Good Friday Sermon

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.