When the Cross Becomes Good News
Sermon for Good Friday
April 7, 2023
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Jesus’s dying words, cried out from the cross, express about as much agony as possible. God, incarnate in human form, killed by human hands, and experiencing suffering so brutal that he feels separated, not just from his creator, but from his very self.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Who is responsible for this?? Who can we reach out to blame for Jesus’s death? Who can we cry out to for justice, to execute punishment on whoever would be cruel enough to do such a thing ? Who can we hold to account for the death of God, our God, the one who we love? This suffering simply cannot stand - whoever caused it should have to answer for it.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Historically, Christians have pointed outside of ourselves, accusing others of killing the one who we’ve built our faith around loving. We’ve pushed the blame for Jesus’s death onto anyone but us, assuming that we are the disciples in the story – flawed, but not the bad guys. The *bad* guys, of course, are anyone but us – and historically, Christians have seized on this day, in particular, to attack Jewish people, deciding that *they* are the bad guys in the story. And when Christians, the most powerful religious group in the Western world, decide that *we* are the good guys, and Jewish people are the bad guys, massive bloodshed happens. Pogroms happen.
There’s a bloody history of reading the gospel we heard today, in Christian churches, churches with liturgies very close to ours, and then going out and hurting Jewish people. There’s a history of hearing the story of a Jewish man, an oppressed religious minority, killed and tortured and bled and hung out to die, and then going out to kill Jewish people about it. There’s a history of hearing of the death of Christ, and instead of looking inward for blame, we look outward to kill him again.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why do we DO this? How have we taken the suffering of our God, and turned it into a weapon of oppression? Our quest to find someone else to blame for Jesus’s death has put us right back into the story, in the same place we were trying to pretend we weren’t in before – at fault for killing the innocent, at fault for standing by. Our refusal to accurately see ourselves as a part of the story, a part of the crowd, has real life consequences.
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How have the origins of Christianity, not even a religion but a movement, started by those on the margins of society, been so often co-opted into a tool of the powerful, a tool to harm and kill? Why is the name of our crucified messiah, to so many folks, pushed out of Christian churches because of their gender or sexuality, a red flag that more harm is coming? Why is our faith used so cruelly, used to attack those from different religious traditions, both in awful, violent ways like pogroms, and in more subtle, sly ways, through religious domination, through cultural hegemony. How has the gospel been turned into such a sick parody of itself?
Why do politicians cite the bible, tear words from the lips of our Lord, when passing laws that try to tear away the dignity from our neighbors? How do companies owned by self proclaimed devout followers of Christ employ working class people at starvation wages? How do pictures of crosses appear with startling regularity on American flags, or even more horrifyingly, confederate flags? Is it all just one big scam, another brand in a world where everything is always a brand? Did our God die on a cross for absolutely nothing, die for us to co-opt his death into just another tool of violent oppression, another tool of Rome?
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
And what about *us*? What about *me*? Why do I hurt those I love? How can I call myself a Christian, when every day, I fail at Christ’s last, most basic commandment, to love my neighbor? Why have I stayed silent in the face of suffering, when I should speak out? Why have I buried myself in my books, while others go through hell? Why have I ignored the death of Christ, replayed every single day, for the sake of false peace?
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
We cannot understand the gravity of God’s death for us, by us, until we understand the atrocity of the deaths that our world takes for granted. We cannot understand the terrible beauty of the cross until we take up our own crosses, until we stop crucifying. This day is incoherent for us until we see the ways that Jesus’s blood is on all of our hands. The solidarity with humanity that Jesus enters into in not just his death, but his isolation, cannot be experienced until we see that deep isolation as a truth of our own experience. Until we take an honest, unsparing look around, at our world, at our church, and at ourselves.
Jesus is with us in it. Jesus is with those being attacked and harmed by the church throughout time. Jesus is with those whose labor is being exploited, is with those whose existence is being legislated away. Jesus is with those who suffer alone, with no friends beside them. Jesus is with them, Jesus is with us, because in our suffering, he knows us more than ever.
Black liberation theologian James Cone said “The cross is not good news for the powerful, for those who are comfortable with the way things are, or for anyone whose understanding of religion is aligned with power.” The cross is not good news for us as long as we use the cross as a weapon, an excuse, a way to get ahead. The cross is not good news for us until we come to die on it.
The cross becomes good news for us when we take up our own crosses, or have them thrust upon us. Good Friday is “good” when we experience it as Christ’s solidarity with us in our own suffering, when we turn away and repent from the ways that *we* have killed Jesus, and instead resolve to suffer and to die with him. The cross becomes good news for us when we step into the story, knowing where we have been, *who* we have been, and knowing that in this brokenness, because of this brokenness, we must be transformed.
When we know that Jesus, dying at *our* hands, experienced the furthest depths of isolation, we know that since our god felt abandoned, there is no way we can be forsaken. When we know that even in our deepest wretchedness, our experiences of suffering are shared by God, we know that we can find the courage to repent, to mourn, and finally, to take up our own crosses.
—Gabriel Oakes