Good Friday: March 29, 2024
The Rev. Nat Johnson
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22
In their final shared meal together, Jesus set before his disciples an example. All that he had taught them, all the signs he performed, are founded on this one new command – to love as they have been loved: to wash one another’s feet, to satisfy one another’s hunger, to ease one another’s burdens. This is how others will know that they are his disciples. He prayed that their love would bind them into the oneness of divine communion. He prayed that this oneness would protect them when the love that sets them apart draws criticism, hostility, and even persecution.
I imagine Jesus’ words ringing in the disciples’ ears as they followed him across the Kidron Valley to a garden. There, he met his betrayer and the detachment of soldiers and temple guards brought along to arrest him. But Jesus didn’t wait for the betrayer’s kiss. He turned himself in and negotiated the release of his companions. Filled with fear and adrenaline, Peter drew his sword. I wonder if he thought that this was the moment they’d been waiting for, that this was the moment when everything they’d been anticipating would burst through the veil of expectation and the revolutionary liberation of God’s people would come to fruition. But once again, Peter found himself being rebuked. “Am I not to drink from the cup of the One who sent me?” Jesus asked. No amount of violence or force could thwart the divine plan, which was bigger than any human agent. If life was to be stitched back into death, Jesus must finish what he came to do – “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,” he had said, “it can bear no fruit…”
Jesus did not waiver in walking the way of his destiny. Though Peter and (presumably) the others understood that everything Jesus did and taught was seen as a threat to the powers and principalities of this world, they failed to disentangle themselves from the very ways of those powers and principalities. They could not understand Jesus’ lack of resistance, his willingness to be humiliated and shamed – postures that didn’t fit with their understanding of the power of God’s liberation and salvation.
Jesus certainly challenged the systems and greed that perpetuated violence as power. The Jerusalem elite were afraid. They feared what Jesus might incite with his teaching; they feared the unknown motivations behind his disciples’ loyalty. They feared his popularity, not out of jealousy but out of self-protection: how easy would it be for Jesus to bid his followers to revolt and how swift and violent would Rome respond? “Yes,” the city leaders thought, “it would be better that he dies than the whole force of Rome descend upon our city, our temple, our way of life and faith.”
So, the Jerusalem elite colluded with Roman power to strike down what they feared. Jesus was arrested, taken to the home of the high priest, and questioned about his teaching and his disciples. He was accused of plotting an insurrection. But Jesus reminded them that he had taught openly in the temple, in the synagogues, and among the people. His mission had been no secret mission and he had established no secret society. “Ask those who were there,” Jesus challenged them.
Peter and another disciple had followed Jesus from the garden. At the gates of the high priest’s house, the unnamed disciple vouched for Peter with the woman guarding the gate. She asked whether he knew Jesus and Peter denied his relationship. Out in the courtyard, Peter kept his head down and tried to hear and see without giving himself away. Confusion engulfed his heart as Jesus’ words of rebuke rang in his ears. Why wouldn’t Jesus resist? How could he defeat the powers and principalities that oppress God’s people if Jesus just gave up? “Aren’t you one of his companions?” someone asked. The question barely registered as he instinctively cried out, “I don’t know him!” Once more he was pressed to acknowledge his relation to Jesus and once more, he denied him. And then the rooster crowed.
On trumped up charges, Jesus was taken to the seat of Roman power in Jerusalem. “Are you who they say you are?” Pilate asked him. “My kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus answered him. “My reign is different; it is not based on military might or coercion or domination. My peace is not fragile, and my power doesn’t manipulate or control. My entire life, the work I’ve done, the reign of God that I’ve proclaimed and embodied, has been about testifying to this truth.” For Pilate, truth was whatever kept the balance of power in his favor and alleviated his fear of losing control. “Yes,” thought Pilate, “it’s better that he dies than I have to deal with an uprising.” And at noon, Jesus was handed over to be crucified.
Jesus had warned his disciples that this would happen. He knew that completing the work he was given to do would lead to this moment. This was no sacrifice. This was the Word of God, in whom all things were made, the source of life that enlightens all people, demonstrating the radical solidarity of God with the oppressed and the suffering. His death was not to appease the wrath of God but to demonstrate the utter depth to which God would go to reject all forms of oppressive violence in the world. All his teachings, all his acts of healing, all the signs he performed were meant as a demonstration of this divine love and it’s aim of bringing restoration and life to all. His was a revelation that God refuses to leave us in the shadows of human existence. The cross would stand not as a sign of divine violence but as an indictment against the world’s “sharp violence that kills what it fears.”
