Three Prayers And a Cross: Sermon for Good Friday

On Good Friday, preachers have to be careful that they avoid the temptation of thinking they can add anything to the story that we just heard. After all, the narrative of Jesus’s final hours is so powerful that no one in their right minds should try to follow that up with anything clever.

For those of us who are in a liturgical tradition such as the Episcopal Church, or Roman Catholicism or Lutheranism, we have heard the story of Jesus’s passion at least twice a year—twice in the same week!—for as long as we can remember—once on Palm Sunday, and once on Good Friday. It is a story that never fails to overwhelm with the sheer sweep and scope of the events that Jesus and his followers endured at the end of his earthly ministry.

However, what strikes me is the way that prayer brackets our account. We hear three prayers in our passion narrative: from Jesus on the Mount of Olives, from the Repentant Thief on the cross, and from Jesus again with his last breath. Jesus, our model in all things, models to us the vital importance of prayer especially in all of the times of trial and suffering that we undergo—trials that we KNOW Jesus himself also endured. And in the middle , the thief’s prayer assures us of the forgiveness and redemption Jesus offers to us all.

Let’s remember the scene of the first prayer we just heard. As the betrayer Judas has left the common table, Jesus doesn’t simply sit and wait for the axe to fall. Instead, as we heard, he gathers together his closest friends and goes into the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives to pray. The Mount of Olives was a sacred place. It was a burial ground where all who were buried were oriented with their feet toward the Temple Mount so that at the resurrection that may walk straight to the Temple. Jesus spends the night there in prayer. His disciples, too are urged to pray—but their grief overcomes them.

The content and intent of Jesus’s prayer is powerful. As a fully human person, of course Jesus does not wish to suffer and die. And yet, he also has the power and the faith to pray that in whatever occurs, not his will, but God’s be done.

That level of acceptance and faith is the model of prayer in a time of suffering. The great singer-songwriter captured this level of acceptance in his beautiful song “If It Be Your Will:”

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will. (1)

Let us be clear: God’s will was not death. Never. No, God’s will was that Jesus demonstrate the power of love to overcome fear, anger, division, and hate, the roots of all evil. God’s will was to have Jesus come to show us how to LIVE. But on Good Friday, we also see how to remain steadfast in our faith and trust in God, even to our last breath. For if we know that God’s will is love, even death has no power, no hold on us.

So there is Jesus’s first prayer as his path to the cross looms: a prayer for strength to make God’s will visible against the very real forces, then and now, that oppose God’s way of love with the malevolent power of hatred, oppression, and cruelty.

The second prayer we hear is not from Jesus, but from one of the two criminals being executed alongside him: Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. A simple prayer that has been set to music by the Taize community, one that the choir sang at St. Martin’s so beautifully last night as we participated in the ritual washing of feet that is part of the Maundy Thursday service. The repentant thief knew that he had certainly been guilty of the crimes that brought him to execution, unlike Jesus. Yet he also knew that Jesus had the power to forgive him. And so his prayer is one of hope, even as his death looms. “Jesus, remember me.” And that penitent thief receives the assurance that that very day he would join Jesus in paradise. What a glorious prayer! What assurance that offers us!

The last prayer, the last word, comes from Jesus once more. Jesus’s final prayer comes with his very last breath. Jesus’s crucifixion is depicted differently in each of the gospels. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus’s last words from the cross were, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” and he later cries out and dies. In John, Jesus says he is thirsty, and after being given sour wine on a sponge, says simply, “It is finished.” and died. But Luke’s version shows Jesus being steadfast and obedient even until the very end.

In Luke’s account, Jesus’s final words from the cross, quotes Psalm 31:5. For any of us who are prone to quoting psalms in times of stress or need, I think hearing the entire psalm in context clarifies a lot about what the gospel is saying about Jesus’s death.

1In you, Lord, I have taken refuge;

 let me never be put to shame;

 deliver me in your righteousness.
2 Turn your ear to me,

 come quickly to my rescue;

be my rock of refuge,

 a strong fortress to save me.
3 Since you are my rock and my fortress,

 for the sake of your name lead and guide me.
4 Keep me free from the trap that is set for me,

 for you are my refuge.
5 Into your hands I commit my spirit;

 deliver me, Lord, my faithful God.

