Sermon: Good Friday - 2020

10 April 2020

Text: John 18:1-19:42

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

We Christians say today is a “good” day.  It is the day of the cross.  The cross is our chief Christian symbol.  We decorate our homes with them.  We wear them.  Our churches have them inside and out.  The cross.  The good cross.

But what is a cross?  The cross was not merely a way to execute prisoners, it was a means of humiliation and torture.  It was so awful that the great statesman Cicero urged polite people to never say the word.  To the shame of the civilized Romans, the cross was the most evil, psychopathic, and inhuman device in the Imperial toolbox for subjugating other peoples and encouraging obedience to the government.  To the emperors and the governors the cross was indeed good.

The word “cross” is often used as a metaphor.  The word “excruciating” that we use in English to this day, meaning severe pain, is based on the word cross.  We speak of suffering as “bearing one’s cross.”  It was actually Jesus who taught us this metaphor.  “Take up your cross,” says our Lord, “and follow Me.”  To follow Jesus is to bear the cross.  The good cross.

Sometimes, it means a literal cross: as it did for St. Peter, who went to his own death, literally following our Lord Jesus Christ, to a cross of his own.  And other early disciples of Jesus were likewise crucified.  A hundred years ago in Muslim Turkey (a country that used to be the Christian Asia Minor), Armenian Christians – men, women, and even children – were crucified rather than renounce the faith and become Muslim.  The good cross.

But for most of us, the cross is metaphorical.  As followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, we suffer mockery, abuse, perhaps the loss of job, some endure lawsuits and severe threats to their ability to make a living.  At many times and places, Christians have been hated and even persecuted.  Today, Christians in Muslim countries may be somewhat tolerated, but typically cannot worship, cannot talk to Muslims about Jesus, cannot live free from fear of beatings and executions and yes, in some cases, a literal cross.  The good cross.

To be human is to bear the cross: the cross of mortality, the cross of aging, the cross of conflict, the cross of the struggle to survive, the cross of loneliness and depression, the cross of temptation, the cross of addiction, the cross of health issues, and yes the cross of our body’s susceptibility to viruses.  The good cross.

What is so good about the cross, dear friends?  What is so good about Good Friday?

“So they took Jesus, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called the place of the skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.  There they crucified Him.”

Many times, our Lord said that to follow Him, we must “take up our cross.”  Many times He said that He would be arrested, treated shamefully, be crucified, die, and rise the third day.  In the Gospels, whenever our Lord made these plain declarations of what would happen on the first Good Friday, it was as if nobody believed Him.  The disciples dismissed His words.  Perhaps they thought Jesus was being metaphorical, that this was just a figure of speech.  But no, Jesus was sent to a literal cross, and He suffered the excruciating torture of the ordeal of crucifixion, which for Jesus was more than just the physical and psychological pain.  He suffered spiritually, to the depths of His perfect soul, because He felt the burden of the sins of the world and the wrath of His Father – His literal Father – placed upon His head, like the Scapegoat of the Old Testament.  Jesus suffered betrayal, denial, and abandonment of His closest and most beloved friends.  He felt the wrath of God.  He and He alone bore the cross, the good cross, the cross of the atonement of the world.

And why is this good, dear friends?  Obviously, it is good for us who were spared the cross that we deserve.  We benefit from this “happy exchange” of our sins for His righteousness.  We are the beneficiaries of the cross, like the terrorist Barabbas, who was released from prison in exchange for the miscarriage of justice of crucifying the innocent Jesus.  We can all say, “I am Barabbas.”  But how is any of this good?  To the militant atheist, this seems perverted.  It seems unjust.  It seems as if our Father is arbitrary and abusive, and the Son is a fool.  It seems as if we Christians are very sick people indeed to adopt the symbol of the cross and to call this day “good.”

What the atheists and the mockers of the world are missing, dear friends, is the concept of love.  Jesus went willingly to the cross out of love.  He suffered the abuse and torture of the Jews and the Romans out of love.  He bore the wrath of the Father out of love – love for the Father whose will He obeys, and love for us whom He redeemed by His mercy, by His exchange of our sins for His righteousness, by His good cross.  The cross is indeed a symbol of death, but it has been transformed into a symbol of love.  Jesus said that greater love has no man than that He would die for His friends.  And because of love, Jesus dies even for His enemies, even as He called Judas “friend.”  As Pilate was concerned about remaining “Caesar’s friend,” he did not understand that Jesus died for Him as well, that He is Christ’s friend.  Jesus dies for the sins of the world, and He does this voluntarily out of love.

The world struggles to understand love.  Our culture sees love in twisted and selfish ways.  The world calls lust “love” and calls love “foolishness.”  Those who devote their lives to love are seen as fools.  The world celebrates wealth and power and fame.  The world idolizes Caesar and looks upon the Church with scorn.  That has always been the cross of the Christian.  The good cross.

Ultimately, the cross, the cross of Jesus, is a good cross, and this day of the cross, this Friday before Easter is Good Friday, because the cross of Jesus is the cross of love, the cross of the redemption of the entire world.  The gift of salvation is offered to all, to friend and foe, for when it comes to the death of Jesus for His friends, even His foes are His friends.  The entire world bears the cross of the virus of sin, and only the cross is the treatment, the universal treatment, that people are free to accept or reject.  This good cross is the inoculation that we all need against Satan, the one who afflicted us, “patient zero” in the universe who continues to torment us and make us terminally ill.  The cross is the antidote.  The good cross.

Dear friends, because of our Lord’s love for us, the cross is also a symbol of life.  In the greatest irony in the history of the world, Jesus takes this psychopathic instrument that was put into the service of Caesar: the state ruler who considered himself to be a god – a symbol of inhumanity and death – and Jesus Himself, the true King who is truly God, transforms the cross into the symbol of our Redemption, of life, of healing, of reconciliation, and of what it means to be truly human: love.  The good cross!

In suffering, Jesus overcomes suffering.  In death, Jesus conquers death.  In bearing the brunt of Satan, Jesus destroys Satan.  In His innocence, Jesus removes the virus of sin forever. The cross.  The good cross.

“When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished,” and He bowed His head and gave up His Spirit.”  On the cross “it is finished.”  The mission is completed.  Satan is defeated.  Death is destroyed.  Sins are forgiven.  Love conquers all.  And this cross, though it took our Lord’s life, will not keep it.  For “in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb.”  We know what happens in the garden tomb, dear brothers and sisters.  The whole world knows. 

And so today is the day of the cross.  We are bold to call it a good cross.  We are bold to call this Friday a Good Friday.  And on this Good Friday, we metaphorically stand at the cross, the good cross, with our eyes now turned to the tomb.  And we wait with joyful expectation for what comes next.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.