[This is a talk I gave to a youth group on Good Friday, April 18, 2025.]
Are there any time travelers out there? That’s a trick question—you’re all traveling into the future at the rate of sixty minutes an hour. But what about the past? Can we time-travel into the past?
There are a lot of time-travel stories where people go into the past and change history or create paradoxes or something. People ask, “What would happen if I went back in time and killed my father?” Fortunately that complicated form of suicide doesn’t seem to be available given our current level of technology.
Actually I think that time travel into the past is probably impossible. After all, where is the past kept? Are there an infinity of universes in some attic somewhere, waiting for someone to invent a time machine to visit them?
But recently it hit me that we all have little built-in time machines that let us revisit the past. We can even change it. In fact, we can’t help it. The past changes whether we try or not. These little time machines are called our memory.
The thing about our time machines, I mean memories, is that they can change completely while remaining the same. Imagine you have a love relationship with someone. You are full of joy in the spring. You have great times together. The whole world is lit up.
And then the person betrays you and goes off with someone else. Even though none of the past events have changed, they’ve all changed. Instead of joy they bring you misery.
The difference is that the events you remember mean something different. Your little time machine has changed the past, not by changing the events themselves, but by changing their meanings.
Now if we apply this to God, well, God’s memory of the past is perfect in every detail. Can he change the past?
It would seem that the whole meaning of “past” is that it has happened, it is definite, it cannot be changed. But is anything impossible with God?
To make a long story short, God respects our choices and doesn’t change what we did. Instead, he changes the meaning of what we did. This is right in the Bible!
Genesis tells us the story of the sons of Jacob who became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. The older brothers became jealous of Joseph. They threw him into a pit. They were going to kill him, but they decided that as long as they were at it they might as well make some money.
So they sold him to wandering slavers who brought him to Egypt. God helped Joseph and eventually he became second-in-command of all Egypt, and God used him to help Egypt come through a famine.
The brothers came down to Egypt to get food and Joseph eventually revealed himself to them. When Pharaoh found out they were Joseph’s brothers he invited their father Jacob and all their families to come down to Egypt.
After Jacob died, Joseph’s brothers were afraid Joseph would kill them. But Joseph said,
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”
God took the evil act of the brothers and changed it. He didn’t change what the brothers did. Instead he changed the meaning of what they did, from death for Joseph to salvation for the brothers and many others.
This is how God showed his mastery over evil. This idea of God re-creating the past by changing its meaning, we call “redemption.”
Thinking about the evil in the world, we can lose hope. It seems as if the world has gotten away from God and that evil has triumphed.
Even our modern civilization, with all its technological advances, has used that technology to become really good at killing people. One bomb can kill perhaps millions. And we just can’t seem to stop doing it.
Has the world escaped God? Has evil triumphed?
We can ask ourselves, “What was the single most evil thing humanity has ever done?” Wouldn’t it be “putting to death the only perfectly good person who ever lived”?
God came to visit us in the person of his only Son. Jesus was called Immanuel, God with us. And what happened? Wasn’t it the most evil thing ever? Maybe not in quantity but in quality?
We—that is, humanity—killed our savior. The most just society of its time—the Romans, parts of whose law we still use today—got together with the most religiously dedicated people of their time—the Jews. And what did these two paragons of virtue do? They killed the only truly good person who ever lived.
Is not this the most extreme triumph of evil? Doesn’t it seem from this that we deserve everything that happens to us, even nuclear bombs?
But—this is where God’s time machine comes into play. God redeemed the evil acts of Joseph’s brothers to save many. God did the same thing with the crucifixion of Jesus to save even more.
Death is described as “the last enemy.” Once we die, we’re dead. We have no agency and no future. But with Jesus something different happened. God, through a mighty re-creative act, through the power of his Holy Spirit, changed the death of Jesus.
Not by changing the event of his death. In fact, John’s gospel makes it clear that Jesus was dead, dead, dead. But God did something nobody expected. He resurrected Jesus. Suddenly the death of Jesus is transformed! It becomes the means of our life!
Death is no longer the last word. With God there are no “dead-end” situations. In fact, death is now a spiritual medicine for us—we are to take up our cross, die to ourselves, and follow Jesus.
Death disconnects us from the webs of our past that would drag us down. We are now free to live towards God and embrace his meanings. All this comes through the mighty redemptive act of the crucifixion and resurrection. And this is why we call this Friday— Good.