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Sermon, Theology & Culture

The Long Road to Good Friday – A Good Friday Sermon

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PASSION GOSPEL: John 18:1–19:42 

*Note: Sermons are posted in the manuscript draft that they were preached in, and may contain typos or other errors that were resolved in my delivery. See the Sherwood Park Lutheran Facebook Page for video

It has been a long road to this moment.

From the mountain of Transfiguration down into the Lenten wilderness. 
From the tempter to Nicodemus’s questions. 
From the dark night to the woman at the well in the noon day sun. 
From Jacob’s well to the blindman not knowing who had healed him. 
From a community in chaos to a community grieving at Bethany. 
From Mary, Martha and a raised Lazarus to the road to Jerusalem covered in palm branches. 
From shouts of Hosanna to the table of the Lord. 
From Betrayal at night to Golgatha by noon. 

And now from Lent to Holy Week to the bottom of it all on the cross. 

The journey to Good Friday is one that takes a lifetime to prepare for. It is one that begins long before Transfiguration, with Angels and Pregnant Virgins and picturesque mangers. 

It begins with a garden paradise and exile from Eden.

It beings with the words “Let there be Light.”

Good Friday was where this story was going since the beginning. 

And now that we are here, now that cross has been planted on Calvary, now that Jesus has been nailed to the tree, now that we have born witness to the execution of the one sent to save…

We ask why? What does it all mean? Who is at fault?

It feels like it could be our fault. Maybe it could be our mistake. 

We did choose sin in the garden. 
We did refuse to repent.
We did choose to sin again after repenting. 

We do put ourselves first.
We choose ourselves before others.  

We harm our neighbour
With our greed, and indifference, and unwillingness, and selfishness.
With our hoarding and racism and wall building and excuses.
With our celebration of power and wealth and control. 

And we harm creation
With our callousness and entitlement and refusal to care
With our destructive actions and war making and striving for more
With our consuming everything and anything that can be consumed. 

We do all of that and more.

So nailing the Messiah to the cross doesn’t feel out of the question. 

It feels like the cross is our fault, our mistake, our consequence. 

And if that was all that Good Friday was about, if Good Friday was only asking why? 

Asking how we got here from Creation and Eden, from Angels and Mangers, from Transfiguration and Lent…

Then maybe we would have our answer. 

But this is not all that Good Friday means. 

Humanity’s best nailing Jesus to the cross is not all there is. 
Humanity using our great power to put God to death is not the last stop of this long journey. 

We ask why? What does this mean?

And God has a different answer. 

God knew that Good Friday was coming from the beginning. 
God saw the cross in Eden. 
God knew that we would try to put Messiah to death. 
From the Angels singing of his birth
From voice speaking from the heavens at the mount of Transfiguration
God knew that Golgotha was where this long road would lead.

But God also knows that Good Friday is not the end. 

Good Friday is not the last stop of the journey. 
The cross is not the last page of the story.
On this day God is doing something new. 

The cross – the pinnacle of humanity’s sinful and death dealing ways, Will be God’s new beginning. 
Where we fail to repent, God will turn us around. 
Where put ourselves first, God will give up all Godself for our sake. 
Where we harm our neighbour and ourselves God will heal and restore that which is broken. 

Where we use our great power of death. 

God will use God’s great power. 
God’s power to keep on going even when things seem to have ended
God’s power of new beginnings when there seemed to be nothing. 
God’s power of life that will stand higher than death on a cross. 

So yes it has been a long road to this moment. 

And yes it might feel like the culmination of everything we have done that brought us here. 

But for God, Good Friday is not the end. 

For God, the cross is not the final destination. 
For the God that spoke life into being, the cross is transformed. 
Transformed into a new creation. 
A New creation for God’s people created a new. 

For God, Good Friday is the beginning. 

covid-19, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Good Friday is neither special nor unique

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John 18:1-19:42

Good Friday is neither special nor unique.

What happens on Good Friday is no different than what happens others days. 

One falsely convicted man killed by a merciless and cruel government is barely even news-worthy in our world. 

