I preached this sermon on April 7, 2023 (Good Friday.) The main text I preached on was John 18-19.
Isaiah said it would happen, Look, my servant will succeed./ He will be exalted and lifted very high. (Isa. 52:12). John the Baptist pointed it out at the very tail end of his own ministry: The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29) Jesus himself told us it was going to be this way: “The Human One must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and the legal experts, and be killed, and then, after three days, rise from the dead.” (Mark 8:31) Here we are, and yet it is still surprising, still stirring, still troubling.
Good Friday is not for the faint of heart. Even with the distance between us and the crucifixion, we still know it is an event marked by pain, suffering, and hopelessness. Even with Jesus in control to the last, I mean John makes it clear Jesus dies only because he allows it “This is why the Father loves me: I give up my life so that I can take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I give it up because I want to.” (John 10:17-18a), we still know this one who knew no sin, who was love incarnate, through whom the world was spoken into being, died a terrible, horrible death. Alexander’s no good, very bad day had nothing on Good Friday.
And this is the day that separates our faith from everything else the world has to offer us to order our lives, provide meaning, give hope. We call this day “good” because it is through this act, this act on behalf of and for every last one of us, sins are forgiven, the life-gate is opened, we are given an example to emulate, the wrongs throughout history will be made right, and Sin, Death, and the Devil are defeated. The Cross effects changes big and small, both in the cosmic drama of the world and inside each of our hearts.
These things matter to people, especially people who’ve been through hell, whose lives have fallen apart, who know there is evil in the world because they’ve seen the whites of its eyes, who have been abused, stepped on, forgotten, left for dead, who have had to reckon with their own hand in it all too. It’s not just that God loves the world, though that is true, God loves you. Loves you to Hell and back.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the best the world has to offer put Jesus to death. Religion, government, and education they all had a hand in trying to snuff out Jesus. When Pilate has the sign put over Jesus’ head with the charge, “Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews,” (John 19:19) he had it written in three different languages. Hebrew—the language of the Bible, i.e., religion. Latin—the language of Rome and its empire, i.e., government. And Greek—the language of philosophy and wisdom, i.e., education. Salvation came not through any of them—effort, ideas, achievement. Indeed, it’s these very things that conspired and pushed and maneuvered and argued and petitioned and eventually put Jesus to death, that executed him like a criminal, even if he allowed it.
Chris Arnade, the former Wall Street stock trader turned journalist who spent years talking to and photographing people in “backrow America” to better understand them, their lives, their culture, their beliefs, found that the people he met had a strong faith. He assumed they would be atheist like him because they knew suffering, but he found they had deep faith. It was the “best” of the world who thought they could do without it. This is what he says: “Like most in the front row, I am used to thinking we have all the answers. On Wall Street, there were few problems we couldn’t solve with enough smarts, energy, audacity, or money. We even managed to push death into the distance; with enough research and enough resources—eating right, doing the right things, going to the correct medical specialist—the inevitable could be delayed, and mortality could feel distant.
With a great job and a great apartment in a great neighborhood, it is easy to feel we have nothing for which we need to be absolved. The fundamental fallibility of humans seems outdated, distant, and confined to a few distant others. It’s not hard to imagine that you have everything under control.
The tragedy of the streets means few can delude themselves into thinking they have it under control. You cannot ignore death there, and you cannot ignore human fallibility. It is easier to see that everyone is a sinner, everyone is fallible, and everyone is mortal. It is easier to see that there are things just too deep, too important, or too great for us to know. It is far easier to recognize that one must come to peace with the idea that ‘we don’t and never will have this under control.’ It is far easier to see religion not just as useful, but as true.[1]”
I would add, not religion as true, but the Cross as true because what humanity meant for evil God used for good. The best and the brightest got together and decided to snuff out the light of the world, but God used it as a way to bring hope to the hopeless. Check that, God used it to be hope for the hopeless, to redeem all pain, all suffering, by going into it himself.
As a leading theologian put it, “The way to God leads not to hell but through hell, or, in Christian terms through the cross. It leads us not to hopelessness but to a hope which transcends all human hope; and we must silence all human hope, if that divine hope is to dawn for us.[2]”
The Cross is the end of all human hopes. It silences all our shouts and attempts to wrestle control from God’s hands, nailing them down firm and sealing them behind a rock. What comes out on Sunday, what is born anew inside us, what is gifted to us by the Spirit, is not our best attempts, our good ideas, our hopes. It is God’s hope dawning again—grace and mercy when we need them.
After his deep anguish he will see light, and he will be satisfied.
Through his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant,
will make many righteous,
and will bear their guilt. (Isa. 52:11)
Even though it was meant for ill, even though it is not for the faint of heart, this, this act, this event, this Cross, is the source of our salvation, our life, our hope.
[1] https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/06/back-row-america?utm_source=ayjay&utm_medium=email
[2] https://mbird.com/theology/the-way-to-god-is-the-way-into-darkness-bultmann-on-hope-and-the-cross/
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