Text: John 18:1
– 19:42
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
All of human history has led up to the events of Good Friday. It is painful to listen to, but it is how God Himself is restoring and recreating the world. It is through the pain and sorrow of the cross that God Himself is restoring and recreating us, taking a chisel to humanity to renew the image of God that we traded away for a little bit of forbidden knowledge about good and evil. The remaking of mankind is painful and shocking – and God Himself received the blows of the hammer and the cuts of the chisel. God Himself took flesh to suffer and to die. This story is the most exciting in all of human history – and it really is the sum total of what it means to be human, and what our lives are all about.
For in spite of our rebellion, God did not abandon us. In spite of our sins, God does not recoil from us. Rather God becomes one of us, and we recoiled from Him: whose “appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance… despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” But His passion is not just another act of gratuitous violence. Rather there is a purpose: “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed.”
Good Friday is a story that is too remarkable not to be authored by God Himself. For God steps into mankind’s story – the Author becoming a character. The Creator takes on the nature of a creature, in order to save creation by creating it anew. It is a story of betrayal, of suffering, of death – but also one of redemption. It is a story that was thousands of years in the making and in the telling. For God began to not only tell the story – but to bring it to reality – in the Old Testament. The story of Good Friday shines like a light on the Scriptures of the Old Testament that were kept in darkness until that very day when darkness came at high noon.
St. John records the passion for us in great detail.
We begin in a garden – even as all of human history began in a garden. And in this garden, we begin with our Lord’s arrest – where even there, as He is outnumbered by “a band of soldiers” armed with “lanterns and torches and weapons,” the mention of His name throws them to the ground.
Jesus is first taken to the Jewish Council, where He is put on trial before the so-called high priest. Jesus is, of course, not only the true High Priest, but also the King of Israel. But He willingly submits to these corrupted men who ironically judge Him. Seeking the death penalty, they bring Jesus to Pilate: the Roman governor. For the Romans will crucify criminals who were not citizens of Rome. Jesus confesses to Pilate that He is the King – but that His kingdom “is not of this world.” And in spite of His innocence, Pilate has Jesus flogged and subjected to the cross.
John points out the details of our Lord’s passion and crucifixion that were indeed prophesied by the prophets in the Word of God, hundreds of years before. Once again, the cross serves as the torch that lights the words on the pages of Scripture. Without the cross, one cannot even see the words, let alone understand them.
The unthinkable happens at the cross. God meets His own mother according to the flesh. This reminds us of who Jesus is. He is God who has come to redeem and recreate the world. But He is also a man – a flesh-and-blood part of the world who was not only “conceived by the Holy Spirit” but also “born of the virgin Mary.” And as He breathes His last, Jesus takes care of His mother – giving her to John to care for her.
And once this last arrangement has been made, Jesus is ready to carry out God’s plan that was made “before the foundation of the world.” Before breathing His last, He fulfills one last prophecy concerning His thirst, being “poured out like water,” saying, “I thirst.” And it is here that the greatest tragedy and the greatest victory in all of human history happens: “It is finished.”
“It is finished,” dear friends. Our Lord’s suffering is finished. The life of God as a man subjected to the hatred of other men is finished. The project to reclaim and renew the world is finished. It is made complete. The mission has been accomplished. Jesus “bowed His head and gave up His spirit.”
“It is finished.”
And though the story is finished, there is an epilogue. There is a story within the story that will play out on the third day after. But today is the eve of the Sabbath – the holy Passover Sabbath. The body of Jesus cannot remain on the cross. Jesus has more to do in the flesh now that His mission to save us has been finished. Jesus is going to show how foolish it is for men to try to interfere in the will of God.
God speaks prophetically yet again, as John witnesses the blood and water pouring out of our Lord’s side, like a fountain of life, like baptism and the Lord’s Supper by which Jesus continues to come to us where we are, in His flesh, in bringing His miraculous presence to us in space and time.
“It is finished,” Jesus continues to say concerning our sins, concerning the devil’s influence over us, concerning our death and the grave. For Jesus has completed the mission, and He has rescued us as our own Kinsman-Redeemer.
John tells of the mercy of our Lord’s friends Joseph and Nicodemus: Pharisees and members of the Council who risked their lives to take care of the body of Jesus. John continues to point out the remarkable fulfillments of passages of the Old Testament that Jesus completes and fulfills even as His body is laid in the tomb – in a garden.
We are back in a garden: the Garden of Eden and the garden where our Lord’s passion began. His passion ends in a garden, in the borrowed tomb. The story of our Lord’s passion begins and ends in a garden. “It is finished.” But though the story is finished, dear friends, though it has been brought to completion – it isn’t over. For a garden is not a place of death, but of life. All of human history has led to this point. It is indeed finished, dear friends, but this is not the end of the story.
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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