Jesus was no unarmed black man killed by the cops, causing marches in the streets, social media hashtags and widespread shows of support. Jesus’ followers hid away after his death. 

Jesus was no Ukrainian family shelled in from of new cameras by careless or cruel Russian military. Only a few devoted followers wept for Jesus. The whole world weeps for Ukraine and the atrocities committed there. 

Jesus was no missing and murdered indigenous woman, no victim of residential schools. His beating, his death did not spark an inquiry. His unmarked grave did not spark an apology from the Pope himself.

There were no news reports for the crucifixion. There were no hashtags like #PrayforJesus. There were no flags to put on profile pictures, no pundits or reporters or commentators who talked and talked and talked. 

Good Friday is not special. It is just another day for us. 

Good Friday is everyday in our world. 

Just in the past year we have come up with so many new names for Good Friday, so many new names for the violence and death that we simply cannot end:

Kyiv, Bucha, Kharkiv, Mariupol. Shanghai, Tel Aviv, Sacramento, Kabul. Ukraine, Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan.

Putin, the Kremlin, Zelenskyy, COVID-19, Variants, Omicron. Convoys, protests, truckers. Inflation, housing, poverty. January 6th, Capitol Riot, Insurrection. Residential schools, reconciliation, climate change.

Our list of new Good Friday words is so long we forget what we were listing off in the first place. 

Our list of new Good Friday words is so long that we forget them almost as soon as we create them. 

Our list of new Good Friday words makes us numb. 
Our list makes violence and death feel normal. 

The first Good Friday was not special. One man died on a cross. 

One man who angered those in power, so they go rid of him. 
One man who didn’t give the chanting crowds their King, so they started shouting crucify. 
One man whose own followers betrayed and abandoned him in his worst hour.

Jesus died like the rest of us, 
Jesus suffered violence and cruelty and hate like the rest of us,
Jesus was just another person to suffer an unjust and merciless death, 

The cross of Good Friday was not special.

Except that not being special is what makes Good Friday special.
We didn’t think that God would be on that cross. 
We didn’t think that God would die at our hands. 

The cross of Good Friday was not special, the violence of the death was not special, the ones who condemned were not special. 

The one who died was. 
The one who died changed everything. 
The one who died was God.

Today, God has died. On Good Friday God has died. 

And all those other words for Good Friday, for death and violence in our world. Those words from that list so long we forget. Those words lose their power. All those days of death and violence and suffering that seem to come at us unrelentingly from the news, from around the world, from our backyards.

All those Good Fridays that seem to happen far too often. 

They lose their power. 

Because the God who died, died with us. 
Because the God who died, lived with us. 
Because the God who died, loved with us.

God died on Good Friday.

But death did not destroy God. 
And God is not forgotten.
And God is not finished. 

Good Friday and all our other words for violence and death are not bigger than God is. 
On Good Friday, God who is bigger than death showed us something new. 
On Good Friday God gave us truly new words. Words that change the world.

Words likes:

Mercy
Forgiveness
Compassion 
Grace
Love

New words that God uses to change us. 

On Good Friday God dies with us.

But what is ended,
What is finished,
What is over is,
the power of death.

On Good Friday death is ended. 
On Good Friday death is no more
On Good Friday death will never have the final word.

Today, on Good Friday, God has a new word. 

One word that changes everything.  

Life. 

__________________________________

Artwork –  Golgotha by Edvard Munch, 1900.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

Good Friday, Pandemic and the Cross

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GOSPEL: John 18:1–19:42

The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John. (read the passion gospel)

Sermon

The shadow of cross is dark and wide today. 

The presence of death feels closer than ever. 

The cross that is so often depicted standing behind mangers and stables at Advent,

stands tall above beds for the dying rather than for infants

and different makeshift shelters today. 

The cross is spoken of with words that we didn’t even know a few weeks or months ago. 

Novel Coronavirus, Covid-19. 

The cross is revealed with words that we really didn’t understand, and still have yet to grasp. 

Pandemic. 

The cross looms high and mighty over hospitals and temporary field units. 

The cross’s darkness has forced the world forced to stay home. 

