Good Friday April 8 2023

Good Friday April 8 2023

I think Good Friday is such a confusing day. Is it a day of mourning, or a day of rejoicing? Is it a day to be sad, or is it a day of forgiveness, love, and compassion? It is all of that. It is time out of time, it is unexpected, in it the system is broken, Jesus is broken, we are broken. What is good about Good Friday? 

 

I think what is good about Good Friday is that it shows us the true story about death. That there isn't just one death that each of us must die, but there are many. Over and over we must die to that which is killing us, over and over, to truly be ourselves, we must lay down all that gets in our way of the loving relationship that God desires with us. And that is good, and very different than what the world tells us is good. And it is different for each of us, the stuff that gets in our way, the idols we worship, the dependency on ourselves, security and safety. God says, lay that down, and don't pick it up again. Walk with me, depend on me.

 

We live this day, and many days, in the reality of this cross. The cross that reminds you of God's love for you, the cross that reminds you that it is through death, and for Jesus, death on that cross, that you receive full and new life. The cross that reminds us of Jesus' brokenness, of our brokenness.

 

Good Friday shows us that something must die before the green and growing thing can take root and bear new life. Good Friday shows us that forgiveness is about pruning that which is dead anyway, so that God can affect in us the new life that God promises. Good Friday shows us that the work Jesus does on the cross matters, that God's love for humanity, and the healing that love affects, saves us. 

 

Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane is Lord, not my will but yours be done. Giving up our will is not a bad thing. In our culture that is all about you, all about what you want and when you want it, obedience becomes a bad word. But it is being who God wants us to be that is a good thing, and that requires that we die to whatever it is that holds us hostage, whatever it is that is killing us.

 

Good Friday shows us holy dying, it is not easy, but it is a part of life. You see, the truth is that being human means being born to die. Again, none of us gets out of here alive. Jesus’ life, and suffering and death on a Roman cross not only show us how to do it, but Jesus, on that Roman cross, takes our place. On this night we remember all this. We enter into the story of the passion.  We hear the story in the voices of those who were with Jesus that terrible night. We do so not to glorify Jesus’ death or any other death, we do it so that we may be healed, we may be reconciled, that we may have the absolutely new and abundant life that God offers in the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

 

The people who populate this story, and the events of this passion, the betrayal, the lies, the apathy, the bad luck, allow each of us to enter the story. You and I are these people, we are people who have betrayed and been betrayed, we are people who have lied and who have been lied to, we are people who have shown apathy, and we are people who experience just darn bad luck. We are people who have experienced sadness and pain, we are people who feel isolated and alienated at times. We are human beings who live in the muck and mess of this life. What we do together this evening, and even the joyous resurrection we will celebrate together on Sunday, doesn’t take away the reality of the muck and mess in which we live. We carry our crosses, they are part of who we are.

 

So what does happen when we walk the way of the cross with Jesus, when we enter into the events of this holy week and this holy day? Why do we all show up all these evenings to walk the way of the cross with Jesus? We grow toward Holy Dying and transformation happens. I surely hope we are changed by our encounter with the people on the way, the people in the stories, and by the amazing love that God has for us that we know because God is willing to be one of us. Because only a God who is willing to be one of us, a God who has such faith in us, is a God in which I can place my love, my loyalty, my attention.

What changes? Jesus does not fight violence with violence, hatred, or revenge. Love wins. Jesus takes on all of our betrayal, all of our lies, our apathy, all of our pain, sadness, loneliness and isolation, and Jesus defeats it, not by resisting it with the sort of violence that was visited upon him, but by absorbing it and removing it through the power of love. 

 

And Jesus’ dying on the cross looks to the world like failure. Jesus suffered, Jesus died. But Jesus did not fail. Jesus redefined death and life. Death does not have the final word; death does not have the victory. The Word of God has the final word.

 

What Jesus did on the cross was to make it possible for us to have new life, a life that our words cannot begin to describe, a life that our minds cannot begin to imagine. What Jesus did and does is to make it possible for us to be make whole, to be put back together again, to be loved wholly and completely. 

 

Winning and losing have no meaning in Jesus’ Kingdom; love and forgiveness are gifts. Success and failure have no meaning in Jesus’ Kingdom; sharing and walking together are gifts. Even isolation, and have felt isolation deeply, has no meaning in Jesus’ Kingdom; relationship and connection are gifts, even through zoom and live streaming.

 

Death is real and grief hurts and sometimes we just have to sit in the silence and cry and wait. Can we do that? Can we sit in the pain and loneliness with those who suffer? That is what this Good Friday is about. In these past days, and weeks, and months, we have more experience than we would wish, in this. It is very like when we sit with our loved ones in hospital, or at home, waiting, quite unsure of what to do or what to think, silence and sadness and tears, are our only activity. 

