JOHN 19:27-31

GOOD FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 2000

THOMAS H. YORTY, WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

This night, with the exception of Christmas Eve, is more holy than any other. Jesus’ birth and death have an aura about them. A stillness and fullness hard to describe. What the world wants this time of year is Easter Morning.

What seasoned disciples have learned to savor is Good Friday. Remembering Jesus’ death like any memorial is a ritual of saying good bye…filled with carefully chosen words, symbols, silences. The backdrop at birth is the possibility and hope for a life yet to be lived. The backdrop of death tonight is the work and grace of a life now over.

 

I remember conducting a memorial service on a lake in the Pocono Mtns. some years ago. It was springtime. We were remembering a man who died in middle age. His brother and family and friends came from far and wide. They told stories of fishing and swimming in that lake with David in the summers of their youth and young adulthood, skiing those mountains over the years. The backdrop of this night is Jesus’ rich and full life. The stories he told, the debates he engaged, the healing he performed, the lives he touched.

 

Celtic folklore refers to nights like this as "thin times." Times when what ever it is that separates this life from the larger truth we cannot see or touch is stretched so thin we can almost peak into another dimension. Maybe what the Celts meant is that when someone enters or leaves this world – an opening occurs in the blue/green membrane surrounding the earth. Like the window going down on a celebrity limousine, we glimpse into a world usually closed off. Brush up against the Source of life. If you open yourself to it tonight through the scripture, the music, the cross you can peak into another realm.

 

What makes for the "thinness" of this night is not just Jesus’ death but his vulnerability. His emotions, passions, feelings naked before us. Stripped of everything by Pilate and the soldiers. One preacher says if this night doesn’t shock you, it ought to at least silence you. The cross does disarm and strip us of our defenses. Witnessing tragedy has a way of doing that.

someone once compared Jesus’ crucifixion to the tragedy of an automobile wreck. You drive by slowly or pull over to see what has happened. You realize how easily it could have happened to you. That car could be my car. That body my body. Tonight we’ve decided to pull over to see what has happened. Why did such a promising life come to such a bloody end? Was there anything anyone could have done?

Jesus and we are vulnerable tonight. But so is God. Our younger son is on a Caribbean sailing adventure this spring vacation. It is as far and as long as he has ever been away from home without his family. The fact that he is on a sailboat means that he is somewhat cut off from us. Probably for the first time in his life he can’t just pick up a telephone and call. So the day before they took commission of the boat he called from San Juan – my office, Carol’s office, the answering machine at home. He could not reach us. When we heard his voice on our answering machines, saying he was just checking in before they flew to some tiny island to take the boat, Carol and I felt we abandoned him. All he wanted was to hear from us – not what we said so much as familiar voices back in Buffalo before his exciting, maybe just a little scary new adventure.

When Jesus cried out on the cross and said, "my God why hast thou forsaken me?" God heard every syllable of that utterance and was devastated. As a parent, I believe that God wanted to rush down to earth, lift up his son in his strong and tender arms and call the whole thing off. Send a few lightening bolts to Pilate and Herod and Caiaphas, tear down a few government buildings, topple a few temples, give holy hell to those cowardly disciples. But God could not do that. Jesus was in charge. God relinquished his parental authority. Whisking Jesus away was not in the plan.

You see, it was not Jesus God was protecting that Friday. It was you and me. The hope that one day the message of the cross would get through to us. Make us see that our worst and most brutal behavior would not change Jesus’ decision to die for us or God’s resolve to honor Jesus’ choice.

The vulnerability of this night – of Jesus, you, me, God – makes Good Friday holy. All of the stuff that usually separates us from one another, everything that usually gets in the way has been pushed aside by this tragedy. For a few moments in the shadow of the cross we come to our senses.

And just as the Spirit hovered over the waters and chaos at creation so the Spirit hovers over Jesus at Golgatha and hovers over us tonight. Good Friday, you see, is a creation. A beginning, not an end. Years ago a couple who belonged to a church I served who lost a child shared with me in the early days of their grief that when ever they read or heard about a child dying somewhere in the world – they experienced a poignant comfort. Not at the death of the child; but that there were two more parents somewhere that night who understood the unspeakable grief with which they lived.

What begins tonight is the trust of generations…that in our suffering, Jesus’ suffering brings comfort; that in our abandonment Jesus’ abandonment offers companionship; that in our despair Jesus’ dying on the cross brings hope. The other realm we peak into tonight is God’s relentless love for us. That is why seasoned disciples have come to savor Good Friday.

Amen.