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Sermon for Good Friday March 29, 2002

This is the day of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the day we remember Jesus’ rejection and humiliation and death, the day we remember how human sin did its worst against the beloved Chosen One of God. This is the day when, according to all earthly appearances, Jesus loses everything.

In this Passion, Jesus loses his disciples. Even his closest friends run away and hide themselves, after the soldiers and temple police come to Gethsemane and take Jesus away under guard. Even Peter, the Rock on whom Jesus would build his church, before the night is over, out of fear and cowardice, publicly denies even knowing who Jesus is. Only John and Jesus’ mother Mary remain—and in the end all they can do is stand at the foot of the cross and weep. These, too, Jesus has lost.

In this Passion, Jesus loses his supporters. We are told elsewhere in the Gospel that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were both members of the Sanhedrin who were sympathetic to Jesus’ message, who were at least open to Jesus’ teaching and Jesus’ meaning. And yet, at Jesus’ interrogation before the high priest, they are silent, they say nothing, they offer no defense, they make no move to interrupt the perversion of justice they see unfolding before them. These, too, Jesus has lost.

In this Passion, Jesus loses the people. The crowds had been excited when Jesus first arrived in Jerusalem. But now their mood has turned—maybe Jesus’ teaching was too hard for them; maybe their leaders sowed opposition among them; maybe they thought twice about the political consequences of his claim to be king—whatever the reason, their mood has turned, and now they want to see Jesus hurt, now they want to see Jesus broken, now they line up at Gabbatha, at the Stone Pavement, to see the humiliation of the man-who-would-be-king, now they demand that he be crucified. These, too, Jesus has lost.

In this Passion, Jesus loses his dignity, his basic human rights. It wasn’t enough for the soldiers and temple police to arrest him: they had to humiliate him: they tied him up like an animal, they chained him like a violent criminal, they led him through the streets like a conquered and captured king. Pilate orders him flogged—which means that the soldiers take a whip made of two straps of leather, with lead weights tied to the ends, maybe even with bits of stone, metal, nails, tied along the length, and with those straps they beat Jesus across the back, until his skin was torn and his flesh was cut and he nearly passed out from the pain. And because he’d claimed to be a king, the soldiers dress him up like a king, in mocking parody of the trappings of the Roman emperor himself: a purple cloak, and instead of the imperial sceptre, a stick, and instead of the wreath of laurel leaves, a crown woven out of branches of thorn. And they come up to him and slap him in the face, and take the stick out of his hands, and hit him over the head with it to force the thorns down good and hard, and say “Hail, king!” And Pilate brings him out to show him off to the crowd, and says “This is what Roman power does to your king.” In the end Jesus has no dignity, no worth, no appearance that we should desire him. These, too, Jesus has lost.

And then, in this Passion, Jesus loses his life. Hung from the cross, with thick, square nails driven through his wrists, his whole body-weight suspended in such a way that it is impossible for him to breathe, impossible for his rib cage to move enough to inflate his lungs, impossible for his heart to force blood through his cramped and straining arteries—hung from the cross, Jesus suffocates, dying by slow, agonizing degrees. Life, too, Jesus has lost.

In this Passion, according to all earthly appearances, Jesus loses everything.

And yet, as we read this story of the Passion, as we come face to face with the way John depicts Jesus’ suffering and death, Jesus doesn’t look like a loser. Jesus has everything stripped away from him—and yet, at every turn of the story, John shows Jesus in control. John shows Jesus confronting all the players in this tragedy with the truth, the truth about himself, the truth about themselves, the truth about God. At every turn of the story, John shows Jesus, not a helpless victim, but a faithful witness to the power and the love of God.

When the troops comes to arrest Jesus in the garden, it’s Jesus who asks them whom they’re looking for—and even when Jesus identifies himself, the guards are afraid to take him, until he yields himself to them.

When Jesus stands, bound, before the high priest, being questioned, interrogated, accused, Jesus shows that it is the priests and scribes themselves who are in bondage, so captivated by Caiaphas’s moral calculus—“It’s better for one man to die than for the whole nation to perish”—that they cannot see the justice to which Jesus calls them.

When Pilate swaggers and boasts of his imperial power, dangling before Jesus the options of execution or release, Jesus says “You have no power over me; the real power comes from above.”

When Jesus is on the cross, in the midst of his own pain, he sees the pain of his mother and the disciple whom he loves—and in compassion for them he commits them to each other’s care, and from that hour the disciple takes her into his own home.

Even when Jesus dies, his final words are “It is finished”—which means not just “It’s over, it’s ended”—but also means “It is complete. It is accomplished. It is perfected.”

At each turn of the story, John shows Jesus in control—not a helpless victim, but one who gives himself, willingly, in the power of God’s love.

And that is the paradox of Good Friday, that is the mystery of the cross: that in this Passion Jesus loses everything, and yet in Jesus nothing is lost; that in this Passion Jesus is stripped of everything, yet nothing is taken from Jesus, but all is given as a free gift of love. In his love for us, Jesus takes to himself the worst of human sin, he takes to himself the worst of human suffering, he takes to himself the worst of human death—and in his Passion Jesus gives it all a larger meaning, Jesus makes it all point beyond itself to a larger purpose, Jesus transforms it all as a witness to the love and the power and the faithfulness of God.

And that is what Jesus calls us to do, as well. In his communion with us, in his sharing his Passion with us, Jesus takes on our sin, our suffering, our death—and Jesus gives us a larger meaning, Jesus enlivens us to give ourselves as free gifts of love, Jesus empowers us to embrace the sufferings of the world in witness to the power and the love of God. Because Jesus shares our sin and suffering and death, therefore we can now share in Jesus’ faithfulness and truth and love.

And that is precisely what we do, here in this Good Friday liturgy. In our worship today, we take up Jesus’ gift of love and we give it again. In a few moments we’ll pray the Solemn Collects, which are the most all-encompassing prayers of intercession we share at any time in the Church Year—in Jesus’ name we offer our prayers for the world Jesus died to save. In a few moments we will share communion from the bread and wine consecrated at last night’s Maundy Thursday service—we are fed with the Body that was broken and the Blood that was shed so that we may be strengthened and nourished to reach out to others in Christ’s own love. In our worship Jesus takes us up and gives us a larger meaning and points us beyond ourselves as passionate witnesses to God’s love.

This is the day of the Passion of our Lord. And this is the day of our Passion, as well, our passage through sin and suffering and loss into the power of God’s love that Jesus gives us. And that is why this day we pray: “We glory in your cross, O Lord, and praise and glorify your holy resurrection; for by virtue of your cross joy has come to the whole world.”

In the Name of God: Yahweh, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Amen.