When we pray, sometimes we can feel God’s presence as if we could touch it; at other times, we try to reassure ourselves that God indeed hears us. This part of psalm 31 starts out with admitting that the psalmist is in need of refuge and deliverance. And here in Luke’s gospel, on the cross, as Jesus gives his last breath, he is proclaiming his faith and absolute trust in God, even in the depths of his suffering and with his impending death. Jesus is stating that God is faithful at a time when a lot of people would wonder why God has abandoned them. This is very different from the other gospels, and is certainly a source of inspiration for all those who suffer.

When the COVID pandemic first began, our parish sought ways to help our members feel a sense of community and worship together. One of the ways that we did this was through beginning to broadcast worship services—but not just our usual Sunday worship. We also began offering Compline, or Night Prayer, twice a week. If you have ever prayed this service, you will know that the first five verses of Psalm 31 is one of the four psalm choices for this brief prayer liturgy before sleep. This part of Psalm 31 is one of the choices because it is such a beautiful affirmation of God’s protecting presence in our lives.

Remembering that God is with us in the dark times—when the outside world might say that the forces of evil and suffering are stronger—is vitally important. And praying Psalm 31 is certainly more comforting than that prayer that many of us were taught as children to pray before bedtime. You know the one—the version that was first printed in The New England Primer in 17th century colonial America:

Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Good Lord, that prayer actually GAVE me nightmares when I was young. Small wonder that this prayer has been used in horror movies and even by the thrash metal band Metallica in its song “Enter Sandman.” Words are powerful things—and those words, and their implication that I could go to bed healthy and never awaken—were terrifying. Small wonder then that, when I became an Episcopalian and grew acquainted with the treasures of the Book of Common Prayer, I very much turned to that portion of Psalm 31 in the Compline service instead.

As these final moments of Jesus’s Passion remind us, and forcefully so, one does not take refuge in a God who has not already proven to be trustworthy and righteous. The demonstration of God’s saving power will also be a testimony to the world. As pointed out in the verses before those one Jesus quotes, God’s loving care of those who trust in God will glorify God’s Name before all who witness God’s saving work.

As we live into the remembrance of this day, of Jesus’s powerful example to us that is the heart of discipleship, may we remember, too, the power of prayer in our own lives. May we remember Jesus’s prayer to God was always grounded in obedience, trust, and assurance.

And may we go, and pray likewise.

Preached at the 10 am Good Friday service at the Fountains, and at the 7 pm Good Friday service at St. Martin's in Ellisville.

Readings:

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Psalm 22

Hebrews 10:16-25

Luke 22:14-23:56

Citations:

1) Leonard Cohen, "If It Be Your Will" from the album Various Positions, 1984.

Jesus, Remember Me: Sermon for Good Friday

What does it mean to remember? Do the ways in which we remember a person or event matter?

In our everyday, secular lives, collective memory is the psychological term for the way a group of people are formed by their memories and understanding of the past. Memory forms that common identity and outlook. What we remember, and what we forget, shapes our present actions and our future in critical ways. Shared remembering forms us and unites us as a body. So it’s not just “remembering.” It is also crucially “re-membering” that we do here, understanding the events of the past as also what shape the present and the future as one people untied as a body. Memory unifies, and enriches our understanding of who we are.

 

This is also vitally true of our religious lives. Remembrance is, of course, at the heart of all worship. It’s at the heart of all prayer. We even hear it in the prayers that we hear coming from the cross on this day. 

 

And it is hard for anyone of conscience to really engage in the process of remembering the events we DO re-member and commemorate on this day, especially when we are talking about things like the horrors and realities of crucifixion. The weight of memory of such terrible events can seem overwhelming.

 

But remember we must, if we are to understand ourselves and God’s abundant love for us. Yet what does it mean to remember?

 

I ask this question on a day that is a day of particular holy remembrance for both Christians and our Jewish kindred, as Passover begins tonight at sundown.

 

Both Good Friday and Passover are particularly steeped in remembrance. “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to this memorial,” our Jewish kindred will intone tonight, gathered around a table, remembering their deliverance from certain destruction and death. And we too, gathered here, remember our own deliverance, and our own debt of gratitude to Jesus for his devotion to the cause of love as the only thing that can overcome death.

 

Today, even as our Jewish kindred gather together to remember and re-member their deliverance from slavery and death, we remember today Jesus passing over from life to death on a cross. We remember his death this day—as devastating as it is—but also remembering that in both our remembrances and our Jewish kindred’s remembrances, death never has the final word.

