Yesterday, April 18, 2014, was Good Friday. We did our customary Good Friday evening worship service at Monroe Congregational UCC. My wife and co-pastor Jane thought attendance wasn't bad. I thought it was terrible. We had around two dozen people, including all who were there because they are in the choir and including a few children. That's about one-third of the total congregation. I thought that turn out was bad because for me Good Friday is the most holy day of the Christian year. Not Easter. Jesus' Resurrection after all follows his Crucifixion and wouldn't have happened if he hadn't died. That our founding figure did not die a natural death but was executed by the Roman Empire as a political criminal is one of the relatively few things that truly distinguish Christianity from other great faith traditions. If Christianity is not to be a rank lie there must be profound meaning in Jesus' death.Of course there is meaning in his Resurrection too, but we don't have difficulty getting people to celebrate Easter. Most of them won't come to Good Friday services no matter how much we explain and how much we cajole. I don't see how you can take being a Christian seriously and not commemorate Jesus' execution on Good Friday, so either most of the people of my church think you can or they don't take being a Christian very seriously. I won't express an opinion here as to which of those possibilities is the more correct. Whatever the reasons were that caused most of our people not to attend our Good Friday worship, I find their decision not to attend to be quite discouraging.
I gave a Good Friday meditation at that service. At least one of our people who did attend--and she drove a considerable distance to do it--called this morning and told me she found my remarks very powerful and moving. I found them powerful and moving as I gave them, so I'm posting them here. I hope they mean something profound to you too.
O Yeah. You Get It
A Good Friday
Meditation
Rev. Tom Sorenson,
Co-Pastor
April 18, 2014
Scripture: Mark
15:25-39
Let us pray: May the words of my
mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O
God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
A few weeks ago I attended our
Conference’s annual clergy retreat at Pilgrim Firs. In one of our sessions we
were talking about Holy Week, and one of my colleagues asked: “Why do we call
it Good Friday?” I was a little surprised to hear the question from a clergy
colleague, but I have heard it often enough from the people of the church.
After all, there doesn’t seem to be much good about it. Jesus, the one we call
the Christ, God’s Anointed One, the one we confess to be the Son of God, indeed
to be the Word of God become flesh, to be nothing less than God Incarnate, gets
brutally executed by the Roman Empire as a political criminal. That is what
happened after all. The Romans crucified Jesus. They killed him in a most
brutal way designed to increased the condemned person’s suffering for everyone
to see. Surely there is nothing good about crucifixion. Indeed, many of us
believe (and I am convinced that all of us are called to believe) that any form
of capital punishment inflicted on anyone is a grossly immoral. Certainly the
execution of Jesus was anything but good. So why do we call this day on which
we remember that execution Good Friday?
When my colleague asked that
question at our clergy retreat I spoke up. I don’t often do that at these gatherings.
Mostly I can’t get a word in even when I want to because the extroverts are
taking up all the air time. But I spoke up this time. I said “I can tell you
why it’s Good Friday.” Then I told this story, or at least a shortened version
of it. I know some of you have heard me tell it before, but I think it’s worth
telling again.
In May, 2007, my twin brother
Pete suffered a severe stroke. At first we thought he wouldn’t survive it.
That’s what his younger son told me when he called the morning after it had
happened. Then it became at least a possibility that he would survive; so after
Jane and I drove to Eugene to tell my father what had happened, I flew to
Tucson to be with Pete and his family. Pete was in the ICU at a Catholic
hospital there. It was really hard for me to be there, although of course not
as hard as it was for Pete to be there. We were pretty confident he would live;
but we didn’t know how disabled he would be, although the best case scenario
involved substantial loss of movement and possible cognitive impairment. I’ve
always said that Pete and I have never been as close as people think twins
always are, but his stroke hit me pretty hard. I was grieving. I was scared for
him and for his wife. It was an emotionally difficult time.
