Sermon: Good Friday – 2022

15 April 2022

Text: John 18:1-19:42

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Nothing happens to Jesus by accident.  There are no surprises to Him who is God, but to us, dear friends, there is much to be surprised at.

First of all, where in the history of the world do we ever read about God becoming human, proving that He is indeed God by doing things that only God can do?  And instead of being worshiped by His own people, He isn’t merely assassinated, He is publicly tortured to death.  And this, after He was hailed as a king entering the city only five days earlier. 

And this was a conspiracy with deep roots.  It involved many of the conservative Pharisees and lawyers and scribes, as well as their rivals, the liberal priests and Levites and Sadducees, as well as the hated politicians known as the Herodians.  And all of these groups conspired with the pagan Romans, whom they considered to be a hostile occupying force.  It involved the provincial ruling council, the Sanhedrin, which was also a Jewish religious court.  It involved the Roman governor, a military captain, a detachment of soldiers, and one of our Lord’s leading disciples as well, who was the group’s treasurer.  This cabal also included the mobs of ordinary people, who were whipped up into a frenzy by their leaders and by the fake news of the day. 

They were so brazen, that this collaboration between Big Religion and Big Government with what was essentially the Big Media of the day, placed the charge over the head of Jesus in three languages at a busy crossroads – the equivalent of airing the execution of Jesus on live TV on all of the news channels.

Indeed, they pulled off what seems to be the most unlikely coup in history: the murder of God, the assassination of the King of the world, the lynching of the one man in history who fulfills all of the prophecies of the Old Testament, and who promised to restore Paradise.  This conspiracy seemed to foil God Himself.

And surprisingly, Jesus was killed because He did things like healing people from incurable diseases.  The doctors and politicians of the day could not cure leprosy.  If you had this disease, you were subjected to a lockdown for the rest of your life.  Jesus embarrassed the doctors and politicians by healing the lepers.  And the same for those who were blind and deaf and mute.  Jesus did what surgeons could not do.  Jesus even raised at least three people from death itself, and promised to raise everyone who believes in Him. 

Why, it’s little wonder the powers that be had to kill Him.  They conspired to commit the ultimate act of injustice.  There is an old saying: if you want to know who rules over you, find out whom you are not allowed to criticize.  And our Lord had plenty to say about all of these groups!  Far from being the syrupy-sweet Mister Nice Guy that ignorant and biblically illiterate people think Jesus is, in fact, He is bombastic and unrelenting in His attacks on the very people that He was “not allowed” to criticize.  It’s all right there in the Gospels.  It is surprising to people when they actually read the Bible.  For Jesus took on the whole lot of them.  And for three years, all of these disparate groups who hated each other could only take their pounding from Jesus, who called them out on all of their evil words and deeds.

Of course, there was another option for our Lord’s hearers: they could have repented and believed the good news.  And some of them did.  Some Pharisees and Sadducees converted and followed Jesus.  There was even a zealot, that is, a formerly violent revolutionary, who laid down his sword to follow Jesus.  Sanhedrin members Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who courageously asked Pilate for the body of Jesus, were such followers of Jesus from among the ruling elites.  Even the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, believed Jesus to be innocent, and wanted to release Him.  Pilate got the last laugh by posting “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” and doing the equivalent of posting it on Twitter and running it on every cable news channel.  But even Pilate, in the end, did the bidding of the mob.  The captain who oversaw the crucifixion of Jesus confessed Him to be the Son of God, as did one of the other men who were being crucified.

This was indeed quite the conspiracy.  It even drew in our Lord’s inner circle of disciples, who abandoned Him – even St. Peter, the head of our Lord’s disciples, betrayed Jesus in a shameful way, just as Jesus predicted. 

Perhaps most surprising of all is that Jesus knew every bit of the conspiracy.  He did not use His divine power to evade what was to come.  He did not call upon the legions of angels at His disposal to crush His attackers and the plotters in this conspiracy.  He went to the cross willingly, like a Lamb to the slaughter, for that is indeed who He is, down to the very marrow of His unbroken bones: “The Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world.”

It is indeed surprising that Jesus willingly endures all of this suffering, and dies quickly, before the beginning of the Sabbath.  Jesus dies when He chooses.  For though sinful men participated in this conspiracy, His passion, death, burial, and yes, His resurrection to come, are part of a bigger conspiracy: a conspiracy between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to commit the ultimate act of justice: the payment for the sins of the world.  While the merely human actors in this conspiracy were motivated by selfish hatred, and the desire to be served, the divine conspiracy to place Jesus on the cross is motivated by outwardly-directed love, and the desire not to be served, but to serve, and not only to serve, but to save.

At the cross, Jesus cures the root causes of leprosy, blindness, deafness, muteness, and death itself.  By means of the cross, Jesus conquers the sinfulness and the hatred that motivated this conspiracy and put Him on the cross.  He destroys the head of the conspiracy by crushing the head of the serpent.  And this is the biggest surprise of all, dear friends.

And the details of all of this would not be known, and the depth of this conspiracy and its ramifications would not fully come to bear, until His resurrection, until His ascension, until the coming of the Holy Spirit, and until the Gospels were themselves written, so that we might study and reflect upon the surprising life, death, resurrection, and eternal reign of Jesus.

To this very day, we are lorded over by charlatan religious hucksters and corrupt politicians from all over the world who continue conspire in vain against Jesus and His flock.  There are traitors in the church, from lowly parish pastors pushing lies and feathering their nests, to millionaire TV celebrity preachers, to bishops and popes, and even bureaucrats in our own synod and its various institutions.  And lest we become forgetful of our own sins, like the disciples, we too are part of the conspiracy, dear friends.  For our sins ultimately put our Lord on the cross.  It was to forgive our sins that He willingly died, using the evil intentions of all of the actors in this tragedy, and turning it into a triumph.

So let us plead the blood of Christ when we are confronted with our own sins.  When Satan, who temporarily rules over the mobs and governments and religious factions who oppose the Word of God, when the devil tempts you and accuses you, remember that He tried to tempt Jesus as well.  He accused Jesus as well.  But it was all to no avail.  Remind the devil of the cross, for indeed, “It is written.”

The biggest surprise of the cross is that it forgives you, dear brother, dear sister.  For it is the means by which Jesus becomes your atonement, and your healing from everything.  It is how you are restored, and go from sinner to saint.  The cross is the antidote to sickness and death itself.

And the death of God upon the cross by means of a huge conspiracy that includes both heaven and earth is not even the biggest surprise, dear friends.  And it really isn’t much of a surprise for us, because we have the Word of God to tell us where this is all leading.  Indeed, it is written.  The black drapes that pall our crosses and images of Jesus on this day will give way to white paraments and vestments and glorious celebratory music on the third day.  For the conspiracy to overthrow the King of the universe and to put God into a tomb is a colossal failure to them, but the greatest success of all to Christ and His bride, the church.  The conspirators – included the devil himself – played right into God’s hands.

And not only will our Lord Jesus rise from the slab and walk out of His own tomb, so will all of us who confess Him, dear friends.  This will be the greatest surprise of all to the remaining members of the conspiracy to kill God and silence His criticism.  But we speak the surprising truth with St. Paul, to friend and foe alike: “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Let us gather again here in this place on Sunday, and let our stubborn and vocal presence be part of the worldwide counter-conspiracy to confess Him as God and as King! 

Amen.

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