Good Friday Sermon - April 18, 2014 – Matthew 27:27-61
On Good Friday, there is a distinctly different tone to our worship service. Every other time we gather for worship throughout the year, we do so in the light of Easter Sunday, in the light of the Resurrection. That’s why normally there’s quite a bit of energy and joy in our worship.
But it’s our tradition as a church, to spend real time together reflecting on the events of that first Good Friday, long ago.
We do so to grow in our understanding and appreciation of the loss suffered on that day, of the love expressed on that day, and the Life given that day. [Pause]
This day. This terrible, terrible day. This day of loss, of sorrow, of disappointment and emptiness.
This day where, for all appearances, hope has died.
For the disciples, this is a day where the bitterest, ugliest reality they could have imagined, came true.
Their fears about Jesus entering into Jerusalem, into a toxic climate where the religious leaders were determined to no longer just challenge Jesus and try to trip Him up in terms of the things He taught, but it was clear their tolerance of Jesus had come to an end.
The disciples knew it, and they warned Jesus to not risk going into the City of Peace, Jerusalem.
But go He did, and going into Jerusalem, events unfolded just as ancient prophets had predicted.
We’ve heard read this morning many of those events, all of which led up to the crucifixion of Jesus.
And as Jesus died, He spoke. Elsewhere, when we hear Jesus speak, it is in parables, in sermons, in prayers that He uttered, in dialogue with others.
There He shared words in a relaxed setting, talking with people He loved, encouraging the weak, lifting up the poor, proclaiming Good News to everyone, challenging those who thought too much of themselves or their religiosity.
Here, His words spoken on the cross, are brief, uttered between agonized breaths, as the life was draining out of His body.
They are brief words, but they are potent words. They expose the heart of Jesus - why He came, His humility and compassion, His humanity and ultimately His full acceptance of His mission and His profound faith in the One Who sent Him.
The First Word: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” (Luke 23:34)
His first words uttered on the cross were a simplified expression of why He came in the first place. He prays for the forgiveness of the people who, with intent and malice, were killing him in the moment.
His prayer was for everyone involved in his murder: the crowd who celebrated His arrival on Palm Sunday and then turned against Him, crying out: “Crucify Him!” to Pilate, who had the power to release Him or not.
So He prays here for the common inhabitant of the city of Jerusalem, and He prays for those who had come to the Holy City on a pilgrimage.
He prays for Pilate who opened the door legally to His death. He prays for the Roman soldiers who mocked Him, (“Hail, king of the Jews!”), spit on Him, made jest of His Kingship, who shoved thorns in the shape of a crown on His brow. He prays for the religious leaders who stand around mocking Him:
42 “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”
I want to suggest that He prays for you and me here as well. Even though we see Jesus and His humanity bared in weakness for us on this bitter, ugly day of Good Friday, we can’t forget that He is the Son of God who has chosen this path for Himself.
And as God-in-the-flesh, Jesus knows in His divinity all for whom He died.
That means on the cross, He knows you.He knows your life, your hurts, your pain, your mistakes, your sins, your regrets, your fears.
And for all, Jesus prays: “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing”.
He prays for those who sin in ignorance, but of course His prayer is broad and wide and He prays for us even when, with intent, we offended God and damage ourselves and others through our actions or inactions.
In His prayer here, a high priestly prayer, Jesus is our advocate before God the Father.
The Second Word: “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)
Jesus speaks this to a man who seconds earlier was heaping insults upon Him.
At first blush, this fellow who hangs on a cross beside Jesus adds His voice to all the other mockers of Jesus who hangs in His perfect innocence on the cross, and in a broader sense He layers His disdain for God over all the previous and subsequent mockery and rebellion that humanity has foisted upon its Creator.
Such were some of us, at one time. Mockers of God.
I was raised to think that the very notion of God was primitive, insulting to modern intelligence; that all who believed in God exposed themselves as fools to the contemporary agnostic, truly wise person.
Some of us were mockers of God. This fellow was one of an endless number of God-mockers, not missing from 2014.
But something changed in Him. Somehow his eyes that were scaled over with sin and rebellion and disdain...began to see.
And so this thief, who hung on the cross beside the Saviour of the world, changed...his tune.
While the second criminal continued to hurl insults at Jesus, (mockingly) “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”, the first one began to feel and think differently.
He rebuked the mocking thief: “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
This man who hangs beside Jesus, in a remarkably short period of time, while under the severe trial of crucifixion himself, somehow travelled very far, an incredible distance, in his thoughts.
He went from feeling smug and justified in taunting Jesus to recognizing the innocence of Jesus, the unjust suffering of Jesus, and that Jesus is the One who could justify him before God. And he sees in Jesus the key to paradise. He says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
He goes from thinking Jesus is a charlatan or a fake saviour, to placing his whole trust in Him, recognizing Jesus power to acquit him of his crimes, his sins against God and man...even identifying that paradise is Jesus domain and that Jesus is the King of heaven.
And this one repentant man: This one who changes his mocking voice that once called out among the scoffers, was, to our knowledge, the first to enter heaven under the New Covenant, as Jesus says to Him, no doubt with love, compassion and perhaps no small joy: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23 NIV)
The Third Word: “Dear woman, here is your son.” (John 19:26)
Here Jesus reminds us of the fact of His humanity in another sense. Jesus was a mother’s Son. He grew up in a human family, with family allegiances - with a mother, a step-father and, as other Scriptures say, with brothers and sisters and cousins.
Perhaps, as we look at Jesus upon the cross through the eyes of a mother who raised him, who was present at His first words, His first steps, His first scraped knee, His bar mitzvah;
perhaps when we consider Jesus in His suffering through the eyes of a mother who suffers also at the unjust murder of her Son, we can feel the weight of Jesus’ suffering in another sense, in His mother’s agony.
