Good Friday 2007

Jn 18:1-19:37

We live in an age and in a culture that is death defying. Our modern medicine and technologies seek to increase both quantity and quality of life. Every part is replaceable, every fiber of our being is treatable, and we can live on and on and on. No to death we say, whether audible or subconsciously. We live as if there is no tomorrow and as if there is an infinite number of tomorrows. We rush from task to task proud that we can multitask, like driving while talking on a cell phone. We live as if our being is nothing more than the list of things we do. We become machines cranking out volumes of work and larger resumes. Then an illness or accident takes our breath away. Someone close to us is gravely ill or dies and we are reminded that this life is mortal and finite. Still we close our eyes and ears, we back away from the dying, or bury them as quickly as possible and try to get on with life.

Today if we come into church for the Good Friday service, we are reminded in numerous ways that death is a part of life. Good Friday remembers in harsh uncompromising terms the reality of death – its inescapable terminus – our finitude. WE are more than the sum of our accomplishments. We are people made in the image of God – relational – creative – bearers of soul. We have the capacity to love and be loved, to serve and be served, to know the transcendent, even in our finite lives of mortal flesh.

John Donne was right, “no man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” Jesus in human life as the incarnate word said yes to death from the cross declaring his mission complete, it is finished.

It is finished! It is completed, brought to perfection, for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. It is over. If we were standing at the fringe of the crowd with Mary and the Beloved Disciple, would that mean the end of suffering has finally come and our loved one is finally at peace? It is not over; it is finished.

In the beginning was the word and the word was God. In the beginning God poke his Word and said, Let there be light” and there was light. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. It is not over; it is finished.

The story of God is the story of creation, of redemption, and of love. The Word of God is the love of God. From beginning, God created out of love, not that God needed anything, but because God is love, God created out of that love. The Word is both his love and his beloved. Through him God loved us into being. At the cross point where all the past and all the future unite in one place, one person, one point in time, Jesus proclaims, It is finished. What began in love should be concluded in love. Jesus, the beloved Son of the Father was loved by the Father and loved the Father perfectly. It is finished, yet time goes on. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. In Christ the infinite is not formless but cruciform, the shape of love.

The cross does not mean that human suffering and loss with rivers of tears are things of the past. It is finished means that death is not the last word. It means that love is the last word.

St. Paul said the cross is “foolishness to the Greeks” and a “stumbling block to the Jews.” The truth of this day is that the goodness and grace of God reached out to us all and offered us forgiveness. Yes, forgiveness for our sin of searching in the wrong places for happiness; for chasing after gold that cannot satisfy, for supporting wars that kill thousands of innocent children, for the complicity that allows millions in our world to starve, for the things we have done and left undone.

Where would you be standing if you were there on that awful hill outside the city wall of Jerusalem? Would you stand with Mary and the women and the beloved disciple or with the mocking crowd? Know thyself said the philosopher for this is the beginning of wisdom. Knowing thyself and fear God, knowing a thousand big and little things that I have done and failed to do. I cannot deny that I was there when they/we crucified my Lord. In ways I do not fully understand, I know that I, too, did the deed. In some mystical way we are all part of the whole scope of human history. No man is an island, entire of itself; every woman and man is a piece of the whole community of humankind, the beloved of God.

It seems so unfair, so wrong for the good man to die such a horrific death. We avert our eyes, divert our minds, to escape the raw pain, the life that was so good dying with such indignity. We want to scream stop. Then we remember God chose to enter time as one of us to meet us where we are to bring us into reconciled relationship – all for the sake of love.

John’s Gospel puts it this way: “For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” and “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” Love is the justice of the God who is love.

What was lost and separated by an abyss of wrong has been reconciled by the deed of perfect love. It is finished.

Today we gaze into darkness that will turn to light. We look on the dying one who is the Lord of life. We look at the One who is everything that we are and everything that we are not…the one true man and true God. In him, God and human are perfectly one. Here, through the cross we can come home, home to the truth about ourselves, home to the truth about what God has done and about what we have done. Now we know, or begin to know, why this awful, awe-filled Friday is called good. It is finished – love has met us where we are, has overcome death and the grave and opened the way to the redeeming love and grace of God and that is very good.