The cross disrupts the work of governments, schools, businesses, public services and more. 

The cross demands the sacrifice of those who serve on front lines to risk health and safety.  

The cross is changing the world with numbers. Number that grow arbitrarily, numbers that terrify, numbers that signify entire lives ending while still in the middle of living, families unable to grieve, communities forced to adapt their care and support from afar.

The cross has arrived in a way that it hasn’t arrived in a long time, in a way that few alive today understand or comprehend. 

And Jesus has been nailed to it, left to struggle for breath, left to suffocate unable to bring air into his lungs out of exhaustion. 

Jesus has been nailed to it, unjustly, cruelly and for the gain of those in power, so that human greed and contempt can keep its grip on Godlike power. 

Jesus has been nailed to it at young age, as someone who shouldn’t receive a death sentence, as someone who simply got mixed up in political games beyond his control. 

Jesus has been nailed to the cross today, and it feels like just one more to add to the list of deaths, the list that we know has only begun being written. 

The shadow of the cross is indeed dark and wide. 

But it is not just pandemic and illness that makes the cross seem taller. 

The cross is still our moment of shame, our moment of attempted power, our moment of trying to put ourselves before God. 

The cross is still our human effort to put God to death, even as God keeps coming to us in life. 

We want power, we want security, we want safety. We want to control our world, especially as it spins out of control beyond us. 

We deny the danger, we forget to care for others, we put ourselves first, we try to use the power of death for our own gain. 

Even still the cross has existed in God’s heart since the beginning of creation.  

Even still Jesus goes to the cross knowing that it is God’s beloved creation putting him there. 

Even still God is willing to die because we demand it, because our sin and pride demand it, because our selfishness demands it. 

Yet today is the cross’s final day of power. 

And yet, the cross will become more than our death symbol looming large. 

And yet, the cross is God’s means to change our course and set creation on a new path. 

What has been there since the beginning, Christ bring to its end. 

Today Christ completes the journey towards creation. 

Today Christ completes the journey towards us.

Today Christ joins creation and creator together in fullness, 

undoing the damage of the fall, 

undoing the separation endured since, 

reconciling what was broken between us. 

What has always been the end, Christ now begins as something new. 

Today, Jesus goes where none of us can go and does what none but God can do.  

Jesus goes to all the places where cross is found. 

Jesus goes the hospitals and field units. 

Jesus goes to empty streets and quiet neighbourhoods. 

Jesus goes to the front lines at testings centres, and grocery stores, and public health offices, and nursing home windows, and emergency rooms and intensive care units.

Jesus goes to lonely quarantined people.

Jesus goes to temporary isolation housing for health workers. 

Jesus goes to stressed out, cooped up families. 

Jesus goes to hungry seniors waiting for food drop offs

Jesus goes to worried and anxious people whose hearts can find little peace.

Jesus goes to the grieving and the separated and the brokenhearted. 

Jesus goes to every place where the cross looms large.

Jesus goes to every corner touched by the shadow of the cross.

Jesus goes to death itself. 

And on the cross Jesus will take on our darkness,

take on our shadows and sin,

take on our suffering and trials and tribulations

take on our our illness and disease.

Jesus will take our death and make it God’s. 

And then Jesus will take us and make us God’s own. 

And Jesus will make the ending the beginning.

And Jesus will shake off our power of sin, our power of death, our power of the cross. 

And Jesus will start a new thing. 

A new thing on the cross, a new thing where we thought there was only death. 

Today in the dark and wide shadow, 

Today as the cross seems to stand above hospital beds and quarantine rooms.

Today when we use new words and forgotten words to describe death. 

Today Christ does a new thing.

Christ hangs on the cross, without breath in his lungs, with pandemic in the air

And prepares the world 

For New Life 

Amen.

Theology & Culture

The Crucified God is God – and we are not

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Gospel: John 18:1—19:42

Seven weeks ago, we gathered on another mountain – the mount of Transfiguration.

On that mountain top, Jesus was flanked by Moses and Elijah, and his disciples gathered at his feet.

From there we descended into the valley of Lent.

