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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Good Friday. The memorial of the passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the day on which he was brutally, horribly crucified. In many ways it's not a good day at all, and it's one that many of us would very much like to ignore. It would be nice to skip the gritty reality of the cross and go right to the joyful relief of Easter. It would be nice to avoid the searing pain of the crucifixion. To think of Our Lord risen in glory rather than suffering in agony. It would be nice. But that's not how it works, not for Jesus and not for us. Before we can taste victory, we have to suffer defeat. It's hard to imagine a defeat more complete than that of Our Lord this day. Today he is betrayed by one of his friends, and those who swore to stand with him have fled. His teachings in the synagogue and the Temple have been ignored and forgotten. Peter denies that he even knows him. He is beaten, mocked, paraded through the streets, and stripped of his clothing. And he is crucified - a tortuous death that could last for hours. This is defeat. This is rock bottom. And yet Our Lord, in John's gospel, never succumbs to despair. He is always in control. Even in his farcical trial, it is Jesus, not Pilate, who holds the power. And at the last, despite everything done to him, it is Jesus himself who chooses to die. �He bowed his head, and gave up his spirit.� It wasn't taken, it was given. Jesus alone decides the terms of his death. He submits himself, empties himself, and by that sacrifice, he attains the greatest power imaginable. That's the great message of Christianity, the paradox of God's last-becomes-first logic. Without Good Friday, there is no Easter. Without crucifixion, there can be no resurrection. Without death, there can be no life. Without a last, there can be no first. Jesus gave everything he had, and became the very last. You could hardly get more last than he was. You'll not be more first, either. But hasn't all of this happened already? Why do we have to be so glum? Didn't the crucifixion and resurrection already happen? Isn't the tomb already empty? Of course, on a strictly linear timeline that's true. The crucifixion is, from our perspective, a past event. It's a tragedy that has already been redeemed by the glory of resurrection. The terrible suffering of Good Friday is fleeting. The glorious triumph of Easter is eternal. Yes, the tomb is empty, and yes, Christ is risen. And that is precisely why we stop to remember this day. It's because we know that redemption is possible that we commemorate suffering. We need to know that redemption is possible, because Our Lord is crucified again and again every hour of every day. There are competing theologies of the crucifixion. The most popular, and perhaps the most pervasive, (it was certainly present in the hymn we sang earlier) is that Christ died to pay for our sins. There is a price to be paid and Christ is the payment. This is the model that places the crucifixion entirely in the past. It does tell part of the story, of course. Yes, Christ died without sin, to redeem a broken world. And none of us could have done it - only the Son of God could have made the self-sacrifice. But if that's all there is, if it's simply a payment, then it reduces God to the status of shopkeeper, comparing an inventory of sin against an account of suffering. Taken alone it's a punitive and punishing picture of God. Another idea is that Christ is our perfect example, and that the crucifixion was his way of modeling absolute obedience. We should look to the cross, then, as a standard by which to measure our own devotion. While this might very well inspire us to greater zeal and commitment, which is no bad thing, it sets an unrealistic goal that can only lead to disappointment. We cannot be Jesus. Our Lord may have been human, but he was also divine and that's a benchmark none of us will reach. As a wise priest once told me, "Don't get into a foot race with Jesus. He'll always win." A third way of looking at the cross is that in Christ we are all crucified, that when Jesus went to the cross, he took humanity with him. That can be a difficult concept for an individualistic society to get its head around. But up there, on the cross, that's you. That's you, and you, and me, and them. That's all of us. Christ became human; he became one of us, flesh and blood. He joined his divinity to our humanity, and when he went to the cross he took that humanity with him. In that marriage of divine and mortal, the mystery that is the incarnation, Christ bridged the gap between creator and creature. And when he passed through death to new and eternal life he opened that path for us. That is the Good Friday path, and that is why Our Lord's passion cannot remain in the past. Because just as we are on that cross, he is with us when we are on our own crosses. When we suffer in this life, Christ is with us. When we feel abandoned, he is with us. When we cannot bear the pain, he is with us. Christ is with us the wake of the tsunamis, in Mayerthorpe, with a scared little girl on the 401, with patients dying of AIDS, with abused spouses, with the homeless, with anyone who has lost a parent or a child or a sibling or a friend, with anyone who has cried bitter tears. That is why we gather today. That is why we come to lay flowers at the foot of the cross. We come to give thanks for the sacrifice made for us. We come to claim the Good Friday path, to accept the notion, as absurd as it might sound to human ears, that to lose everything is to gain everything. But most of all, we come to stand at the foot of the cross. We come to be with our friend in his suffering, the friend who has been with us in ours. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
Christ is with us and in us through the darkest times. He shares our suffering, shoulders some of the burden, and assures us that our pain, like his, will be redeemed in glory.