I spent time in Pete’s room with
him and his wife Virginia. I spent other time in the family room of the
hospital’s ICU wing. As I sat there grieving and stewing about what had
happened and what my brother’s future life might be I noticed a crucifix on the
wall. It was, after all, a Catholic hospital. A crucifix, for any of you who
don’t know, isn’t just an empty cross like we Protestants use. It is a cross
with the body of Jesus on it. It is a graphic representation of Jesus suffering
and dying. It is the scene of Good Friday. As I sat in that family room of that
hospital on the verge of tears I looked up at that crucifix, and I said: “O
yeah. You get it. You’ve been here, and worse.” Seeing that crucifix and saying
those words helped. They helped me feel some better. They helped me be more
present for Pete and Virginia. When I told that story at our clergy retreat I
said “that’s why it’s Good Friday.” My colleague who had asked the question
said: “Well, that’s a pretty good answer.” Indeed. It is a very good answer.
Good Friday is Good Friday not
Bad Friday, not Tragic Friday, not The Friday of Tears, because that isn’t just
any man on the cross that we remember today. It isn’t just any man on the cross
in that crucifix on the wall in that Tucson hospital. It is Jesus, and Jesus
isn’t just any man. He is the Son of God. He is God the Son become human. He is
God in human form experiencing the worst that human life has to offer. That
Friday was very bad news for Jesus, but that bad news for Jesus is very good
news for us. It is very good news for us because in the crucifixion of Jesus we
see that God gets it. God gets everything about human life. Most importantly,
God gets it about the worst that human life brings us. In Jesus God experiences
human pain—excruciating, soul-killing physical pain. God experiences human
death. It is not an exaggeration to say that in Jesus on the cross God dies a
human death. God enters into human mortality and experiences in God’s own
person what it is and what it is like. In Jesus on the cross God suffers gross
human injustice in God’s own person. In Jesus God is persecuted, prosecuted,
wrongly convicted, and wrongly executed. In Jesus on the cross God experiences
human injustice worse than most of us every will. In Jesus God knows. In Jesus
God gets it.
And that God in Jesus gets it
makes all the difference for us. It makes all the difference for us because
when we see Jesus on the cross we know that God does not forsake human
suffering. God does not forsake human death. In Jesus on the cross God enters
into them. More than that God sanctifies them, God makes them holy because God
makes them God’s.
Jesus cried “My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?” Jesus knew the human experience of the absence of God.
Jesus knew the human experience of abandonment by God. But in Jesus it was God
who knew the absence of God. In Jesus it was God who knew the experience of
abandonment by God. Because in Jesus it was God who knew those things we know
that God is not really absent when we feel God’s absence. God has not really
abandoned us when we feel that God has abandoned us. We can look at Jesus
abandoned by God on the cross and say O yeah, you get it. You’ve been there.
You’ve been where we are. You’ve felt what we feel, and worse. You’ve had the
experiences of pain and death, and you are present with us in our experiences
of pain and death. In our times of pain, grief, and death we can see your
presence when we see Jesus on the cross. We can know that you are there with
us. We can know that you hold us. You sustain us. You comfort us.
Yes, at first we feel alone. We
feel your absence. Those feelings are real, and we should not deny them. But
when you feel them, look at the cross. Look at Jesus on the cross. Then maybe
you can say what I said in that hospital in Tucson seven years ago. O yeah. You
get it. You’ve been here, and worse. You know my pain. You know my grief. You
are present with me in them. And when you can say that you will feel God’s
unfailing arms of grace holding you tight. It won’t make all the pain go away,
but it will make the pain easier to bear because you will know that you do not
bear it alone. God, even God, bears it with you.
Knowing that helps. It really
helps. That’s what we know in Jesus on the cross. We know that God is present
with us in the worst that life brings us. We can know that God’s presence will
sustain us. God’s presence will get us through. God’s presence will draw us
near to our source and our goal, to our Creator and our Sustainer. Trust me. I
know. I’ve been there. It helps. Yeah. God knows. God has been there. Thanks be
to God. Amen.
