Good Friday, What It Is Not
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin for Good Friday, April 15, 2022.
Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42
When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit (John 19:30).
It has been said that on Good Friday “the Christian gospel decisively defines itself.” [1] I believe this to be true, with my whole heart I believe it to be true, and yet, when all is said and done, I’m not confident that I can, in this moment, do Good Friday justice –define it, make it clear, make it all connect. In fact, I know I cannot.
And yet, stopping here would make the service shorter, but it would not quite be holding up my end of the bargain, so to speak.
Often, it’s easier to say what something is not than what something is, and so I’d like to offer a few thoughts on what Good Friday is not.
First, Good Friday is not about Christ’s physical suffering. Hear me out.
We have just heard John’s passion narrative. For those of you who were here on Palm Sunday, you have now heard the Passion twice (you get a gold star!). Fleming Rutledge suggests that “the reason we read all the very long passion narrative is that we seek to enter into the meaning of this death by state-sanctioned brutality.” [2]
Note that she’s drawing a distinction here. We don’t read it so that we might sit and contemplate “the suffering of an innocent hero whom we might someday emulate or imitate,” [3] but we do it so that we might enter into its meaning. That’s quite a different thing.
Think of all the people, past, present, and future, who will no doubt physically suffer worse and even longer than Jesus did –some of them by state-sanctioned brutality (both overt and less so). We have no shortage of examples in our present. This does not diminish the physical suffering of our Lord or its great offense, it is only meant to direct our attention to what it all meant. To drive us deeper.
Yes, Christ’s suffering does speak, and speaks loudly, to a God humbling Himself, entering human frailty, to a God who the world rejected and continues to reject, to a God who is with us in our suffering evermore and evermore. And yet, Good Friday is not, at its core, about Christ’s physical suffering or suffering for sufferings’ sake.
We need only look to the Gospel accounts themselves to see that it is not, in the words of Rutledge, “the physical suffering that dominates the passion narratives; instead, the evangelists are concerned with the inner meaning of the events.” [4]
Good Friday is not about our ability to comprehend and articulate this inner meaning. Nor is it about our piety, our belief, or, most of all, our deservedness.
(I realize now that I’m making any previously awarded gold stars meaningless. My apologies.)
Good Friday is incomprehensible in the most wondrous sort of way. We can try to put words to it, and every now and then we get a bit right perhaps, but it is in living that we encounter the truth of it.
Amid love and loss, loyalty and betrayal, health and sickness, wealth and poverty, understanding and confusion, restraint and hedonism, there is truly something more than the sum of our parts. We often feel it most when all else is stripped away.
And yet, we do not enjoy exposure, and too often seek to cover ourselves, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We wish to make ourselves presentable before others and, tragically, before God.
In the same vein, we have for far too long, perhaps forever, been in the business of our own redeeming. Climbing towards God as if we could earn a place at God’s table. We have bought for too great a price sin’s deception: the idea that if we were more:
more powerful, knowledgeable, beautiful;
that if we were younger, taller, wealthier,
that if we were more generous, pious, and less selfish;
that if we were the best spouses, parents, children, friends, siblings, church-attendees, benefactors, well, you get it . . .
If we were more, or less, or different, we could earn God’s love without having any need for God’s forgiveness. Beloveds, this is a tempting deception and a dangerous one.
A deception shared by many present with Christ in his last days. As he marched determinedly toward trial, crucifixion, and death, pretty much everyone else was in the self-saving business. Judas, Pontius, Peter, the fickle crowds, all maneuvering as best they can to save themselves as Jesus prepares to save them all.
While not in our appointed readings this evening, Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans speaks to the moment:
For while we were still helpless . . . Christ died for the ungodly. . . . But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:6-9).
So, there you have it. Good Friday is not about our ability to comprehend, nor is it about our piety, our belief, or, most of all, our deservedness. Except that it is about our deservedness a little bit, in the sense that we, beloveds, are undeserving, for who could possibly deserve what came to pass on Good Friday?
Finally, Good Friday is not a wayward stop on the Easter train.
I’m serious.
All too often, Christianity as religion becomes about the resurrection at the expense of the crucifixion. But you cannot get to Easter Sunday without first spending time in Good Friday. This is a truth that many who have suffered profoundly know intimately.
The resurrection authenticates the crucifixion to be sure and for that we rejoice mightily. And yet, the resurrection is not a “gotcha” moment –it’s not a negation of what happened on the cross, nor is it a reversal. To truly rejoice in resurrection hope, we must appreciate when all seemed lost.
When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
It is finished. This is not merely a title card signaling the end –the end of the drama, the end of the day, the end of Jesus’ life. No. As Jesus dies his work is completed. The end. It is finished.
Indeed, on Good Friday “the Christian gospel decisively defines itself.” As you contemplate the Cross, I pray that the truth of the moment is with you.
That Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world has defeated the enemy, once and for all: for you, for me, and for all with the capacity for great goodness, yes, but also with the capacity to crucify innocence.
In the words of Rutledge, may we
look at ourselves today with the Savior’s eyes. Jesus looks at us, and he knows that we cannot help ourselves. He looks at us this very day in the same way he looked at every human being that he encountered during his earthly life: with infinite sadness for our predicament, yet with unquenchable love and with unflinching resolve to rescue us . . . whatever it took, wherever it led, whatever the price. [5]
“As by his death he has recalled us to life, so by his love may he raise us to eternal joys” (BOS 2018, 63).
Amen.
[1] Fleming Rutledge, “Good Friday,” in Means of Grace: A Year of Weekly Devotions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021), 109.
[2] Rutledge, “Good Friday,” 109.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., 110.
[5] Ibid., 111-112.