The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of Good Friday
30 March 2018
Readings:
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22
Today from noon to three in the afternoon, Christ hung dying on the cross. Today from noon to three in the afternoon, Christ suffered the ultimate penalty for loving us as God loves us. Today from noon to three in the afternoon, Christ’s willingness to stand up to empire, to stand up to power, to stand up for those without a voice in order to teach us how we ought to be in relationship with each other is answered by the voice of power and empire killing him for it.
Our readings from Isaiah and Psalm 22 remind us that humankind is no stranger to suffering. From the model of the scapegoat, in which the high priest of the Israelites would cast the sins of the community onto a goat which was then sacrificed, the reading from Isaiah speaks of the suffering servant. This is the one who is innocent and yet takes on the sins of the people, who lament, in the middle section of the reading, their belief that the one on whom their callousness and dismissive rejection rested must have in some way deserved their plight. From the fourth century onward, we know that this passage from Isaiah became identified with the suffering of Christ in such a way that the suffering servant became identified in the one who served as a perfect model of the sinless being destroyed without a voice raised in objection. This day we are reminded of each whom we have ignored, cast aside, hurt, and rejected; but we are also reminded of our own times of suffering without a voice and without anyone to come to our aid.
Our 22nd Psalm picks up with a response to that suffering. In the midst of the deep darkness and despair of alienation, suffering, reproach, and powerlessness—without a voice and without anyone to help, the light of a distant memory sparks the hope of prayer. Feeling utterly scorned and alone, beaten, dried up, and forgotten, the Psalmist reaches for the memory of God’s promise of accompaniment and finds a voice to cry out. The cry of distress becomes a dialogue between that fear, suffering, and anguish, and faith—turning back and forth between the present moment and the hope of God’s presence that even in the deepest pit of despair yet brings forth praise for the one who is found with us in the depths of the pit. Drawing us into this Psalm in Mark’s version of the Passion we heard on Palm Sunday, Jesus recognizes in himself our own moments of torment and despair, yet assures us that even abandoned, rejected, and hung up by his own people to die he is never alone—and neither are we.
Our reading from Hebrews draws from this same hope in a post-messianic world in which Christ’s resurrection is already known, and draws us deeper into the mystery of why this day is called Good. Recalling Jeremiah’s prophecy, the writer places the context of “after this day” squarely on the rending of the temple curtain described in today’s Gospel, after which we as God’s children have come to know and understand not only Jesus in a new way, but our own relationships with God through a profoundly new and intimate bond. And so, in our own day of trial, our own Day of the Lord, when darkness surrounds us and threatens to overtake us. We are encouraged to hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for the one who has promised is faithful.
Watching the events of our world unfold over the past year has been frightening for many of us. From white supremacists to concert snipers and school shootings, to the recent rekindling of the arms race and mounting tensions with North Korea and Russia, many of us have found ourselves cast back into an earlier time of our lives when fears ran similarly high of a global scale drama unfolding that could threaten the whole world as we knew it. Though most of us will never have to face the depths of abandonment, suffering, and torturous death that Jesus endured at the end of his time with us, the Good of this day comes in the reminder that no matter how dark the depths of our suffering may become, we will never be left to endure it alone.
Where other Gospel writers mark Jesus’ final words as a prayer to God—either as calling on Psalm 22 to speak his final prayer and message of God’s unfailing presence, or Luke’s “into your hands I commend my spirit,” John’s gospel ends with “It is finished.”
One of the striking things about John’s gospel is the way he alludes to the story of creation. John’s gospel begins with “in the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Ending his life on earth with “It is finished,” draws us back to the work of creation, started by Christ as God’s Word in the beginning of time, and, if we follow John’s rather amazing perspective, concluding with Christ’s completion of the work he was born into the world to do. What was begun with God’s love exploding into light, life, and the promise of relationship with all that God had wrought, and which had been disrupted when we placed a barrier between ourselves and that relationship with God, could only be completed by that same incarnate Word breaking that barrier and reintroducing us to a love that spawned the universe, spanned the eons, took on human flesh, taught us again how to be in relationship with God and one another, and paid the ultimate penalty for risking it all to find us. The cosmic sigh with which these final words come is a sigh of God’s own breath again moving over the chaos of human darkness and perpetually, eternally, bringing from it the light of love and hope.
This day, with Mary and John, we are called on to be parents and children of those who have lost their own. With those rejected and suffering victims of collective human indifference, we are called to prayer and to the work of justice. With those in the dark pit of despair, we are called to praise the one who promises light in the darkest places. And today, no matter which side of the curtain of suffering we stand on, we are invited into hope, because even in the abyss of the cross, we are assured that God is with us.
Amen.
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