Good Friday, Sermon by The Reverend Loree Reed

John 19: 1–37
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

We call this Friday ‘good’, but honestly, most of the time, I think we struggle to remember what is good about it.  For today is a day of sorrows for the man acquainted with grief, for the one who had done no violence.  And on some level I think every one of us wishes we could avoid this day.  Maybe it’s because we don’t want to see someone we love suffer.  Maybe it’s because we ourselves feel helpless in the face of Roman soldiers, dressed to intimidate in silver helmets and scarlet tunics, their swords flashing in the light of the torches.  Or maybe it’s because we too would hesitate to stand up to wily Temple officials, so wise in their own estimation.  But maybe it’ also because we know, deep down, that we ourselves are implicated in his death.  As Isaiah puts it, “All we like sheep have gone astray . . . and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Whatever our reasons, we’re not alone in our desire to avoid this day.  Jesus’ own disciples deserted him on the night Judas betrayed him in the olive grove they called Gethsemane.  They turned tail and ran, looking for any place of safety in a world that had suddenly turned against them.
To be fair, Simon Peter tried to stay close to him that night, going with the mob of soldiers and Temple police to the palace of Caiaphas, the high priest.  But even he, finally, got scared when one of the High Priest𔄂s servant girls recognized him as one of the disciples.  In response, just as Jesus had foretold earlier in the evening, Peter panicked and denied he ever knew the man.  Then, realizing what he had done, he fled.
So by the time Jesus was marched to Pontius Pilate’s headquarters, no one who loved him was by his side.  Even on Golgotha, where they finally crucified him, he was alone – except for his mother, her face dissolving in grief.  She stood there with a few friends and one single disciple.  These few, standing at some distance from the cross, were the only ones he had with him in his final hours of agony.
But even that wasn’t the worst.  The worst was his sense of being deserted by his own heavenly Father.  He had prayed in Gethsemane with all his heart, until his sweat turned to blood, that the Father would spare him the ordeal he knew was coming. But the only voice he heard back was his own.  Then again, on the cross, he prayed for a word, any word of comfort or support.  Once again all he heard in return was silence.  And it was in that silence that he died, wondering if he’d been forsaken by God.
What are we to make of this – a son asking for bread and receiving instead a stone?  Is this, perhaps, the deepest reason we wish we could avoid this day?  Is it that we know – at least from time to time – that same silence in response to our own prayers?  Surely that silence is part of what makes this day painful.
But I’ve never been able to believe that God the Father, God our loving heavenly Father, utterly deserted his Son in his hour of greatest need.  It just doesn’t agree with what I know about the God and Father of us all.  Surely, surely, God made some response to the disciples’ fervent prayers, to Mary, his mother’s agonized pleas, to his own beloved Son’s appeals.  Didn’t he?  And if he did, wouldn’t he please show me?
I finally received an answer to these questions a few years ago when my husband and I were visiting an old monastery site in Ireland.  Clonmacnoise has always been known in Ireland as one of those ‘thin places’, where the door between this world and the next cracks open now and again, spreading God’s light on all who want to receive it.  And on this day that light flooded my soul in a most unexpected way.
Because this site is revered in Ireland as a ‘thin place’, over the centuries many people have been buried in the green monastery graveyard that slopes down to meet the River Shannon.  And over their burial sites they have erected tall stone Celtic crosses delicately carved with Biblical scenes and Celtic motifs.  These tall stone crosses are themselves quite beautiful; and in an effort to protect them from the ravages of air pollution, some of them have been removed into a museum on the site, where each one can be displayed in the center of its own room, with lighting that enhances the carving on their stone faces.
I was particularly taken with one tall sandstone cross, standing in its own circular room.  First, I admired the biblical scenes delicately carved on its front, the four apostles on the circle around the cross, and the figure of Christ, a simple shepherd, at its center.  But then I moved around to the side of the cross and saw the lovely tree–of̫life pattern carved all the way up its shaft.  My eyes followed this pattern of intertwining vines upward where I was surprised to realize that they extended underneath the arms of the cross.  And they ended — not as you would expect in a leaf or a flower – but in a human hand, stretched outward on the underside of the cross arm.  And then I gasped.  For coming out from each thumb and finger of those hands was a thin stone ridge – to indicate rays of light.  These weren’t human hands.  These were divine hands.  These were the hands of God – supporting the cross, supporting his Son all the way through his ordeal.
As I realized what I was seeing something Frederick Buechner once said came to mind.  He said, “To sacrifice something is to make it holy by giving it away for love.” God had given his Son away – out of love for us – to make us holy.
Maybe – on this day — that is why we can call this Friday ‘good’.
Amen.
 
 
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