The Darkness Falls - Good Friday 2010
John 18:1-19:42 & Psalm 22
It is the darkest, most horrifying hour of our faith. It is not a popular celebration by any stretch, and it’s even a stretch to call it a celebration… because it’s not. There is a awful irony in the name “Good” Friday… and while it is easy enough to explain that “Good” is a development from Old English pronunciations of “God Friday” or Holy Friday… the irony in the name makes such a question both frequent and relevant. Even by calling it “God” Friday, it doesn’t seem appropriate at all… because it is a remembrance of that darkest single day where we tried, and for at least a moment, succeeded in killing God.
Yet this wasn’t in the way of the atheist’s notion of denying the existence of God. If anything this death was far worse. Keep in mind that Jesus was tried and condemned for blasphemy by the religious authorities of the day. He was put to death by the Romans, who had exalted themselves with their own divine right to rule the world. As much as the gospels tend to downplay the complicity of the Romans, nobody is free from blame for this dark Friday… none of us are… because the darkness of Good Friday is something that all of us own, personally. If we deny it, then we aggravate our own human failing to blame someone else… to not take responsibility for our own actions. If we deny that we ourselves are capable of such darkness, then that is the very moment that we are the most vulnerable to it.
The challenge with Good Friday is trying to get a grip on what it all really means. No amount of words I can possibly offer from this pulpit at this time could possibly encompass everything that the Crucifixion and Death of Jesus means. Two thousand years later, we’re still trying to come to terms with it. We know the story, the symbol of the cross is quite literally in front of us all the time reminding us of the events of this day… but do we really know the story? I’m not sure we do, which is why we keep coming back here, to this place, that dark hill on that darkest of days.
It is much more than a dry recounting of the events on the day that Jesus was executed. This is not a simple history lesson where we simply say “this is what happened.” It’s a whole lot more than that… but it is hard for us to move beyond that because the story is so unpleasant. We don’t like being there when the darkness falls.
Oddly enough we need this darkness… our faith is not always happy and uplifting… some of the most profound songs of our faith come out of this darkness. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” “When I survey the Wondrous Cross.” to name a few. We need this darkness, we cannot ignore it, because if we do, we ignore some very genuine pain and anguish that we have in our lives. If we ignore it, we ignore the real possibility that we try to make God fit into the box that we make. We try to nail Jesus down to suit our own purposes.
We become no different than those who once shouted “Crucify!!” as they attempted to make God subservient to human will. We need to be here as the darkness falls… because we need to come to terms with our own darkness, our own demons.
At the beginning of the service, each of you should have received a nail. That nail can represent something in our lives where darkness has crept up on us, where we try to nail down God to fit our own wants and desires. It is a tangible way for us to remember our own darkness… and if we don’t deal with it… well, we might as well be holding the hammer ourselves. Whatever that darkness is, I will be inviting you to leave that nail at the foot of the cross at the very end of the service before heading home.
We need this darkness, because without it Easter would make no sense. We’d skip from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday and think nothing of it, and we’d be asking “what’s the big deal about Easter?” Today makes it a big deal. After all, “Amazing Grace” as a hymn would not exist at all without John Newton’s own experience with personal darkness. In order to understand what happens at Easter, we need to be here when the darkness falls over us.
We need this darkness to understand who we are, but also to realize the lengths to which God is willing to go to in order to be in relationship with us. There is no place too dark, no pit too deep, no place so far that we cannot also find God there with us. Our faith is not about being spared from the realities of life that we face. Good Friday shows us that not even God is spared from it. When the darkness falls, through this awful experience of Jesus, God truly understands what it is to be human… and it becomes a connection and a bond that even 2000 years later we are still only beginning to truly comprehend.
It makes it all that more powerful when the darkness falls in a different way come Easter morning.
It is the darkest, most horrifying hour of our faith. It is not a popular celebration by any stretch, and it’s even a stretch to call it a celebration… because it’s not. There is a awful irony in the name “Good” Friday… and while it is easy enough to explain that “Good” is a development from Old English pronunciations of “God Friday” or Holy Friday… the irony in the name makes such a question both frequent and relevant. Even by calling it “God” Friday, it doesn’t seem appropriate at all… because it is a remembrance of that darkest single day where we tried, and for at least a moment, succeeded in killing God.
Yet this wasn’t in the way of the atheist’s notion of denying the existence of God. If anything this death was far worse. Keep in mind that Jesus was tried and condemned for blasphemy by the religious authorities of the day. He was put to death by the Romans, who had exalted themselves with their own divine right to rule the world. As much as the gospels tend to downplay the complicity of the Romans, nobody is free from blame for this dark Friday… none of us are… because the darkness of Good Friday is something that all of us own, personally. If we deny it, then we aggravate our own human failing to blame someone else… to not take responsibility for our own actions. If we deny that we ourselves are capable of such darkness, then that is the very moment that we are the most vulnerable to it.
The challenge with Good Friday is trying to get a grip on what it all really means. No amount of words I can possibly offer from this pulpit at this time could possibly encompass everything that the Crucifixion and Death of Jesus means. Two thousand years later, we’re still trying to come to terms with it. We know the story, the symbol of the cross is quite literally in front of us all the time reminding us of the events of this day… but do we really know the story? I’m not sure we do, which is why we keep coming back here, to this place, that dark hill on that darkest of days.
It is much more than a dry recounting of the events on the day that Jesus was executed. This is not a simple history lesson where we simply say “this is what happened.” It’s a whole lot more than that… but it is hard for us to move beyond that because the story is so unpleasant. We don’t like being there when the darkness falls.
Oddly enough we need this darkness… our faith is not always happy and uplifting… some of the most profound songs of our faith come out of this darkness. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” “When I survey the Wondrous Cross.” to name a few. We need this darkness, we cannot ignore it, because if we do, we ignore some very genuine pain and anguish that we have in our lives. If we ignore it, we ignore the real possibility that we try to make God fit into the box that we make. We try to nail Jesus down to suit our own purposes.
We become no different than those who once shouted “Crucify!!” as they attempted to make God subservient to human will. We need to be here as the darkness falls… because we need to come to terms with our own darkness, our own demons.
At the beginning of the service, each of you should have received a nail. That nail can represent something in our lives where darkness has crept up on us, where we try to nail down God to fit our own wants and desires. It is a tangible way for us to remember our own darkness… and if we don’t deal with it… well, we might as well be holding the hammer ourselves. Whatever that darkness is, I will be inviting you to leave that nail at the foot of the cross at the very end of the service before heading home.
We need this darkness, because without it Easter would make no sense. We’d skip from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday and think nothing of it, and we’d be asking “what’s the big deal about Easter?” Today makes it a big deal. After all, “Amazing Grace” as a hymn would not exist at all without John Newton’s own experience with personal darkness. In order to understand what happens at Easter, we need to be here when the darkness falls over us.
We need this darkness to understand who we are, but also to realize the lengths to which God is willing to go to in order to be in relationship with us. There is no place too dark, no pit too deep, no place so far that we cannot also find God there with us. Our faith is not about being spared from the realities of life that we face. Good Friday shows us that not even God is spared from it. When the darkness falls, through this awful experience of Jesus, God truly understands what it is to be human… and it becomes a connection and a bond that even 2000 years later we are still only beginning to truly comprehend.
It makes it all that more powerful when the darkness falls in a different way come Easter morning.
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