Sermon for Good Friday 2015
Today is hard. Today is a black day for many of us. We can’t get the feeling that this is just
wrong out of our heads. We ask why did
Jesus die – and especially die such a brutal death – the death of suffocating
under his own weight on a Roman instrument of torture. Unfortunately this is also a story that has
also been used to scapegoat people. It
has been used as justification for genocide against the Jews. The text of the gospel of John can be read to
indict the Jews for Jesus crucifixion.
There are several problems with blaming the Jews. The first is the Jews did not have the power
to crucify Jesus – it was only the Roman authorities with that power. And the Roman authorities were happy to put
anyone claiming to be a messiah to the Jewish people to death. It was a lesson that they were in
control. That no Jewish God was going to
overthrow empire. But a bigger problem
is that Jesus was also a Jew. There are
no “Christians” in this story. So really
when we read any John’s Gospel that the “Jew’s cried out…” for Jesus death we
really need to say that we all cried out for Jesus death. You see - Jesus was
not the warrior that the people wanted to set them free. He was a carpenter’s son going about healing
people and annoying everyone in power.
And I mean everyone.
The peace of Rome was to be
kept at any cost. The Roman authorities
allowed their foreign subjects to worship their God’s as long as the piece was
kept. The occupying force was not all that
benign and malleable by the subjects as this story sounds.
Rome controlled who would be
the high priest. Rome guarded the temple
to make sure that no rabble-rousers caused trouble. Rome crucified all the messianic wannabe’s. The inscription that pilot puts over the
cross makes it clear that as far as Pilot was concerned Jesus was yet another
in a long string of people who claimed to be sent to overthrow Rome. The irony as viewed through John’s Gospel is
that it is not a sarcastic claim – but the truth.
However if we focus on the
mechanics and the history of oppression by both Rome and of the Gospel’s we
miss the point. The point is not
betrayal and death. The point of the
passion story that we remember on Good Friday is love. Not power.
Not some substitutionary atonement for sins. Not the triumph of evil over good. The story that is so easy to miss today is
love.
Like so much we read in the
accounts of Jesus ministry this doesn’t makes sense. How can it be love? The hymn writer Samuel Crossman saw it in the
17th century when he wrote the words to a Hymn we sang at St. Paul’s
last Sunday “My song is Love Unknown.”
The first stanza speaks of the love of Christ for us:
“My song is love unknown,
My Saviour’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I,
That for my sake
My Lord should take
Frail flesh and die?”
God shows us a kind of Love
that we can’t get our brains around. And
I –as the extrovert scientist who lives much of my life in my brain would
suggest that the brain is the wrong place to engage in this love. I invite each of us to move out of our brains
and into our hearts to find this kind of love. A love that is unknowable but
only can be felt when we let go of what we expect.
A love that I experienced the
last six months as a hospice chaplain. A
love that is a gift from God. A love
that stirs my heart. For six months or
so I visited Sarah – not her real name – every two weeks. Sarah had advanced dementia likely caused by
a stroke. For the most part she was
non-verbal. I would see her every two
weeks. She might answer a yes/no
question with a verbal response or with the nod or shake of her head. “Sarah – those are really pretty flowers” or “what
a pretty balloon”– I said pointing to a table by her bed. “Someone must really love you” to which she
nodded and quietly said ‘yes’. Or when I
asked her if she would like me to sing or pray with her she would say yes or
nod her head. Otherwise all I heard was
sentence fragments or whispering. At the
end of every visit I always said “Sarah – thank you for letting me visit with
you today. I really enjoyed it!” Never expecting a response and never getting
one – until my last visit. On my last
visit her eyes seemed to clear and she looked me in the eyes and said – in a
quiet voice “your welcome.” Sarah died
the next day. That “thank you” was a
gift from God. It was Love from an
unexpected place.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We hear this kind of love from the cross
““When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her,
he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the
disciple, "Here is your mother." Even in his final earthly moments
Jesus reaches out in Love to his mother.
He shows a love that is unexpected.
