Good Friday  C                R Lundquist                           4/6/07

Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12       http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=42813416

Ps 22                            http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=42813444

Hebrews 10:1-25            http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=42813477

John 18:1 – 19:37          http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=42813523

Jesus the Nazarene received one sentence –

but there were many judgments the day. 

Judgments upon:

Judas – who betrayed his friend

The soldiers – who were just doing their job

Chief priests – who ignored their ideals

Pharisees – who used “faith” to advance their political goals

Caiaphas – who valued expediency above all else

Annas – who was willingly manipulated

The officer of the guard – who reveled in his own cruelty

Simon Peter – who denied his friend at the worst possible moment

Pilate – who was unable to do what he knew was right

The people – who looked for and found their scapegoat

Barabbas – who was exposed as the greedy opportunist he was

And the disciples – who abandoned their Teacher, their master.

            They all stood back & looked upon the one they had pierced.

                        Can you see yourself in this drama?

            Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

That’s why we tell this story – to make it real.  That’s part of the relationship we enter into at baptism and cling to throughout the life of faith.  Are you fed by Christ in the Eucharist?  Then stand on Golgotha and be a witness to his Passion.

It was the reality of the moment –

            The thorns piercing his scalp

                        The cold iron spikes rending his skin & muscle –

that gives lie to the pervasive secular concept of Jesus.

            That he was a nice man,

                        a good preacher,

                                    an interesting philosopher.

It was the ways of the world,

            the sin and the separation

                        that crucified Jesus.

And we mourn – not as for a loved one taken by illness

            Or even a friend killed suddenly in an accident

But as for an innocent one, unjustly slain for sin –

            and the feelings of fear, rage, impotence & despair…

                        they join with the grief that enfolds us on this day,

      and whenever the world drops away from beneath our feet…

Were you there?

            Soren Kierkegaard wrote:

            “One thing unites us Christians – our forgetting how much we have been loved by God in Christ.”

            Remember…  remember…  remember…  we call it the anamnesis, the “not forgetting” in Greek.  The imprint of Jesus’ story upon our lives is to be as the mark of a nail, a wound of love.  A costly, fatal wound, freely given out of an unfathomable love.

            That’s why we tell this story – to make it real.  We’re here to stand on Golgotha and to be a witness to the wounds, and to that wondrous love.

Amen.