 

Thus we consider again the power of remembrance.

 

On the cover of our Good Friday bulletin there is a special image. It is a painting by the great 20^th century master Marc Chagall entitled “White Crucifixion.” It is meant to remind us of the Jewishness of Jesus, and of our solidarity with people of faith across the spectrum of belief. The Jewishness of Jesus is especially important to remember on this day, at a time when some people are seeking to limit our full understanding and remembrance of the past.

 

I ask that you look at that image for just a few moments with me right now, and see what it is attempting to call us to remember on this particular day especially.

 

Chagall was born into a devout Jewish family in what was then the Russian Empire. At that time, Russian Jews were limited by law in where they could live throughout Europe. This concentration enabled targeted outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence to take place throughout the centuries. 

 

Jews were targets in Christian Europe for nearly two millennia-- in part because of a misguided understanding of the Biblical texts used on Good Friday that appear to place the blood-guilt for Jesus’s death on the Jewish people. An idea that is a lie, one of the most devastating lies ever told: the lie that some people deserve their suffering, and that their suffering actually benefits others somehow and is therefore, necessary. That’s an easy position to take when you aren’t the one doing the suffering, isn’t it. That’s why tyranny throughout history is founded upon people placing restrictions on others that costs them nothing and that they would never tolerate on themselves.

 

By the time Chagall painted this painting in 1938 from where he lived in France, the Nazi party had been in control of Germany for six years, and in those six years, the Nazi scapegoating of the Jews had become brutally evident. In 1936, the Nazis opened the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, and in 1937 they opened Buchenwald. The year 1938, the year of Kristallnacht and of this painting, made clear the perils of Jewish identity in Europe. And of course, the next seven years would see the attempted extermination of the Jewish people at the hands of Nazi-led genocide. And even though Hitler and his henchmen were no Christians, they co-opted German Christianity with their National Church, and they found a ready source of support from Christians who had been taught that the Jews had killed Jesus.

 

“White Crucifixion” is a critical turning point in Chagall’s career, and is a daring and profound political as well as artistic statement denouncing war and religio-racial hatred. Russian pogroms and the rising Nazi Holocaust are equivalized. Chagall equates the suffering and threat to the Jews with Jesus’s crucifixion. 

 

The Jewishness of Jesus is emphasized: instead of a loin cloth, a prayer shawl drapes his body; the crown of thorns is a headcloth; and the mourning angels usually depicted around Jesus are instead three biblical patriarchs and a matriarch. On both sides of the cross we see pogroms, with villages afire and literally turned upside down. On the left of the cross, a man flees holding a Torah scroll, while on the right a synagogue and its Torah ark are in ashes, and a Torah scroll set aflame. Refugees flee on foot and by boat. And in the center is Jesus, placed on the cross by those forces of power who ever seek to destroy anything they do not understand and cannot control or co-opt.

 

The wonderful Jewish New Testament scholar Dr. Amy-Jill Levine in her commentary on the Passion Narratives, makes this profound but simple statement: 

“Memory can provoke ethical responses.” 

Memory forms our decisions about how to live a morally grounded, reverent life, in other words—and of course that is the very point of a life of faith. Faith is about how to live.

 

Dr. Levine’s reminder places an obligation within us to go more deeply below the surface, on this day of all days, because remembrance on this day has often been fraught with peril and even bloodshed between Christians and Jews, based on a lack of understanding of our texts that describe Jesus’s passion and death. When we look at the entire story of Jesus’s betrayal and death, we see that he was executed by the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire alone, on a trumped up charge of which he was, as even the centurion noted, innocent. 

 

Jesus’s real “crime” was the crime of telling the truth in a world in which lies predominated. Lies that came at the poor and marginalized like a sledgehammer, designed to keep them beaten down and helpless to resist. Lies like calling Rome’s terror tactics of mass crucifixions all necessary in the service of so-called “greater good,” in this case the misnamed “Pax Romana,” or the “Peace of Rome.”

 

Jesus was executed for daring to critique the injustices and cruelties of Empire and our tendency to give in or claim helplessness to those cruelties rather than resist them. Jesus died for proclaiming an upside-down kingdom in which God’s values were foundational, rather than human calculations of power, cruelty, and exploitation, for offering hope to those who were the least of the least within that Empire. Hope, like memory, can be a dangerous thing. People have died for less.

