GOOD FRIDAY

A MEDITATION BEFORE THE CROSS

St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church • April 6, 2012

The Rev'd Howard T. W. Stowe

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you:

because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

We just heard what we call “The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It refers to the whole account, the holy story of Jesus from the sad excuse for a trial, to the suffering journey to the cross and crucifixion, and finally to death.

I used to think that when they talked about “Jesus’ passion” they meant Jesus’ pain. I used to look at the antique crucifix someone had brought me back from Spain and try to make sense out of all the blood, sweat, and tears that someone had so realistically painted on the dead corpus of a very gaunt man, his ribs protruding, and his body hanging from arms held in a deep “V” to the left and right of his thorn-crowned brow. You’ve probably seen one just like it somewhere.

I would sit and look at it and think to myself, “If this is the passion of Jesus, then I have to figure out what it has to do with me. What’s this pain and suffering got to do with my relationship with God?” And I’m going to tell you something that may sound strange.

I couldn’t ever find any meaning in it at all.

All the pain and suffering I’ve ever seen hasn’t been anything to glory in. I’ve been with a lot of older people who died in front of me with lung cancer. I saw nothing glorious, not once. I buried over 30 men who died with AIDS, including someone very close to me. I can tell you that their suffering was never worth singing about.

Standing next to the parents of a child who had been hit by a car and killed, or with someone whose partner of 35 years died unexpectedly ¾ standing with him in his grief, or with a woman who’s marriage was ending, or any number of other times where I’ve stared pain and suffering in the face… I just can’t pretend it was ever glorious or even meaningful. It just hurt. It hurt a whole lot.

And I came to hate it when people would try to come up with flip rationalizations for me. “God wanted this!” they’d say. That’s probably the worse one. Or they’d say, “This is nothing compared to what Jesus suffered.” That’s a pretty close second worse.

No, if there’s anything meaningful about the passion of Jesus, it sure isn’t the pain and suffering, no matter how many of my very favorite hymns seem to say it is.

Okay. If the passion isn’t about the blood, sweat, and tears… then what? What else could it be? I knew I had to figure this “passion” thing out. Either that or quit coming to Good Fridays for the rest of my life.

I didn’t much think I could get very far with that idea, what with being a priest and all.

So I sat down again, this time with a New Testament in front of me instead of that crucifix. And what jumped out at me were these words.

Lama Sabachthani…WHY?

“Why God? Why did you forsake me? To what purpose? Why?”

And it suddenly hit me… this gut-of-the-soul crying-out of Jesus… this is the passion.

Not the flogging and the spitting. Not the terrible walk up the Via Dolorosa. Not the nails in the wrists or the weight on the arms or the fluid in the lungs. That wasn’t where I should have been looking.

I should have been looking at the question that has no answer.

Jesus says about his persecutors and his crucifiers, “Forgive them for they know not what they are doing” But isn’t it a paradox ¾ especially if he’s God’s Son ¾ that to God he says, “Why? Why are you doing this? Why have you forsaken me?”

The question that has no answer has been around humanity for a very, very long time. Job sat in dung and asked it. Abraham took his son Isaac up that mountain and asked it. In fact, Adam stood in the Garden with Eve beside him and in effect, they both asked it.

Why? To what purpose?  Lama sabachthani?

The central mystery of Good Friday is this “space” of emptiness between where we know God and where we can’t. Notice I didn’t say “the emptiness between where we know God and where we don’t.”

I say that because if we think we ought to be able to answer the question that has no answer, we’re going to end up with Guilt Friday instead of Good Friday.

It’s so hard to leave a mystery alone. It’s so hard to stop trying to come up simple answers. It’s frightening.

To sit here in front of the cross is to face something about our fundamental aloneness… our fundamental isolation from God. Not just God, of course. Our neighbor… even our own Self at times.

Why? Why in the “Cross-moments” of life… why has God forsaken us?

We’ll never answer that question. But it doesn’t mean that’s all we have to say today. Because if that’s it and nothing more, we have no reason to be here.

But we have a very good reason to be here and that is that we know the end of the story, don’t we? Without it, the darkness will overcome us and the shadows will engulf us and we will only see the antique cross.

And it will only be Gruesome Friday.

No, there’s only one way out of here. Only by going through the valley of the shadow of death will we learn to fear no evil. Only by staying close to the cross with Mary, and Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary of Magdala, and the beloved disciple John only by standing near the cross will we catch a glimpse of something else… something that hints at what God is up to in the vacuous times when we’re empty of hope and feel abandoned.

Look away from the dead figure and look at those people. They stay there, standing where death’s gate and life’s edge touch.

They are the faces of a new humanity. They are alone but not alone. Those standing back in the shadows begin to come forward. Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus step out of their aloneness and join the women. And little by little they begin to become a community of the faithful.

Why? Why should the very shattering of hopes and promises cause a new community to begin to step forward? Why do they risk this?

It’s because of something they know. The women know. John, the beloved disciple knows. Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus know.

The list gets longer. It reaches our time. It’s here, this noonday. Our humanity is still standing there at the gates of death on the edge of life, but looking into the face of death and knowing that “death” is not the final word.

When I look at that cross in front of me, I see the moment when human history was turned inside out, the moment when what it means to be a man or woman was turned away from the consequences of sin, the moment when life and all creation began to go home to God again.

What meaning does this have for us?

When I ask this question I look straight into the deepest moment of Jesus’ passion… because it’s there in that cry ¾ “Why, God? Why?” there’s where I begin to know what others many others knew long before I discovered it.

There is where, as Clement of Alexandria wrote:

…in o’erwheming final strife

The Lord of life has victory,

And sin is slain, and death brings life,

And earth inherits heaven’s key.

And, you know something else? Here’s where all those I thought God was abandoning, all those whose suffering and pain was and still is meaningless to me, all those who hurt and whose hurt I felt here’s where I see them stepping forward toward me from the shadows.

And in the passion of Jesus, I see that right here in my despair is where I am saved by the grace of a God who does not abandon me, but meets me and calls me into glorious light.

In just a few moments, we’ll be receiving the outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace that is Jesus’ promise to be with us unto the end of the ages.

The Sacrament of Holy Communion is the agreed-upon meeting-place where Christ’s Presence is made known in broken bread and poured-out wine.

“Here our eyes are opened to see God's hand at work in the world around us. Here we are delivered from coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.”

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, remove all fear and want from us by the redeeming power of your victory over sin through your death on the cross. And let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in you, O Christ, that we may worthily love and serve the world in your name.

Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the Bread.