GOOD FRIDAY – Isaiah 53:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42 –
2 April 2010 – A sermon given by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado
A Day of Old Ways and New Possibilities
INTRODUCTION – Horrific words and images
The words that we just heard and the pictures that form in our minds when we hear them are too much for us. Marred… despised… rejected… suffering… infirmity… stricken… afflicted… wounded… crushed… punishment… oppressed… slaughter… perversion of justice… cut off… anguish… – those are just some of the words in the first reading from Isaiah, a prophetic “Suffering Servant” passage, written 700 years or so before Jesus’ time, and yet sounding exactly like what Jesus went through.
And what about Psalm 22, probably an even older passage of scripture, and yet so fitting that, according to one Gospel writer, Jesus quoted it while hanging from the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” A Psalm of isolation… a Psalm where we again encounter words like “scorned” and “despised”.
And then there is the Gospel account of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, and mock trial… his being flogged, the crown of thorns, being struck again and again, the chief priests and the temple police and the crowd yelling “Crucify him! Crucify him!” and then the nailing of Jesus to that cold, hard wood.
SITUATION – Old ways of judgment, violence, hatred, and contempt
The day that Jesus was crucified was a day of judgment. Not judgment in the way we sometimes use the word, in the sense of weighing things out and making a wise, rational decision. This was more of a rush to judgment, a judgment influenced by hatred and contempt and fear and a hard-to-articulate sense of feeling threatened. This was judgment mixed with threats and brutal violence and the abuse of power by certain folks who had one type of authority, and access to weapons. This day – the day when Jesus was crucified – was all about the judgment of condemnation.
COMPLICATION – I’m there, too
But you and I miss one of the huge messages of Good Friday if we stand at a certain distance from all of these images and think, “Oh, what a terrible thing they did to Jesus on that day!” No, there’s much more going on here. I am in the middle of this story, and so are you.
This is a very old story, and by that I don’t mean just a 2,000-year-old story. This is a very old story in my life and in your life, too, for these condemning kinds of judgments that were going on that day are deeply familiar to you and me.
Someone nearby does something that we don’t like, and within a few seconds we have decided that we know everything that there is to know about that person, and charged him or her in our minds, and tried him, and found him guilty, and pronounced a sentence of condemnation. The sentence might be “loser” or “lazy” or “stupid as hell” or “clueless” or “un-American” – the list goes on and on. The list is so long, in fact, that I probably can’t preach a sermon that would be long enough to include all the sentences that you and I have pronounced upon other people over the years. It’s the very same thing as being in that crowd 2,000 years ago and yelling “Crucify him!” We may not have been yelling it out loud yesterday or last week, but we were thinking it, and we’ve already crucified that other person in our minds, and there is no real difference. And that is why it is pure genius that during the reading of the Gospel, we all get to play the part of the crowd and shout out “Crucify him!”, because we are already very familiar – way, way too familiar – with that role.
But the judgment game goes much deeper than that, even, because for many of us, the one we are most often condemning is the person we see in the mirror every morning. We see something in ourselves that we don’t like, and we pronounce a sentence on ourselves. It might be “loser” or “stupid” or “not enough” or “not worthy” or maybe we resonate with the Psalmist’s “I am a worm and no man” (Psalm 22:6).
I was at a conference two weeks ago and the speaker, Gay Hendricks, said something like this: “If you see something in your life that you don’t like, some old pattern that has not been serving you well, a pattern which you keep repeating, so that you feel stuck, and you respond to that pattern by adding a drop of judgment to it… that drop of judgment is like adding another drop of glue to where you’re stuck. If you want to start dissolving the stuck-ness, you need to add a drop of love. Have compassion for yourself, notice that you’re stuck in this pattern, and add a drop of love, and that old pattern will begin to dissolve.”
If you are anything like me, one of those old patterns is the pattern of being hard on yourself. So when you mess something up, your tendency is to condemn yourself – to add that drop of judgment.
GOOD NEWS
The good news of Good Friday is that Jesus comes to show us another way. You notice that as Son of God, Messiah, Son of Man, the Lion of Judah, the Lamb of God, the Lord of Life – whatever title you might prefer – he didn’t take matters into his own hands, grab a sword like Peter impulsively did, tell Pilate what a loser he was, or rain down fire and brimstone on the whole lot of them. He didn’t condemn anyone that day, because he came to offer a new way out of the madness. He came to offer what you and I and many before us sometimes refer to as salvation.
There is only one way to get out of the vicious cycle of condemnation and judgment and violence, and it is the path that Jesus learned and practiced, and it is called the way of love. He offered every ounce of his love in every single encounter that he had.
And I know that when he had a frustrating day teaching – when his disciples didn’t get it – and he retreated back for some quiet time with his Heavenly Father, the message he heard over and over again was the same one. “You are my beloved Son, and I love you.”
It was that message of love that sustained him. And it was love that, in the end, poured out of him – through his blood shed, yes – but also in the words that he offered from the cross. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)
When we condemn others, we do not know what we are doing. When we condemn ourselves, we do not know what we are doing. For if we had even the tiniest notion of what we were doing, and how damaging it is to others, and how damaging it is to ourselves, we would cry out instantly and yell, “Hosanna!” – a word which came to mean “praise”, but which originally meant “save us, we pray!”
That is what this day is about – the saving work of Jesus. He saves us, ultimately, by showing us the power that a drop of love has to change the world. The soldiers pierced his side with a spear, to make sure that he was dead. John tells us that blood and water came out. But you and I know that what really flowed out that day was his love.
NEW BEHAVIOR – A new way
A new way has been offered to you and to me, and it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. It’s the way of compassion – compassion for others and compassion for ourselves. Let’s be honest, shall we? We all have a killer in us. We all have a condemner in us. We all have an accuser in us, someone who is ready at a moment’s notice to shout out, “Ha!” Sometimes the killer, the condemner, the accuser is focused outwardly. Sometimes the killer, the condemner, the accuser is focused inwardly.
But there is a greater Power in this world, a Power that is not about violence or threats or condemnation or killing. This Power comes with a new message, and we must shift our stance, turn our head, smile at ourselves, take a deep breath, yell for five seconds – do anything we can that will help us hear the message. “You are my beloved son. You are my beloved daughter. With you I am well pleased. I know you, and I love you. Take it in. Hear it again. I love you.”
Wherever we go, whatever we do, whoever we encounter, whatever comes up that surprises us, whenever something goes a little differently than we think it should, whenever we notice something in another person or in ourselves that we don’t like… can we add a drop of love? Can we walk the way of Jesus, and add a drop of love?
That’s what Good Friday is all about: finding a new way to be in the world, a way that brings transformation and healing for us and for others. It all starts with one drop. May Jesus’ life and message and death not be in vain. Choose the life-transforming way. Receive a drop of love. Add a drop of love.