 

So back to memory: as we contemplate the passion narrative we just heard, in all its pathos and heartbreak, we also hear a plea to remember. Did you notice it?

 

It comes from the lips of the so-called “Repentant Thief,” the one who traditionally was executed on Jesus’s right hand side. Tradition even ascribes a name to him: “Dismas,” a name that comes from the Greek word for sunset. On the other side of Jesus, tradition has assigned the Unrepentant Thief the name “Gesta,” which comes for the word for complaint or moaning. And indeed, that thief on the left not only complains and moans to Jesus, he repeats Satan’s temptation of Jesus in his challenge and mockery of Jesus’s powerlessness at that moment when all three hang above the barren landscape. “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us, then!” he moans.

 

But the Repentant Thief, hanging on the right hand of the crucified God, rebukes his companion. Rebukes him, and claims that both of them deserve their fates for their crimes. He then addresses Jesus straightforwardly.

 

‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’

 

Jesus immediately assures this repentant sinner that that very day he will be with Jesus in Paradise. Despite his crimes. Despite how he had lived his life up until that point. Despite whether he had checked the right religious boxes or not. All the evils he had done-- those will be forgotten, wiped out by his acknowledgment and his repentance, and his faith even at the gates of hell on earth.

 

The good news of today that we are called to remember is how very much God loves us. How much God calls us to the honest work of remembrance and the brave work of repentance. Jesus shows us that love in his outstretched arms and his forgiveness.

 

That amazing and abundant grace is what we are called to remember this day—to remember, and open ourselves to despite the cost, so that that memory and its ethical command may transform our lives just as it did the life of that Repentant Thief, even at the last. But beyond the hope it offers us, we are today also called to remember the reality of humanity’s cruelty to humanity—to remember and stand against injustice, and persecution, and dehumanizing others or scoffing at their pain or perceived powerlessness, as they Unrepentant Thief did.

 

And so today, at the foot of the cross, may we join together in this prayer: Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom. 

And may we ever dedicate ourselves to remembering and re-membering within our own lives the gift of forgivenenss and salvation offered to us by the love of God, made visible in the suffering Christ on the cross. 

May we re-member and denounce attempts to place the blame for that suffering anywhere but where it belongs: on our own wayward tendency, as both individuals and as communities, to close our eyes to the suffering of others. Including suffering we either cause directly, or that is done in our names, as we confess every time we gather. 

May we allow our remembrance to transform our relationship with God, each other, and with all of creation.

 

 

Amen.

Preached at noon and 7 pm on Good Friday, April 15, 2022, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Psalm 22

Hebrews 10:16-25

Luke 22:14-23:56

Note: The Passion Gospel read was adapted as a script and to address the appearance of anti-Judaism in the text. A copy of the script can be found here: https://poemspsalmsandprayers.blogspot.com/2022/04/script-passion-narrative-from-luke.html

Citations:

Amy-Jill Levine, Witness at the Cross: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Friday, pp. 37-49.

Henry L. Roedinger III and K. Andrew DeSoto, "The Power of Collective Memory," June 28, 2016, at Scientific American.

Images: "White Crucifixion," Marc Chagall, 1938, at the Art Institute of Chicago, photos mine.

For further reading on the appearance of Anti-Judaism in the passion narratives, please see Louis Weil, "Anti-Judaism Issues in the Scriptures for Holy Week," March 19, 2013, at Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music for the Episcopal Church.

In the Garden: Sermon for Good Friday, 2021

Every year when I was a high school teacher, I used to love to teach my students about the 1960s, and that usually was happening right about this time every year. One of the things I shared with them was the Joni Mitchell song about Woodstock. You know that one, right? Here’s how the song’s chorus goes:

“We are stardust, we are golden,
we are caught in the devil’s bargain,
and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”(1)

Countless writers and musicians have talked about our longing to get back to that garden in the beginning, where we were innocent.

Our story today in the gospel of John begins in a garden. And the mention of that garden is meant to remind us of the garden that Joni sang about. The author of the gospel of John is writing a new version of the creation story.

In the beginning, God placed us in a garden, but eventually, we forgot who we were-- and whose we were. All we had to do was trust in God, who even walked with us each day in the cool of the evening. God gave us freedom, because love can only be given in freedom, and God loved us and all of creation.