Into the wilderness, just as the Israelites were sent into wilderness to be found by God.

The wilderness was not the place of danger we imagine, but the place of renewal.

Rather the danger was found in the return from wilderness, in the journey towards human chaos.

It was on streets of Jerusalem where Jesus found the centre of chaos and struggle.

It is on our our streets and in our communities where Jesus meets human messiness.

And along the journey from down the mountain through the wilderness and chaos of Lent, Jesus kept coming back to God’s people, kept coming back to us.

He came and answered our big questions about life and suffering.

He showed us the prodigal Father, who sought out his lost sons.

He let himself be anointed with perfume like a body being prepared for burial.

And then Jesus rode up into Jerusalem again.

On a donkey, with a crowd waving palms, chanting Hosanna, save now…

filled with expectation that he was their new king,

come to take away their problems with power and might.

But by the end of the week, the crowds had turned.

As Jesus gathered at the family table with his disciples last night, he knew what was coming.

There would be no more rest, no more sleep, no more calm.

There would be betrayal and denial.

There would be sham trials and wrongful convictions.

There would be police brutality followed by summary execution.

And through night into today, the humanity that was so oblivious to him this whole time,

Who clamoured for him to perform like a side show,

to feed the bored and hungry, to satiate the crowds….

Today this humanity has woken up…

This humanity has become aware of just who Jesus is.

The baby born in a manger to peasant parents,

promised by angels, visited by shepherd, worshipped by Magi…

this baby who is God come in flesh, word incarnate.

This baby is now this man.

This man who is God.

This man who is God, which means we are not.

This man who is God, who threatens our claims to power.

This man who is God, who makes us feel small.

Jesus has come to centre, to the core of humanity. To our messy and chaotic existence and reminded us our limitedness, of our ungodliness, of our fallibility and imperfections.

And that just wont do for us.

And so we go back up the mountain to send the God-Man away.

We march up Golgaltha with murderous rage.

And we haul a cross along with us.

We who are the best humanity has to offer.

Religious leaders, political leaders, the educated and prominent.

We pick up the nails too, and desire to be rid of this One.

This One who is God in flesh and who brings God close.

This One who announces the Kingdom coming near.

This One who talks about grace and mercy at inconvenient times.

This One, the Christ, the anointed of God, sent to save…

We will put to death and be done with him.

And then we can go back to being in control.

Back to being in charge.

Back to being God.

Except this mountain was always where Jesus was going.

From the beginning of creation, from the moment God spoke us into being.

From the dirt and clay that formed the Adam, the first born of creation.

There was also a cross.

The cross was always the place where God’s Word in flesh would meet us.

Always the place where the Christ would confront our most God-like power.

The cross was always the place where the God of creation would meet the God we tried to create of ourselves.

The cross was always the place where God was going to bridge the gap to human chaos and messiness…

Where God would rejoin what was split apart in the fall.

Where God would reconcile creator with created, humanity and divinity.

Where God would remember and remind us that we were created in God’s image, in Christ’s image.

Here on this mountain, the skull, the place of humanity’s power of death,

God declares that we are not God once and for all.

And that sin and death are no longer in control.

God declares a new reality by reminding us of the first reality.

God declares that God is God

And God declares that we are God’s creation.

That we belong to the crucified one.

That our chaos and messiness,

Our human failings and fragility

Our questions and vulnerability

Our discomfort and overwhelming feelings

That all of us, including sin and earth

Belongs now to the one who hangs on the cross.

The one in whom all creation began

And whom creation put to death.

That we belong to this One, this Word, this Christ, this Jesus.

That we belong to this One who loves beyond all love.

That we belong to this Word of Life.

That we belong to this Christ who saves

That we belong to Jesus who makes us one.

Who gathers us into God.

Into God, who even though dead on a cross…

Who is life beyond all life.

Who is freely given love and salvation

Who is mercy and forgiveness for us.

This God, who even though dead on a cross…

Has come again to the mountain top

and finally shown us once and for

That we are now a new creation

That there is now

New Life in the crucified Christ.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

When the Old Thing was Finished

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John 18:1-19:42

The journey to this moment, began with those first stories of Advent. The angels that told Mary and Joseph that they would have a son. We don’t think much about Good Friday while singing Christmas carols.

