What we read today is the end of the story of the glorification of Jesus. The glorification of Jesus is his death on a cross, the atoning sacrifice of an all-loving God, who gave us His Word, His Son, so that we might all become his sons and daughters. What greater gift can we receive, than the glory of Jesus Christ? The eternal Glory of God Himself opening the doors of His kingdom, and inviting us all, as his heirs, to behold the glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This is Good Friday, the commemoration of the greatest event in the history of the world. An event that when it happened appeared to be the ultimate defeat, as opposed to the ultimate victory. What do you think was on the minds of all those who loved Jesus, and who believed him to be their king, and champion, as they witnessed his brutal chastisement and crucifixion at the hands of Pilate?
Caryn Rivadeneira, in her book Grit and Grace Heroic Women of the Bible, takes us into the heart and mind of Jesus’s most committed disciple, his mother, The Blessed Virgin Mary. She writes this from Mary’s perspective, “That was the day I heard crucify him! Shouted from the streets. The day I saw Jesus dragged and whipped and beaten. The day I saw my son’s broken and bleeding body dragging that cross toward Golgatha.
‘What was it like?’ Some ask me.
The very worst. The worst thing you can imagine. I’m not sure there is an emotion for me screaming, crawling after Jesus in the street, begging for them to take me instead.
I’m not sure there are words for the scene of me collapsing with the other Marys at the foot of the cross, of us weeping and moaning below his precious feet, the ones I’d kissed and cradled that night he was born.
What I wouldn’t have given to go back… to be holding him again… to be visited by the shepherds. What I wouldn’t have given to go back to those nights I snuggled him to sleep and prayed over him. What I wouldn’t have given to giggle again together when we started our prayers with ‘father into your hands I commit my spirit.’ All good Hebrew children prayed those prayers, not all good Hebrew children were literally praying to their father.
And in that moment when Jesus whispered his final words on the cross, he did bring me back: ‘Father,’ Jesus said on the cross, ‘into your hands I commit my spirit.’ When Jesus died, part of me did too.
My son – Immanuel God with us – was no longer with me.”
I ask each of us today, how is it that out of this immense pain God’s glory is revealed? This does not sound like glory to me. This sounds like the most heart-wrenching terrible story I’ve ever heard. That would be the case wouldn’t it, if we didn’t live on this side of the resurrection?
If it were not for Jesus freely, willingly, and lovingly giving his life as a ransom for all the lives that have ever lived, we would not find these following words to be so comforting:
Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. Matthew 11:28
God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16
This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. 1 Timothy 1:15
If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the perfect offering for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2:1-2
We cannot be refreshed, we cannot have eternal life, we cannot be
saved as sinners, without Jesus being the perfect offering, or as the 1928 Prayer book says it, without Jesus being the “propitiation for our sins.” For all of our sins, Jesus gives himself up to be tortured and killed. Thanks be to God that is not the end of the story, because three days later, after descending to the dead, Jesus Christ rises from his apparent defeat at the hands of human sin and reveals God’s true Glory to us in his resurrected body.
Today we focus on the glory that is the crucifixion, but soon, we will focus on the Glory of the resurrection, which is the proof that Jesus wins salvation for us on Good Friday.
Again, in the fictional words of The Ever-Blessed Virgin Mary, “You probably also know that my story doesn’t end there. Even though during that Sabbath, from the Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, I thought it had.
As he was dying, Jesus had asked if God had forsaken him. That was how I felt: forsaken. By God. By the God who had asked me to carry this child. By the God to whom I’d said yes, all those years ago. By the God I loved.
But then I remembered: those words – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” They were so familiar. The beginning of a psalm – a lament – that ended with a great promise, with the words “He has done it.” And I wondered… Just what would God do?
In a few days it will be Easter, and we will celebrate exactly what God has done, for us all. AMEN.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Christian M. Wood
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, Florida
Good Friday
10 April 2020