Good Friday 2022

Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill

The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling

Let’s get real. Today’s liturgy is about a violent death. Now, whoever you think Jesus was in real life, and why he was crucified, depends upon your perspective. Some claim he was an innocent man, unfairly accused and sentenced to death. Others say he was a good man who made claims of divinity that were blasphemous to His religious leaders; and so they asked for his death, claiming falsely that he was a rabble rouser, and a threat to the Roman emperor. Perhaps Jesus was your family member or a friend, and it didn’t matter what you thought about him. You just knew that you loved him.

John Dominic Crossan and Sarah Sexton Crossan wrote an article entitled “Rising up with Christ” in which they address the escalatory nature of human violence from the perspectives of anthropology, sociology, and theology. “Since Homo Sapiens spread out from Africa 70,000 years ago, we have never invented weapons we did not use, nor created ones less lethal than those we replaced. We moved inexorably from iron sword to atomic bomb in about 3,000 years. Given our history of escalatory violence, what can save our species from itself?” the authors ask.(1/19/18, Living Church) 

They say there is no getting to Easter unless you go through Good Friday. That is to say, there is no resurrection of the dead unless you die. But who wants to think about death when we’re still very much alive? Who wants to confront the painful reality of death, when we can still avoid it? And yet Good Friday is when death, injustice, and violence is shoved right into our faces and under our noses with the crucifixion of Jesus. 

Crucifixions were public spectacles, arranged to humiliate the ones who were crucified, not unlike warfare today. In courts of law, victims like Jesus were condemned to death by dispassionate tribunals, people of prejudice, and angry mobs. Avoiding responsibility and accountability, people passed Jesus from one hand to another, letting others take the blame. Death penalties were intended to send a clear message. Step out of line and this could happen to you. Keep your mouth shut and conform to the party line. If you sin, you will be punished, and you will pay with your life.

Death is ugly, no matter how it comes to pass, and crucifixions were intended to be especially ugly. The prophet Isaiah describes a suffering servant whose appearance was marred. He was a man of infirmity, despised and rejected by others. Like Jesus, in his last hours, his mouth is dry as dust; his body is wounded by abuse, and his arms are weakened by the nails that hold his arms open. Breathing becomes difficult, the effects of crucifixion, diseases like COVID, or a knee pressed down hard and unrelenting upon your neck. 

Death comes to innocent people. Maybe they are fleeing from the devastation of their own lives, sitting in their cars, and suddenly crushed by enemy tanks, or walking home from work and hit by a stray bullet. Terrified, innocent people hide in their buildings, behind closed and locked doors of fear. Bombs, dropping from above, explode, and destroy the temples of God’s Spirit, human bodies and sacred sanctuaries that were created for prayer. 

In a perversion of justice, our graves become open pits, holding rich and poor alike, the guilty and innocent lying side by side. People of various faiths are thrown together in unholy wars and hostile acts, initiated by human pride, greed, and violent aggression from the very beginning of time. Like Golgotha, the smell of death stinks to high heaven; and people often wonder, “Where now is our God?”.

Like a sniper or the secret police sitting atop a building, we watch people get picked off and die. Lying in a bed at home or in the hospital, on the street or in the battlefield, is our sibling, our parent, or an innocent child. Maybe it’s a friend, a community member, or a citizen of another country. “How can this be happening to them or to us,” we cry, as the hard truth of death breaks in upon us. “Why have you forsaken me or them?” we demand of our God. And is there any hope for us in a world where pandemics, wars, and injustice rage like wildfires around our globe?

Michael Fick, pastor of Ebenezer Lutheran Church in Chicago, reminds us that we are not re-crucifying Jesus on Good Friday, but we are looking “full on” at the reality of death. We are facing the profound feelings that arise when we look at innocent people who are dying. (Christian Century, 04/06/22, p19) We see the weapons we have used throughout history and how violence can easily escalate. And so we whisper, we wail, and we grieve our sins and our losses at the foot of the cross.

Jesus knows “the cup that the Father has given" to him is the cup of his own death; and rather than denying it or avoiding it, he steps forward to embrace it. He knew full well for whom the soldiers were looking, and for whom the bell tolls. Dominic and Sarah Crossan claim that “Very deliberately, Jesus of Nazareth lived and died, incarnating one obvious answer - indeed, surely the only possible answer. Programmatic nonviolent resistance to violence alone can end civilization’s trajectory of escalation.” (end quote)  

John’s gospel claims that God had created Jesus for a purpose - to live and die as one of us, and to show us the way into resurrection life. And so I close with a final story, whose author remains unknown. “There was a kind, decent, mostly good man who was generous to his family, and upright in his dealings with other people. He just couldn’t swallow the Jesus story, about God coming to earth as a man; and so he chose to stay home on Christmas eve, rather than going to church with his family.”

“Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to come down quite heavily. He was reading the newspaper in a chair by the fire, when he was startled by a thudding sound. These sounds became so frequent that he thought someone might be throwing snowballs at the window. He went to the front door to investigate and found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. Caught in the storm, and desperate for shelter. They had tried to fly through the window into the lighted room.”

“Well this man couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze to death, and then he remembered their barn. It could provide a warm shelter, if he only could direct the birds into it. So going out into the storm, he opened the barn doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not go in. He then figured that food might entice them, and so he fetched bread crumbs, and sprinkled them onto the snow, making a trail to the open doorway. The birds continued to flap around helplessly in the snow.”

“Next he tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them and waving his arms. Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn. And then, suddenly, he realized that they were afraid of him. If only I could think of some way to let them know that I am not trying to hurt them, but rather to help them.”

“‘If only I could be a bird,’ he thought to himself, ‘and then I could mingle with them and speak their language. I would tell them not to be afraid, and show them the way into the safe warm barn. I would have to be one of them, he realized, so they could see, and hear, and understand.” (end of story)

This is the story of our salvation, of the incarnation when God became human, and lived and died as one of us. Jesus shows us that the cross is not the end of our story; for it is a symbol for Christians, not only of suffering and death, but also of everlasting life. On one cross hangs a man; on another cross, it is empty. 

If there is punishment to be had, we are forgiven. If a debt is owed, it has been paid. If our bodies, minds, and spirits have become broken, we are healed. For God so loved the world, that He stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross, so that everyone might come within the reach of his saving embrace. It is a good Friday when we remember Jesus.

Death no longer has its sting; the war is over and the victory is ours. So let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.The tomb will become empty and the barn door is wide open. And Jesus has shown us the Way into Resurrection Life.