 

Too many Christians want to go straight from the garden of Gethsemane to the garden of the empty tomb without going by way of the hill of crucifixion and the stone-cold body. It seems too painful to sit in silence, waiting and grieving. And yet nothing of the reality of Christ’s victory over evil on the cross, or our faith in the resurrection to come soon, must be allowed to shield us from the awful brute fact that Jesus died. And that death, that brokenness, makes us whole.

 

We have come through so much, heartache, sadness, and we look forward to joy, hope, love. For now, we wait.

 

Tonight, we sit in the tension, of life, death, and new life. Watch, and wait. 

 

Good Friday

YouTube recording

Good Friday April 2 2021

I think Good Friday is such a confusing day. Is it a day of mourning, or a day of rejoicing? Is it a day to be sad, or is it a day of forgiveness, love, and compassion? It is all of that. It is time out of time, it is unexpected, in it the system is broken, Jesus is broken, we are broken. What is good about Good Friday? 

 

I think what is good about Good Friday is that it shows us the true story about death. That there isn't just one death that each of us must die, but there are many. Over and over we must die to that which is killing us, over and over, to truly be ourselves, we must lay down all that gets in our way of the loving relationship that God desires with us. And that is good, and very different than what the world tells us is good. And it is different for each of us, the stuff that gets in our way, the idols we worship, the dependency on ourselves, security and safety. God says, lay that down, and don't pick it up again. Walk with me, depend on me.

 

We live this day, and many days, in the reality of this cross. You have been carrying your cross around with you all during lent. The cross that reminds you of God's love for you, the cross that reminds you that it is through death, and for Jesus, death on that cross, that you receive full and new life. The cross that reminds us of Jesus' brokenness, of our brokenness.

 

Good Friday shows us that something must die before the green and growing thing can take root and bear new life. Good Friday shows us that forgiveness is about pruning that which is dead anyway, so that God can affect in us the new life that God promises. Good Friday shows us that the work Jesus does on the cross matters, that God's love for humanity, and the healing that love affects, saves us. 

 

Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane is Lord, not my will but yours be done. Giving up our will is not a bad thing. In our culture that is all about you, all about what you want and when you want it, obedience becomes a bad word. But it is being who God wants us to be that is a good thing, and that requires that we die to whatever it is that holds us hostage, whatever it is that is killing us.

 

Good Friday shows us holy dying, it is not easy, but it is a part of life. You see, the truth is that being human means being born to die. Again, none of us gets out of here alive. Jesus’ life, and suffering and death on a Roman cross not only show us how to do it, but Jesus, on that Roman cross, takes our place. On this night we remember all this. We enter into the story of the passion.  We hear the story in the voices of those who were with Jesus that terrible night. We do so not to glorify Jesus’ death or any other death, we do it so that we may be healed, we may be reconciled, that we may have the absolutely new and abundant life that God offers in the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

 

The people who populate this story, and the events of this passion, the betrayal, the lies, the apathy, the bad luck, allow each of us to enter the story. You and I are these people, we are people who have betrayed and been betrayed, we are people who have lied and who have been lied to, we are people who have shown apathy, and we are people who experience just darn bad luck. We are people who have experienced sadness and pain, we are people who feel isolated and alienated at times. We are human beings who live in the muck and mess of this life. What we do together this evening, and even the joyous resurrection we will celebrate together on Sunday, doesn’t take away the reality of the muck and mess in which we live. We carry these crosses, they are part of who we are.

 

So what does happen when we walk the way of the cross with Jesus, when we enter into the events of this holy week and this holy day? Why do we all show up all these evenings to walk the way of the cross with Jesus? We grow toward Holy Dying and transformation happens. I surely hope we are changed by our encounter with the people on the way, the people in the stories, and by the amazing love that God has for us that we know because God is willing to be one of us. Because only a God who is willing to be one of us, a God who has such faith in us, is a God in which I can place my love, my loyalty, my attention.

What changes? Jesus does not fight violence with violence, hatred, or revenge. Love wins. Jesus takes on all of our betrayal, all of our lies, our apathy, all of our pain, sadness, loneliness and isolation, and Jesus defeats it, not by resisting it with the sort of violence that was visited upon him, but by absorbing it and removing it through the power of love. 

 

And Jesus’ dying on the cross looks to the world like failure. Jesus suffered, Jesus died. But Jesus did not fail. Jesus redefined death and life. Death does not have the final word; death does not have the victory. The Word of God has the final word.

 

What Jesus did on the cross was to make it possible for us to have new life, a life that our words cannot begin to describe, a life that our minds cannot begin to imagine. What Jesus did and does is to make it possible for us to be make whole, to be put back together again, to be loved wholly and completely. 

 

Winning and losing have no meaning in Jesus’ Kingdom; love and forgiveness are gifts. Success and failure have no meaning in Jesus’ Kingdom; sharing and walking together are gifts. Even isolation, and have felt isolation deeply, has no meaning in Jesus’ Kingdom; relationship and connection are gifts, even through zoom and live streaming.