But we began to clue in to where Jesus was headed when he went down the mountain of transfiguration into the valley of Lent.

From temptation in the wilderness, to secret meetings with the Pharisee Nicodemus as night, to Jacob’s well and the woman who had had 5 husbands, to the blind man who didn’t know who had healed him, to Mary and Martha’s grief on the road to Bethany… as Jesus uncovered our fears and anxieties in intimate encounters week after week… there were signs, signs that something bigger than just our issues and personal sufferings was being confronted. Jesus was passing by the particularities of our humanity. Jesus passed by because he was headed somewhere else.

Jesus was going to contend with something much bigger, something that was not about us individually… but something that is about us collectively.

And by the time we stood with the crowds waving palm branches, singing “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”…singing “Save us now,  Son of David” there was no doubt that we would find ourselves here.

There was no doubt that the disciples would betray and deny him.
There was no doubt that the mobs would demand crucifixion
There was no doubt political and religious leaders would use the outrage for their own benefit.
There was no doubt that the empire would coldly and ruthlessly order execution.

There was no doubt that the place Jesus was going to was the cross.

We could see that today was where Jesus was going because Good Friday we have seen before.

We have seen the betrayals and denials of friends and family.
We watch the angry mobs crying out for vengeance on cable news.
We witness daily political and religious and business leaders use our outrage to turn a profit or gain a political win or entrench the power of religious institutions.
We see an empire that treats people coldly and ruthlessly even as we live and thrive because of that same empire.

We have no doubt that Jesus could end up on cross, because people like Jesus always do.

The ones who speak out.
The ones who risk themselves for others.
The ones who fight for goodness over self-benefit, justice over victory, compassion over power.
The ones who show warmth amidst coldness, who show love over ruthlessness.

We know today, we know Good Friday well, because in our world, there is also Good Monday, Good Tuesday, Good Wednesday and Thursday, Good Saturday, and Sunday.

Jesus’ journey to Good Friday is a common journey.

And it isn’t.

Because we remember the angels of Advent and Christmas, because we remember the voice of God thundering over the waters of Baptism and on the mountain of Transfiguration.

And then even though we have seen this story often enough, of betray and denial, of outraged mobs, and manipulative leaders, and cold uncaring Empires… beneath the cross we finally see the thing that Jesus has been pulling us towards all along.

The truth that Jesus tried to remind the tempter of.
The questions that Jesus explained to Nicodemus
The living water that Jesus gave to the woman at the well.
The sight that Jesus revealed to the blindman.
The buried  mercy that Jesus opened up for Martha, Mary and Lazarus.

Today Jesus reveals to us not another person doomed to die on a cross.

Today, Jesus reveals God, willing to die on a cross.

For us.

And thus begins the new thing that God is doing.

The new thing in oldest of stories.

In oh so common of human deaths for the sake our failing humanity, our sinfulness exposed in every way imaginable…. in the ultimate hubris, our belief if we just killed God we could be God.

God shows us life by dying.

Jesus shows us the beginning accomplished through the end.

Jesus shows us mercy given by a God who simply won’t be pushed away any longer.

Jesus shows us the love and grace that will be born, and live and pass by and come close and be just like us. How this love and grace ties humanity and all creation together on the cross.

Jesus shows us the completion of the journey where God does the thing that we have refused to do since Adam and Eve left the garden….

God joins the fallen to the divine, joins the sinful to the forgiven, joins the finite to the infinite, permanence of death to constant renewal of life.

Jesus shows us a God that dies just like us.

A God comes to us and finds us in every place we can possibly go, even in death.

So that we will live, and death will not be our end anymore.

No… we don’t think about Good Friday while we sing Christmas carols.

But God does.

The cross was where the incarnation, where God come in flesh, was going from the beginning.

The cross is the place where God was going to redeem creation all along.
The cross is the place and Good Friday is the day when the old thing – the power of sin and death –

When the old thing was finished.

And Jesus made all things new.