So many of his disciples had fled, fearing their own lives were in danger, confused about what was happening and why. But there were some who followed all the way to the Place of the Skull, who stood at the foot of the cross, bearing the incomprehensible burden of grief, defeat, and loss. Perhaps in their heart they too questioned whether Jesus would call upon the power of God to free himself from the nails that bound him to the tree. It’s easy to imagine why the others fled, the fear that paralyzed them from bearing witness to the pain and agony of this moment. It’s a fear that still rests in our humanness, that pushes against us and propels us out of the place of suffering. We despise the discomfort of unsolvable pain and so we rush through it as we grasp for those feelings of warmth and life and joy.
“Woman, here is your son; beloved, here is your mother.” From the place of suffering, Jesus looked down and once again showed them that love was the heartbeat of life. “Love one another,” he had told them, “as I have loved you.” Only love could fill the depths of sorrow, anguish, and grief that enveloped the disciples at the foot of the cross. And, “having loved his own, he loved them to the end,” and he cried out, “It is finished.”
At that moment, John tells us, Jesus bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Certainly, the physical, emotional, and mental agony he’d endured was finished in that moment as he died. The suffering was ended. The humiliation was over. A plain hearing of this story suggests that this was the meaning of Jesus’ words. For any of us who have had to watch a loved one suffer with illness and disease, that moment of death brings with it a tinge of relief – shrouded, for sure, in overbearing grief, in longing for the one who is now gone, and a weight of sadness that makes even the most basic of human functions difficult. And yet, buried in the soil of that turmoil is the seed of recognition that even while we will continue to carry our own pain, the agony and suffering of our loved one is finished. It is possible to read Jesus’ final words through the lens of this human experience.
I wonder, though, if there isn’t something more to his words. I wonder if the “it” he refers to is not actually about the pain and suffering, not actually about the death he experienced. Could it be that the “it” Jesus refers to in his final words is the completion of the very thing he came to do?
The primary theological conviction of John’s Gospel is that Jesus, the Word of God, is in fact God. He is the Word that speaks all things into existence. All of life is dependent upon this Word. In Jesus, God takes on human flesh and comes to dwell among us in order to reveal to us who God is. As Jesus walked the earth he tore down every barrier that hindered full communion between God and humanity. He did this by taking the human condition into himself and by communicating something of the divine nature to humankind in the process.
Living among us, Jesus revealed a God of love, a God who sides with the poor and the oppressed, a God who desires wholeness for all of creation. Ultimately, Jesus revealed to us a God who chooses us, who refuses to leave us in the shadows of the human condition. By enduring the humiliation of a trumped-up trial, the violent floggings that ripped open his flesh, the cruelty of being hung on a cross, Jesus revealed to us a God who is unafraid to walk into the most excruciating experiences of being human. As Jesus hung there on the cross, he could say with certainty that he had, indeed, loved his own to the end. He could say with certainty that everything he had done fulfilled his purpose. He could say with certainty, “it is finished.”
There is another side to Jesus’ revelatory life and death. As he revealed God to us in all that he did, he also revealed to us who we are. The indictment of the cross is not Jesus’ to bear – rather, it is ours. The events told within our gospel story tonight expose the ways that we all distort our identity as creatures made and loved by God. They expose the ways we manipulate others to ensure things turn out the way we want. They expose the ways we grasp at power to protect our privileges. They expose how quickly we let go of our convictions in order to avoid criticism, marginalization, and suffering. They expose how quickly we turn on those who disrupt the status quo and pick up the call to “crucify” any who challenges our lot and status in life. Jesus’ life and death reveal this also, and to this end, he could say with certainty, “it is finished.”
Tonight, the finality of Jesus’ statement presses in on us. As Easter people, it is easy to jump ahead in our story, to arrive too soon at the hope of resurrection, all in an attempt to skip the uncomfortable parts of our shared story and faith. On this Good Friday, however, we are invited into the fear and confusion of the disciples who scattered. We are invited into the heartache of a mother watching her son suffer and die. We are invited into the emptiness of loss and unfulfilled expectations. Moving too quickly to the hope of new life renders our hope shallow and unstable. Tonight, as we look upon the empty cross, we are invited to sit in the discomfort of longing, because it is only through longing that our hope is deepened and given a resurrection shape.