GOOD Friday

There is an irony about how on Good Friday

            we read the longest Gospel lesson:

                        the entirety of John, chapters 18 and 19.

But we don’t have the time or opportunity 

to go into an in-depth Bible study 

on all the segments of these 2 chapters.

I think that this portion of the Gospel is not one we ordinarily dwell on

            because it is hard to be in such a space as the Crucifixion,

                        that is so full of suffering and heartache. 

But if we could see in John’s Gospel

            how Jesus is the One who is empowered, who is acting,

            we might change our minds, 

and we might find ourselves willing to dwell more and more 

on this portion of the Gospel,

            reading it with love and devotion,

                                    with joy and wonder and thanksgiving

                                    for its powerful message

                                                to encourage us 

                                                            and fulfill our hopes

                                    and give us deep gladness of heart.

In John’s Passion Account Jesus is the only one who is in control.

Everyone else exhibits that they have no control over what is going on, 

that there is great failure on their part 

to achieve what they want to do.

As we know from the other Passion accounts,

the disciples have no apparent control over their drowsiness;

                        they fail to stay awake.

And then they all run away, fleeing for their lives.

            Despite whatever his motivation and intentions were

Judas is doomed to become known as the betrayer.

The band that comes to arrest Jesus at Gethsemane

            are knocked to the ground by the force of the word 

spoken by Jesus, his simple statement: “I AM.”

Only when Jesus purposely gives them a second chance 

            can they lay hands on him and take him away.

Peter, in spite of his earlier protestations,

            fails in his ability to keep from denying his Lord.

The high priests and Sanhedrin 

can’t make a credible case against Jesus.

And they have to revert to political pressure 

to get Pilate to cooperate.

Pilate tries to set Jesus free, but fails.

And Mary, his mother, must stand by 

helplessly watching with the other women as he dies.

Everyone else is ineffective.

This is all a picture about us, 

our failure, 

our helplessness, 

our misguided attempts to take matters into our own hands, 

and how the results are not what we anticipated or wanted,

our lack of control in a situation we weren’t prepared for.

In some ways this all mirrors what we are living with at the moment.

None of us is able to do what it takes save our own selves, 

            let alone the world.

But it is Jesus who acts, who is in control, 

who accomplishes all that needed to be done, 

right down to the last detail described in the ancient texts 

about the Servant, the Lamb of God.

It is he who chooses when his last moment is, when he dies.

He completes all, 

and breathes out his breath 

and gives up his spirit.

Usually in each sermon there is an exhortation

            - that which we are urged to do in response to the Word of God.

But on Good Friday, today, I give none.

Today we sit and do nothing, no action.

We can’t.

It is impossible.

Nor need we do anything…

…despite our question carried down through 2,000 years of history:

            “What may we do that we may work the works of God?”

                        the question asked of Jesus in the 6^th chapter of John.

The answer he gave them is the same today:  believe, trust, surrender.

            Surrender to Jesus; trust into him.

Today it is Jesus alone who acts, who by dying accomplishes all.

It would be a denial of faith, of our basic trust in Jesus, 

to seek to add our own action to what he has done for us.

Even the faith we do have in him is a gift that he has given to us,

            breathing his breath/his Spirit into the disciples

                                                                                    and into us,

            breathing out his last breath

                                                to release that breath in us for life.

How interesting - the disciples,

            though they all ran away that night of the betrayal,

later they all stayed the course.

Tradition has it that each of them, except John,

            died a martyr's death, and often in horrible torture.

John suffered exile and imprisonment on a desolate island,

            a prolonged torture.

What made the difference for them,

            that turned them from deserters to martyrs?

After Christ's death and resurrection,

            they got it.

They got the message Jesus had been telling them all along.

One death does it all.

One death buys life for all.

One death brings healing and sanity and hope and new life,

            and everything worth giving up your own life for.

I pray that each of us will be able to really get it

            about this death, about this day.

It can be life changing

            if you let it.

Some Thoughts for Holy Week based on John 12:20-36

            Someone very wise once said to me, “When you say ‘I love you’ to another person, that indicates you care more about them than you do about yourself.”  When Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground…” he was referring to himself, meaning his own self giving out of love for us. He obviously cared more about you and me than he did about himself. That’s obvious. The kicker is that he is expecting that of his followers also.

            Jesus said to his disciples, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.  Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”

This Gospel reading, we could say, is the Ultimate discipleship lesson.  Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth… (which is what the purpose of the seed is – to get planted) …unless it falls into the earth and dies… (Once planted that is the end of the seed’s existence; the identity of the seed as seed is over.  What comes next looks nothing like a seed.)  …unless it falls and dies, it remains alone… but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (The purpose of the seed is to bear fruit.)

            The death of the seed is a birth into a new and more abundant, fruitful, effective life.  There is a parallel drawn here between the seed and the disciple.  Our purpose as disciples, what it is that God wants from us, is that we bear much fruit, that our lives are fruitful in the qualities and characteristics of the Kingdom of Heaven, that our lives are lights to others,  bringing them also into that peaceable realm where all sorrow is washed away, where there is no fear, no plague, nothing that need separate us.  That is the fruit that we are made for and intended to produce – very pragmatic and utilitarian.

            

            In the midst of the pandemic today we pray for those who are fulfilling these words, who are dying to self in service to others, and even those who are literally giving their physical lives in service.  

             “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  ”These are hard words; they confront us, but we would do ourselves a great disfavor if we avoided looking at them,  as we often would like to do.  These words are too important spiritually to let them pass by unexamined.  What is the life that is to be hated, that is, the life to be renounced?  What is the life that we turn our backs on and walk away from?

            We can always say that it is that which we have linked our self-identity with, that which we have claimed ownership with regarding who we say we are.  It is how we answer the question, “Who am I?”  Now we may not see this, or realize this, but our self-definition for the most part is an illusion, a fantasy, a falsehood, unreality.

            But loss and grief and the swift and varied changes of the world can set things up for the stripping away illusion.  And today in the midst of global pandemic that question, “Who am I?” is even more significant.  Who am I now?  We are caused to sit up and look again at who we are.

            Sometimes it is pretty hard to see through our illusions.  There is, it would seem, a veil covering our eyes.  We are not able to remove that covering from our eyes by ourselves, however. That is the work of the Master, the Teacher, the One who was lifted up on the cross who draws all people to himself.

            Jesus said, “I will draw all to myself.”  And the word for draw in Greek is very significant.  It means to draw a sword, to un-sheath it.  The veil of illusion covering our eyes, the false self-identity we cling to, will be stripped away from us by the action of the cross.  We will be unsheathed from that.  What is left is our true identity in Christ.  And there is all our hope and strength to face the day in front of us, even to the point of willingness to become “a grain of wheat that falls into the ground.”