We have two services on Good Friday and I preach two different sermons, in part because there are a number of people who are present at both, but mostly because there is too much to say in just one. These are the manuscripts from Good Friday, March 29, 2024, which are more or less what I preached. (I don’t preach with my notes, so there is always some variation.) This is from the evening service.
We are using Wilda C. Gafney’s A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church: Year B. The readings for Good Friday are Judges 11:29-40, Psalm 22, Hebrews 12:1-4; Luke 22:14-23:56.
One of the questions – one of the age-old questions – is why is this day called “Good” Friday? The day that the Son of Woman is hung on a cross like a common criminal, taunted by the likes of us, and eventually dies – how can it be a good day? And yet, I think it is fair to say that when we take this day, fast forward a couple of days and look at the whole picture, it is part of the best days.
Part of our questioning about it is because when we look at the cross and we see suffering, we see humiliation, we death. I’m not convinced that Jesus every saw the cross in and of itself because he saw everything beyond the cross. Jesus saw the fullness of God’s love for God’s people, and the promise he had come to fulfill some 33 years before he was executed.
He was executed because he was so radical and was standing up to the authorities. He wasn’t standing up for no reason or because he never outgrew his teenage tendency to defy authority just because he could. It was about showing us, telling us, inviting us to understand that the way we live together, the way we treat each other, is essential to our wellbeing. It was about showing us the Way of Love.
It was about showing us the kind of love in which and from which it made sense to be born a human in a horribly violent and conflicted time, where there were people who never stood a chance and a few people who had all of the privilege and all of the resource, as well as the people in-between. It was a time not unlike the times we find ourselves in today.
Jesus came to show us that there are different ways for all of us to feel richly blessed, for all of us to feel that we have authority in our own lives, and the power and agency to make the world a better place. Jesus was born from love, lived only in love, died in that love, all so that we could understand that love, which is, quite frankly, beyond our comprehension.
That is the good news of Good Friday. The good news isn’t in our horrifically bad behavior. It isn’t in our ability to justify the horrible things we do to each other and to God’s creation, and to eventually feel vindicated because some authority figure somewhere says, “Sure. You must be right so we’ll punish this person.” It is about helping us to live our best selves, showing us that there is a love that knows no bounds, a love that will tolerate immense pain to sacrifice themselves for us.
It is not about the suffering. Yes, Jesus had to have suffered. The fully human person suffered on that cross just like any one of us would have. The fully divine welcomed that in some way as further proof that the divine love will conquer everything, including death. That’s good news.
When we look at that cross, a question for all of us is what do we see? What does it mean for us? I’m reminded of a 10-year-old Kathleen telling a friend’s mother that “We’re Episcopalians. Jesus didn’t get stuck on the Cross.”
That’s the good news. Jesus died on the cross. The human person died on that cross, but the divine Christ lived beyond it and continues to live still. It’s that perception that God has of who we are and what we and the world can that God was willing to sacrifice God’s self. That is the good news.
I think we observe Good Friday solemnly in part because I’m not sure that if Jesus came back today, that we would do any of it any differently. The good news is that the God who loved us into being and loves us still, would still think it worth doing.
The Cross, though a place of suffering, is not a symbol of suffering. The Cross is a symbol of a magnificent, unbelievably generous love that is perfect and is everything we need.
