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April 14, 2006,   Good Friday , All Souls Episcopal Church

Behold the man.

     Following an agonizing, sleepless night – a night in which he was betrayed by one friend, denied by another, and forsaken by nearly all the rest – our Lord Jesus endured a trial and an interrogation during which he was physically assaulted. He was then flogged, the skin torn off his back by a particularly brutal form of corporal punishment which many failed to survive. He survived, only to be forced to carry a cross beam weighing around a hundred pounds through winding, narrow streets lined with onlookers hurling insults. He made the steep ascent to the top of a hill shaped like a skull. There, with every muscle aching, dehydrated, his lungs begging for oxygen, his entire body, already in shock, was jarred violently as the cross was slammed down into place, his hands and feet affixed by the large nails driven into his flesh. He refused even the mildest analgesic and his throat was parched. As difficult as speaking would be in this condition, it was made that much more painful by the fact that to do so required pushing up with exhausted legs and  impaled feet in order breathe a few precious words: “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”

     These were the first words spoken by our Lord upon his cross – the cross fashioned by the sins we take for granted, fashioned by all our betrayals - our betrayals of God and of ourselves. His first words, spoken in anguish, were a plea for our forgiveness. These words demonstrate the point of his passion. Jesus said, “No man takes my life from me. I lay it down.” The Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Jesus makes atonement for us once and for all. He offers that life as our eternal High Priest. He offers himself as well as our Passover Lamb, slain to take away the sins of the world. We call that Friday Good Friday because all that was done there was accomplished for our good. And there, all of the sacrifices made daily in the Temple – sacrifices which established a principle they themselves could not fulfill - are fulfilled. In a Good Friday sermon preached some years ago, the Reverend Professor Robert Crouse put it this way:

       We gaze and fix our minds and hearts upon the passion of the Son of God. Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, to witness a mystery which astounds and stupefies, a mystery before which all words seem cheap, and every symbol seems too shallow. What thoughts or what emotions can embrace such horrendous contradictions: the Son of God is spitted on; the Son of God, the Word of Life, goes down to death. How can we contemplate such things? How can we even begin to understand? How can we fix our minds and hearts on that?  In the mystery of that moment, all the powers of heaven and earth and hell are shaken. The sun withholds its light, and the whole creation, which longs for its redemption, utters its astounded cry, as the earth quakes, and the rocks are rent. In that moment, all the hopes and expectations of religion are confounded, and the veil of the Temple is rent in twain from the top unto the bottom. Many bodies of the saints arise and go about the city. That is to say, the whole settled order of the universe and of human life and expectations, all that is reasonable and dependable, is  turned upside down when God, the Son of God, is spitted on, when the Word of Life goes down to death.

     Before his execution, our Lord’s final meal was a Passover supper with his friends. He left them shocked and unsettled when he got down on his hands and knees to wash their feet, taking the form of a servant. He left them perplexed when he broke bread and said “this is my body broken for you.” He then took the cup of wine and said “This is my blood shed for you.” We must remember now that everything he endured on that Good Friday was indeed done for us. The night before his execution was spent in a garden. We must recall that it was in a garden where the first man, Adam, was disobedient. Our Lord, the new Adam, was perfectly obedient in his garden. In agony, he prays to his Heavenly Father and says, “Not my will, but thine be done.” This all happens early in the morning, the sixth day of the week – the day of man’s creation.

     The God who created us on that sixth day and who called us to have faith in him made a point in all his mighty acts to show that we must trust him and rely entirely upon him. And so, he calls Moses, an inarticulate, foreign sounding murderer to be the leader of his people after more than four hundred years of slavery. He parts the Red Sea, gives them water out of a rock and feeds them with manna from the skies as if to say, “you’re not accomplishing this, I am.” He tells the people to take a walled, fortified stronghold called Jericho by marching around the city seven times and blowing trumpets. And yet, the walls of that city tumble down. He causes three hundred men to have victory over an army of thousands, leads the people by a pillar of fire, and gives shepherd boys the ability to slay giants, all by way of saying, “You’re not accomplishing this, I am.” And yet, we betrayed this God ever single day, over and over again. How could sinful humanity ever hope to atone for our sins? How could we ever pay that price? On Good Friday, God accomplishes this as well because he loves us. And because he loves us so much he accomplishes our redemption by allowing one of us to make that atonement. Make no mistake about it. When you look at that Good Friday cross, you see one of us suffering and dying there for all of us. God accomplishes this mighty act. He loves us so much that he accomplishes this as one of us. Christ is our God and he is our brother. He is the Lord and he is our friend. This is a mystery so profound our minds can barely grasp it, so deep our hearts can scarcely take it in. So, let us simply reflect upon these words of St. Paul: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. God shows us his love for us in this: While we were sinners, Christ died for us.”

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