Once, we walked in a garden with God, and it wasn’t enough for us. We thought God was trying to box us in, and we responded with suspicion, which led to rebellion. Distrust leads us to be cut off from the love that offers itself to us freely, because we are afraid it will take something from us. It leads to wanting to hurt others-- and sometimes even those who are close to us—before they hurt us.

We disobeyed, and in our freedom, we turned from confidence to fear and, and then shame- shamed for our naked fear, when we had never been given any reason to doubt.

And on that day, God came looking for us. But we hid ourselves- even though we had begun hiding the second we listened to that intruder in the dust cajole us into uncertainty and suspicion. And later, we told ourselves that God had put us out of the garden, when in truth we had turned our backs on home. And we continued to hide from God throughout the centuries, unable to return to full obedience, unable to empty ourselves of all our stubbornness and pride.

At the beginning of our gospel for Good Friday, the Word of God, Jesus of Nazareth, is in a garden too. But Jesus, the bridge between humanity and God, is not hiding. This time, the forces of the world come looking for a rebel and a blasphemer. They are looking for someone who they believe has committed the sins of Adam: rebellion, and claiming to be God. The sins we’ve all been committing throughout time.

Yet Jesus, who is a new Adam, is not hiding from anyone. Instead, he boldly walks out to those looking to seize him. Instead of rebellion, Jesus acts out of perfect obedience, love, and unity with God. Instead of Adam choosing sin in opposition to love, this new Adam, Jesus of Nazareth, chooses to act in love in opposition to sin.

Once again, God knows his love will be met with rejection. This Adam is truly God’s son. Once again, we find the one who wants to give us everything, and we react with doubt, rejection, and fear. Jesus plainly tells us who he is, using the same name that came to Moses out of the burning bush. Those who come to that garden are seeking a rebel; but instead they find God in the shape of Jesus. Yet we still refuse to recognize God as God. Instead WE rebel. WE want to be in charge.

We want to be gods. That’s the REAL original sin. And it is as prevalent today as it was millennia ago, as we deny science, and deny community and deny that we care about anyone other than ourselves. We have elevated ourselves and made our feelings of grievance our gods. And it is exactly that tendency that puts Jesus on the cross.

Jesus turns our first story of a garden on its head. Jesus will go willingly from that garden, into the place where we all face trials, and place himself in the hands of evil so that he may show that the love of God always wins out over fear and sin.

On the way to the cross, and on the cross itself, Jesus shows us the way of Isaiah 41:10 – words of promise and comfort that we need today more than ever as the pandemic continues into its second year, and as some of us still refuse to acknowledge the claims our neighbors make upon us to act out of charity rather than arrogance in doing what we can, even something as small as wearing a mask. Isaiah 41:10 says this:

“Do not fear, for I am with you,
do not be afraid, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, and I will help you,
I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.”

“Do not be afraid, for I am your God.” God loves us enough to be ours even when we are not willing to submit to belonging to God.

“Do not fear, for I am with you,” God whispers to his beloved Son as he suffocates on the cross through our own fault. Our sin—our doubt, our disbelief, our suspicion, our fear—has put Jesus on that cross. Yet God is there with Jesus, bending down as human freedom plays itself out, even to the point of putting Jesus on a cross to suffer and die.

“Do not fear, for I am with you,” Jesus whispers to us even as we seize him and condemn him to suffer for our own fear and sinfulness.

Like our brethren the Jews, we Christians are a remembering people. We remember each time we worship, each time we read scripture, and we remember each time we share communion together, remembering this moment, when Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. That’s why our liturgy has us sing, “We remember his death, we proclaim his resurrection, we await his coming in glory.” Today, on Good Friday, we remember Jesus’s death. Death for the sake of us all. And we await his coming in glory.

With a quiet “it is finished,” the old creation, which we had misshaped through sin and fear in that first garden, is ended.

But what happens on the cross is not just an ending, but also a beginning. There is a new creation that is

begun on that cross, a new world for all of us who look upon it. We are born anew through what happens on that cross.

Our story begins in a garden, and our story ends in a garden, or so we think. The last image we see this Good Friday is another garden, redolent with the scent of jasmine, and hyssop, and more faintly, frankincense and myrrh. Jesus’s body is put into another garden—a garden with a tomb, but from this tomb, death is going to be defeated. Unless a seed falls to the earth and dies, it bears no fruit. The power of sin is going to be, and is, vanquished. Death will itself be, and is, destroyed.