It’s true that Mary is called in Greek the theotokos, the mother of God. She gave birth to God the Son. A mind-boggling thing for a young teenage virgin to go through. But He was her boy, none the less.
And here, in Jesus 3rd word from the cross, He gives us a preview into the nature of Church as family.
He tells His dear mother that since He will soon be gone, she is to take the disciple John as her son.
This speaks of adoption, this speaks of family not through blood lines, but through relationship to Jesus.
Mary was Jesus’ mother.
John was Jesus friend, His best friend I reckon.
Jesus becomes the centre of, the reason for and the glue that holds together the family of God.
You and I, as followers of Jesus, are sister and brother in the Lord, united through faith in Jesus Christ.
Adopted into the family of God because of the sacrifice of the Son of God.
Here, Jesus inaugurated the web of relationships based on faith in Him that would become known as the body of Christ, the Church universal.
The Fourth Word: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Mark 15:34)
I find this the most difficult of Jesus final words. It’s difficult on the one hand because it is absolutely loaded with theological truth and power.
Theology is the study of God, and the most brilliant thing about God is that He chose in Jesus to suffer.
He chose in Jesus to leave all of heaven’s beauty and safety and splendour, in order to come to this planet, motivated only by the purest love.
He chose to allow Himself to be, by those He came to love and save, beaten and broken and crucified - slaughtered as a lamb.
And that’s just the beginning. He also chose to have all of our sins place upon Him.
Why did Jesus say: “My God, my God, why have You abandoned Me?” Because God the Father turned His face away.
These words recall the reality and the moment when Jesus, separated from God the Father as He endured the wrath of God for the sins of humanity, cried out, expressing the violent sting of alienation from God as He who knew no sin became sin for us.
He was forsaken, stepping into our place, as He took our sins upon Him; forsaken by the Father, who in His holiness will not countenance or accommodate sin.
We’ll come back to close the open wound of this separation that Jesus experienced in a moment.
The Fifth Word: “I am thirsty.” (John 19:28)
Let me read a poem by the songwriter Beverley Lowry.
One day I came to Him, I was so thirsty.
I asked for water, my throat was so dry.
He gave me water that I never dreamed of.
But for this water, my Lord had to die.
He said, "I thirst" yet he made the rivers.
He said, "I thirst" yet he made the sea.
"I thirst," said the king of the ages.
In His great thirst He brought water to me.
Now there’s a river that flows as clear as crystal.
It comes from God’s throne above!
And like a river, it wells up inside me,
Bringing mercy and life giving love.
He said, "I thirst" yet he made the rivers.
He said, "I thirst" yet he made the sea.
"I thirst," said the king of the ages.
In His great thirst He brought water to me.
The Sixth Word: “It is finished!” (John 19:30)
On this day of Good Friday, as we consider all that Jesus lived through in real time on the last day of his life; as we consider His last words, it is perhaps this word that begins to open the door, if even just a crack, to what awaits us in a few days.
When Jesus uttered these words, it marked the moment when Jesus understood not that His life was truly over, not that His suffering was necessarily at an end, but that the purpose for which He was sent had been completed.
He had asked the Father while He prayed in the garden to, if it was possible, remove this cup, this experience, this responsibility, this agony from His path.
He prayed while sweating drops of blood from the sheer anxiety of the anticipation of His crucifixion. But then He said to God: “Not my will, but Yours be done”.
With that prayer, Jesus embraced His path to the cross.
But here Jesus says: It is finished. The purpose of His incarnation, His birth, His life, of every day He lived, was fulfilled in this, His death.
His purpose of creating a way for us to be reconciled with God was finished.
His purpose of trading His life for ours, taking our penalty upon Himself, suffering in our place, absorbing God’s wrath for sin, like I said. It was finished.
And now, from this vantage point, from Easter 2014, we can look back and speak of the finished work of the cross, from which flows our hope, our salvation, our joy and our healing.
The Seventh and last Word of Jesus, offered in a final, gasping breath: “Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands!” (Luke 23:46)
Here, Jesus reconciles Himself with His Father’s will and with His own chosen path. Was Jesus forsaken by the Father? He says He was.
Was He abandoned as He took upon Himself the ugliness of our sin, when God turned His face away from His own Son? Jesus says He was.
But Jesus didn’t lose focus. Jesus didn’t lose track of His mission. Jesus didn’t get confused by all that was happening to Him, even in His torment and agony.
Jesus choses, despite the trial, despite the fiery furnace that He is in, to place His whole confidence in God, to entrust His ebbing life into the hands of God the Father.
Jesus faced the ultimate trial, under the harshest circumstances - not for Himself. Not to redeem His own life. Not to get something for Himself. He did it for you. He did it for you, and He did it for me.
Let me ask you: If Jesus was thrown into the ultimate furnace for you, can you begin to sense Him in your - smaller - furnaces with you?
He has endured the worst that awaited me and you. He is with us in each daily struggle, present in each moment of pain.
Jesus laid down His life for you, if He traded His own well-being, His own lifeblood for you. Can you accept that? Can you receive from the hand of God that kind of love?
Can you accept that you, personally, matter enough to God, that God loves you so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die in your place, to suffer in your stead for your sins...
So that you and me and all who believe that He did what He did needn’t perish, but can have everlasting life with God?
We meet this day to reflect on the passion, the suffering of our Saviour. We meet to remember…
Now as we enter in to our cross ceremony, where we will literally nail our sins to the cross, let us worship our crucified King. Let us remember, as we hear the sound of the hammers pounding, the nails that pierced Jesus.
Let us stand together to read from the prophet Isaiah:
He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all…For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished…Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer…
After he has suffered, He will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