 

Death is real and grief hurts and sometimes we just have to sit in the silence and cry and wait. Can we do that? Can we sit in the pain and loneliness with those who suffer? That is what this Good Friday is about. In these past days, and weeks, and months, we have more experience than we would wish, in this. It is very like when we sit with our loved ones in hospital, or at home, waiting, quite unsure of what to do or what to think, silence and sadness and tears, are our only activity. 

 

Too many Christians want to go straight from the garden of Gethsemane to the garden of the empty tomb without going by way of the hill of crucifixion and the stone-cold body. It seems too painful to sit in silence, waiting and grieving. And yet nothing of the reality of Christ’s victory over evil on the cross, or our faith in the resurrection to come soon, must be allowed to shield us from the awful brute fact that Jesus died. And that death, that brokenness, makes us whole.

 

We have come through so much, heartache, sadness, and we look forward to joy, hope, love. For now, we wait.

 

Tonight, we sit in the tension, of life, death, and new life. Watch, and wait. 

22 Pentecost Proper 27 Yr C Nov 10 2019

Audio  22 Pentecost Proper 27 Yr C Nov 10 2019

Job 19:23-27a, Psalm 17:1-9, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17, Luke 20:27-38

Oh Luke, what were you hoping to accomplish by including this passage in your gospel? Confusion? Heartache? Polygamy? Just what is it? What does this show us about God and God's relationship with God's people? Because scripture is really a divine love story about God and God's relationship with us. 

The Sadducees pose this question to Jesus, in the resurrection, whose wife is this woman, who has married seven brothers and remained childless? And yet those same Sadducees say there is no resurrection, so what are they doing posing this question in the first place? From the get-go we know the Sadducees are really just trying to trip Jesus up, they are not bad people, but they have no intention of listening to any good news Jesus may have for them. It's not about this woman at all, it's not about marriage at all, it's about something else entirely. 

The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God who created the heavens and the earth, the God who is seen and unseen, the God of the Universe, the God who is here in the flesh, is the God not of the dead, but of the living. That is the Good News, the rest is description. The rest gives us glimpses, opens windows, illustrates, the reality that God is the God of the living. The rest shows us what it is to live this life fully alive, fully engaged, fully loved.

NT Wright, theologian, writer, and former Bishop of Durham, writes in his book Surprised by Hope, that resurrection is life after life after death. The work that God does in Jesus is to defeat death, not by resisting it, but by absorbing it and redeeming it. Resurrection living is living that truth today. Resurrection is life after life after death and resurrection is living presently without fear of death, because God has transformed death and therefore life. Resurrection is the promise of a future self-animated by God's breath of new life.

All history is equally present in the moment, this is the way God sees things. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus teaches again and again that the good news is about a death that leads to life. It's a pattern, a truth, a reality that comes from losing your life and finding it. Dying the death that must be, so as to be raised, changed, transformed. 

And how do we know what that looks like? It has something to do with love that embraces the terribly difficult life that we are so fortunate to live.

Dorothy Day, an avid preacher of a social justice gospel, said "'Every time I'm tempted to give up on my messy self or a messy person or a messy group of people - I say this to myself: "Love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us but it is the only answer.'" And in response to this, a very favorite blogger of mine, writes, " Love is NOT fluffy or perfect or easy or pretty or common. Real love is jagged and lurching and heavy and unattractive and HARD. If it wasn't so much harder than war- more people would choose it. The good news is - You can do hard things." (Glennon Melton)

Resurrection is what this love looks like. Resurrection is this harsh and dreadful love that God has for God's people. Resurrection demands that we let go of our preoccupations, our idols, our obsessions and our compulsions, our addictions, so that the love that gave up everything on the cross, can embrace us and make us new, and equip us to love ourselves and others. 

Each one of you knows about death. You know that your heart breaks at the death of your spouse, or your parent, or your friend. You know that your heart breaks when someone you love and care for leaves you. There are all sorts of other kinds of deaths as well. When your health dies, and you must live with disease. When your self dies a little each day with harsh words that are spoken. When your dreams die and you must live with a reality you never even imagined. When your livelihood dies, and your life is not the the same. Deaths that are out of our hands, out of our control. And sometimes, even though it breaks our heart, death is necessary, because it is only then that new life, resurrection, can begin to take hold. But it is in all of these moments where God's love seeps into us and makes us new, heals us, changes us, transforms us.

And it is this hard kind of love that God calls us to in our lives, and our families, and our neighborhoods, and our church and our world. It is this hard kind of love that speaks the truth of life, in all it's messiness and chaos. 

The Sadducees could not imagine resurrection, maybe because they could not imagine a love that would give itself away for the life of the other. But Jesus would not have it. Jesus proclaims the God of resurrection, the God of life, the God of love, the God whose scent permeates all of life.  

Love is hard, and you can do hard things.