By faith, we have come this far, tottering like toddlers on the feet of hope—and God has not brought us this far to abandon us now at the grave.

God
Has
Not
Brought
Us
This
Far
To
Abandon
Us
Now
At
The
Grave.

Let a new creation spring up in our hearts, even as we watch and wait for our Savior.


Amen.

Preached at the noon Good Friday service online at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, on April 2, 2021.

Readings:

• Isaiah 52:13-53:12
• Hebrews 10:16-25
• Psalm 22
• John 18:1-19:42

Notes:

1) Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock," from Ladies of the Canyon, 1970.

Prayer, day 2629: For Good Friday in time of COVID-19

O God,
for You alone my soul in silence waits.
Into your hands, O God, I place my spirit,
for I know indeed that You are my home and my shelter.
We turn to You, O Merciful One,
and remember the love you have embedded
in each breath we take.

Lord Christ, you took on the cross,
the point where darkness and light meet,
and opened your arms to embrace us eternally:
may we kneel at your feet and repent,
crucifying our fears, our divisions,
our callous indifference, 
o live eternally in You.

Blessed Jesus, You are lifted up before us,
offering yourself in freedom to lay down your life
to overthrow the power of death:
may we take up our cross of love, and follow,
embracing the light of God.

Spirit of the Living God,
You sustain us in every moment:
abide within our hearts,
and grant your protection to those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2273: For Good Friday

O God,
for You alone my soul in silence waits.
Into your hands, O God, I place my spirit,
for I know indeed that You are my home and my shelter.
We turn to You, O Merciful One,
and remember the love you have embedded
in each breath we take.

Lord Christ, you took on the cross,
the point where darkness and light meet,
and opened your arms to embrace us eternally:
may we kneel at your feet and repent,
crucifying our fears, our divisions,
our callous indifference, 
o live eternally in You.

Blessed Jesus, You are lifted up before us,
offering yourself in freedom to lay down your life
to overthrow the power of death:
may we take up our cross of love, and follow,
embracing the light of God.

Spirit of the Living God,
You sustain us in every moment:
abide within our hearts,
and grant your protection to those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 1889: Good Friday

O God, 
for You alone my soul in silence waits.
Into your hands, O God, I place my spirit,
for I know indeed that You are my home and my shelter.
We turn to You, O Merciful One,
and remember the love you have embedded
in each breath we take.

Lord Christ, you took on the cross,
the point where darkness and light meet,
and opened your arms to embrace us eternally:
may we kneel at your feet and repent,
crucifying our fears, our divisions,
our callous indifference,
to live eternally in You.
Blessed Jesus, You are lifted up before us,
offering yourself in freedom to lay down your life
to overthrow the power of death:
may we take up our cross of love, and follow,
embracing the light of God.

Spirit of the Living God,
You sustain us in every moment:
abide within our hearts,
and grant your protection to those for whom we pray.

Amen.


Photo: The Crucifixion from the Passion side of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

Prayer 1541: Good Friday

From the Museum of the Middle Ages, Paris.

Blessed Savior,
whose body is broken for us,
may we be united in our witness and love
to your sacrifice, O Christ.

We confess our sinfulness,
our resistance to your call to unity,
our tendency to violence and enmity
instead of love.

Lord, let us stay awake
and watch with you for just one hour.
Lord, let us be still.
We pray for the ground beneath our feet,
that cradled your precious steps toward Calvary.
We pray for all whose faith
is broken, lost, or known to you alone.
We pray for all who suffer or grieve
in body, mind, or spirit;
we pray for all whose fellowship
is shattered by treachery, betrayal, or jealousy.

In the silence at the foot of the cross,
we make our prayer to you,
O Eternal One,
whose love remains even in darkness.
Your arms stretched wide to encompass the whole world,
we make our prayer to you, Lord Christ.

Amen.

Prayer 1158- For Good Friday

From the Museum of the Middle Ages, Paris.

Prayer for Good Friday  
In silence, we kneel before You, O God: forgive us our sins that we may amend our lives by your grace. 
We place our hearts at the feet of the Redeemer of the World, whose love surpasses all loves: hear our prayer, O Christ. 
Lord Jesus, you share with us in all our afflictions and walk with us in joy and in sorrow: have mercy on us. 
Holy One, draw us within your outstretched arms on the cross, we pray, that we may worship you all our days. 

