is mentioned, but not as the life of the Son poured out for sinners.
The sermon’s basic answer is: choose Jesus because you are lost, guilty, facing death and judgment, and only Jesus can forgive you, help you die well, and bring you into paradise.
That is not false. But it does not explain how the dead can choose life.
Jesus is presented largely in terms of the benefits he gives: rescue, forgiveness, comfort for guilt and shame, a better death, paradise afterward. But Reformed preaching must not present Christ merely as the solution to the sinner’s felt crisis. He is the Father’s appointed Mediator. He is Lord. He is the last Adam. He is the covenant head of the new humanity. He is the righteousness of his people. He is the Lamb slain. He is the risen King.
The sinner does not come to Christ merely because Christ might be useful in the future. The sinner must come because Christ is the only name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved, because the Father commands all to honour the Son, because the crucified and risen Christ is Lord of all.
The sermon is slick. That is perhaps its most striking quality. It has all the marks of polished evangelical preaching: the memorable human-interest story, the clean structure, the emotional appeal, the personal confession, the neat conclusion.
But slickness is not depth.
In fact, here the slickness hides the thinness. The sermon sounds weightier than it is because it is emotionally coherent. The rescue story gives drama. The crucified criminal gives urgency. The promise of paradise gives comfort. The final appeal gives closure.
Yet beneath the polish, the theology is slight.
No Genesis. No Adam. No fall. No covenant breach. No promised seed. No last Adam. Judgment without weight. Wrath without force. Curse without depth. Absent Father
No Blood theology. No Spirit. No regeneration. Thin union with Christ. Bare resurrection life.
There is Jesus as an unlikely rescuer, but not much Christ as covenant Mediator.
This sermon is not heretical. It is not empty. It says many true things. But it is shallow.
It gives us a named human rescuer and an underdeveloped Christ. It gives us a rescue mission without sufficient covenantal gravity. It gives us Isaiah without Genesis, sin without Adam, judgment without terror, blood without sacrificial depth, the Father without functional presence, and response without regeneration.
It is a slick Good Friday sermon. It may move the hearer. It may even help some people understand that they should rely on Jesus. But it does not bring the full weight of Good Friday to bear.
Good Friday is not merely the day of an unlikely rescue. It is the day when the last Adam bore the curse of the first Adam’s children; when the Father’s justice and mercy met in the obedience of the Son; when blood was poured out for covenant sinners; when death was judged by death; and when the way was opened for dead sinners to be made alive in the risen Christ.
That is more than a rescue story.
And Christ is more than Austin Appleby with nails.