It is countercultural. Jesus
shows us an example of love that we are invited to model – even in our darkest
moments.
I have another patient - Lisa (again not her real name) - with
advanced Alzheimer’s and I see in her daughter’s the women at the foot of the
cross. They do not understand why their
mother is dying from that terrible disease.
They have not even heard their mother speak more that a word in months –
perhaps a year. Just like the women who
followed Jesus did not understand what was happening but they stayed with
him. I don’t know what – if anything
Lisa hears or understands at this point.
But her caregiver told me that she used to sing in their church
choir. So I sing to her. I sing hymns.
And occasionally Lisa talks to me.
She will say “Yes” and on one visit after I prayed for her she looked me
in the eyes and said “Thank-you.” The
gift of music and prayer allowed me to reach someone who’s passing is already
being mourned. Lisa still – even in this
advanced state – can show a love that we don’t understand.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Could this story of Jesus’
life have ended a different way? Why
couldn’t the creator of heaven and earth reach out and smite the oppressors of
God’s people? Instead of riding in on a
donkey to shouts of Hosanna – “Save us now” why didn’t Jesus come in with a
supernatural army? That is what the
people expected. After all if God can
wipe out the world with a flood why can’t God’s chosen – His Son - wipe out the
Roman occupation army and restore the chosen people to power? Why? But instead we get something else. We get Love.
Why show us love? A strange love
that is willing to die.
If we read the Passion story along
with Jesus’ great commandment perhaps we can start to understand. Jesus told his disciples and the people that
the greatest commandment was to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind
and strength. And the second is to love your neighbors as yourself. And for a very short active ministry of about
three years, as documented in the gospel stories, Jesus demonstrates that
love. He heals the untouchables of his
society. He eats with sinners. He calls a motley group of fisherman and tax
collectors to follow him. In short Jesus
does not follow the rules. He does not
wait to see what will be allowed by the occupying army or the temple priests
that were approved by the occupying force.
No he heals those that have been harmed by society. He models a love that we still find hard.
Today we would rather love
the lovable. We hold celebrities, the
wealthy and the powerful in high esteem.
We create mementos with pictures of athletes on them and swoon over
movie stars. There are entire industries
supporting this way of living. Telling
us that we should aspire to be like those we see on our TVs or in movies. And we do it without even thinking. We are no better now than the people in the
passion story. We call people who want
to feed the hungry and make sure they have food, shelter and medical care
socialists and communists – or worse.
Some places have even gone so far as to make it illegal to feed the
hungry!
But God’s way is different. God’s
dream is that we will follow Jesus. God’s
dream is that we will work to make a world where instead of destruction there
is life. Where this strange love – a
love that is willing to go to the cross – is practiced by us.
That is what this Friday is
about. That is the “goodness” in
it. That Jesus modeled a type of love
that we still have trouble emulating. You
see we have a secret. We know that this
love that is willing to die for us does not die in the end but becomes
stronger. This love defeats death. The hymn writer ends his hymn:
Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend,
in Whose sweet praise
I all my days
could gladly spend.
Our invitation this day is to
see the love that would not die. A love
that invites us day in and day out to spend our days loving the way Jesus
loves. To spend our days bringing God’s
dream of a creation of love to fruition here – and not wait for some heavenly
place.
I know it is hard to see love
in this story. It is easy to get bogged
down in the cruelty and inhumanity in the story. But the love is there. When we put on our corrective lenses of
knowing the rest of the story it is a little easier to see. When we practice the kind of radical love
that welcomes the outcasts to dine with us we can see the love. When we treat people we think don’t hear or
see or are already dead with love it is easier to see the love in this story. When we forgive those who have harmed us – a
hard thing to do – and model the radical forgiveness that Jesus provides from
the cross we can start to see the love.
As I said at the beginning this
story is hard. There are so many places
that we could enter into the story that might shed light on the darkness. Don’t try to make sense of this whole story
at once. Find a place where you can
enter into the story. For me this day I am choosing to enter into the story
from a place of love.
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