Help us walk in humble compassion with each other, and make our tread light upon the earth. Bless those for whom we pray, O Merciful One, and pour your comfort like a balm over them.

Amen.

Back to the Garden- Sermon for Good Friday

Readings for Year A:
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22, BCP
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42

Theme for Lenten preaching: Isaiah 41:10

This week, I was teaching my students about the 1960s. One of the things I shared with them was the Joni Mitchell song about Woodstock. You know that one, right? Here’s how the song’s chorus goes:

“We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the devil’s bargain, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

Countless writers and musicians have talked about our longing to get back to that garden in the beginning, where we were innocent.

Our story today in the gospel of John begins in a garden. And the mention of that garden is meant to remind us of the garden that Joni sang about. The author of the gospel of John is writing a new version of the creation story.

In the beginning, God placed us in a garden, but eventually, we forgot who we were-- and whose we were. All we had to do was trust in God, who even walked with us each day in the cool of the evening. God gave us freedom, because love can only be given in freedom, and God loved us and all of creation.  

Once, we walked in a garden with God, and it wasn’t enough for us. We thought God was trying to box us in, and we responded with suspicion, which led to rebellion. Distrust leads us to be cut off from the love that offers itself to us freely, because we are afraid it will take something from us. It leads to wanting to hurt others-- and sometimes even those who are close to us—before they hurt us.

We disobeyed, and in our freedom, we turned from confidence to fear and, and then shame- shamed for our naked fear, when we had never been given any reason to doubt.

And on that day, God came looking for us. But we hid ourselves- even though we had begun hiding the second we listened to that intruder in the dust cajole us into uncertainty and suspicion. And later, we told ourselves that God had put us out of the garden, when in truth we had turned our backs on home. And we continued to hide from God throughout the centuries, unable to return to full obedience, unable to empty ourselves of all our stubbornness and pride.

At the beginning of our gospel for Good Friday, the Word of God, Jesus of Nazareth, is in a garden too. But Jesus, the bridge between humanity and God, is not hiding. This time, the forces of the world come looking for a rebel and a blasphemer. They are looking for someone who they believe has committed the sins of Adam: rebellion, and claiming to be God. The sins we’ve all been committing throughout time.

Yet Jesus, who is a new Adam, is not hiding from anyone. Instead, he boldly walks out to those looking to seize him. Instead of rebellion, Jesus acts out of perfect obedience, love, and unity with God. Instead of Adam choosing sin in opposition to love, this new Adam, Jesus of Nazareth, chooses to act in love in opposition to sin.

Once again, God knows his love will be met with rejection. This Adam is truly God’s son. Once again, we find the one who wants to give us everything, and we react with doubt, rejection, and fear. Jesus plainly tells us who he is, using the same name that came to Moses out of the burning bush. Those who come to that garden are seeking a rebel; but instead they find God in the shape of Jesus. Yet we still refuse to recognize God as God. Instead WE rebel. WE want to be in charge. Jesus turns our first story of a garden on its head. Jesus will go willingly from that garden, into the place where we all face trials, and place himself in the hands of evil so that he may show that the love of God always wins out over fear and sin.

I am grateful that Pastor Rebecca said the words "the people" instead of "the Jews" in the reading of the gospel passage today, because this passage in particular has been used throughout the centuries to justify anti-Semitism, and that is completely wrong. WE are the ones-- all of us-- who put Jesus on the cross. We are there as Jesus is being questioned and condemned, and we are there as Jesus is executed although not guilty of any crime.

We are Adam and Eve, and we are also the disciples, we are the chief priests and the crowd, and we are Pilate and the soldiers. Each one of those groups represents something about us.

WE are Adam and Eve: We are the ones who run away and hide from the ones we love, and then wonder why we are alone. We are the ones who want God to be powerful enough to grant our wishes, yet weak enough to do our bidding.

WE are the disciples: We are the ones who ask to sit at the place of honor and but shun the shame of Calvary.

         WE are Judas: We reject those we’ve pledged to love, betraying them when they won’t do what WE want.

WE are the chief priests and Pharisees: We are the ones for whom a thousand signs are never enough proof.

WE are Pilate: We are the ones who choose inaction in the face of wrong.

WE are the crowd: We are the ones who blindly follow our leaders, even to cheering the slaughter of innocents.

WE are the soldiers: We are the ones who take part in a thousand cruelties, both small and enormous, in the names of doing our jobs.

And all these sins add up. These sins are what put Jesus on the cross.

That’s why these stories mean something to us. But these stories also contain a challenge- to be like Jesus. The challenge is to give up the way of fear. And Jesus’s way to the cross of Good Friday as we see it in the gospel of John today shows us not the way to die, but the way to live.

We want to believe that terrible events like crucifixion and injustice are the work of people who are evil. Yet the line between good and evil doesn’t run between us, it runs within us. It starts with how we respond to fear. So many of the people involved in the Good Friday drama are filled with fear born out of mistrust. And this applies to us as well. We have created a society where we have elevated distrust to an art form, after all. When we lash out at those we love, when we destroy relationships out of dread that we could get hurt, we choose the way of anxiety rather than the way of trust.

And that is the mistake that was made in the garden of Eden, and in the garden in the Kidron valley where Jesus steps forward to meet those who accuse him out of fear and distrust.

The Gospel of John shows us Jesus as the man “who was despised and rejected by others,” as our Old Testament reading for today in Isaiah 52 described, the man “who was wounded for our transgressions, “ and who “by a perversion of justice… was taken away.” But John also shows that Jesus was fearless, and Jesus calls us to be fearless too. As the Son of God, Jesus has, and had, perfect freedom, yet he used that freedom to be nailed on the cross, staring sin and evil in the face.

On the cross, Jesus loved us despite our rejection and defeated our fears, fears that lead us to want to hurt even those who love us. By his path to the cross he showed us how to live a better way—a way of loving us and also, just as importantly, the way for us to overcome our fears and doubts, trusting in God to the very end.

On the cross, Jesus shows us that God is always with us, upholding us when we are afraid. Jesus loves us enough to be falsely accused and condemned, to suffer and to die, and to show us that the love of God breaks even the power of sin. The symbol of torture and shame is transformed into a call to trust.

Jesus is united with us in suffering through his very great love for even those who have demanded his death. Yet death is not the final answer today. Death cannot stop true love. It can only delay it for a while.

On the way to the cross, and on the cross itself, Jesus shows us the way of Isaiah 41:10 —which we have pondered during these 40 days of Lent. You have cards with this verse on them in your service leaflet. Please take them out and look at them. Jesus shows us what happens when we take hold of these words:

“Do not fear, for I am with you,

do not be afraid, for I am your God;

I will strengthen you, and I will help you,

I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.”

“Do not be afraid, for I am your God.” God loves us enough to be ours even when we are not willing to submit to belonging to God.

“Do not fear, for I am with you,” God whispers to his beloved Son as he suffocates on the cross through our own fault. Our sin—our doubt, our disbelief, our suspicion, our fear—has put Jesus on that cross. Yet God is there with Jesus, bending down as human freedom plays itself out, even to the point of putting Jesus on a cross to suffer and die.

“Do not fear, for I am with you,” Jesus whispers to us even as we seize him and condemn him to suffer for our own fear and sinfulness.

Like our brethren the Jews, we Christians are a remembering people. We remember each time we worship, each time we read scripture, and we remember each time we share communion together, remembering this moment, when Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. That’s why our liturgy has us sing, “We remember his death, we proclaim his resurrection, we await his coming in glory.” Today, on Good Friday, we remember Jesus’s death. Death for the sake of us all. And we await his coming in glory.

With a quiet “it is finished,” the old creation, which we had misshaped through sin and fear in that first garden, is ended.

But what happens on the cross is not just an ending, but also a beginning. There is a new creation that is begun on that cross, a new world for all of us who look upon it. We are born anew through what happens on that cross.

Our story begins in a garden, and our story ends in a garden, or so we think. The last image we see this Good Friday is another garden, redolent with the scent of jasmine, and hyssop, and more faintly, frankincense and myrrh. Jesus’s body is put into another garden—a garden with a tomb, but from this tomb, death is going to be defeated. Unless a seed falls to the earth and dies, it bears no fruit. The power of sin is going to be, and is, vanquished. Death will itself be, and is, destroyed. 

Creation is waiting to burst forth anew.