Art: Mary and John Wash the Body of Christ, Edward Knippers, 1988

Good Friday
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 19:25-27
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Austin, Tex.

In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time;
all the light of sacred story gathers ‘round its head sublime. 
–John Bowring, 1792–1872

I.

Last year I walked the Stations of the Cross with some students, beginning down at the Blanton Museum of Art, moving north through campus and ending in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit. Later, as we shared some simple soup and crusty bread, one of the students who had never walked the Stations before looked at me and asked: “Why did we do that?” The question caught me off guard, I confess; so I pulled out the classic teacher’s trick and asked, “Well, why do you think we did that?” In any case, I didn’t have a good answer.

I have spent the last many years dancing with the mysteries of God, but for the most part the unsettling story of our Savior’s Passion has remained for me just that: a mystery. I dwell on this story because I trust that it is good for me to face this tapestry of suffering, betrayal, and injustice tangled with compassion and devotion, to see where I find myself stitched into the design. But of these three sacred days we are in the midst of, Good Friday is the one from which I have taken the least satisfaction.

This day presents us with a horror show and asks us to make sense of it. What is God doing in the crucifixion, if anything? Many of us heard as children that Jesus died to save us from our sins so we can go to heaven, as if God were waiting to strike each and every one of us down unless Jesus stepped in. On some level it’s true that we are spared a death we have earned, but simple explanations meant for children have their limits. As we mature, we find ourselves in a kingdom governed by Death and all his friends—war, poverty, hatred, greed, disease, despair. Their rule seems to strengthen by the day, not least because when we scratch the surface we find that what we have done and left undone makes us complicit no matter how much we try to wash the blood off our clothes. Many have concluded that Jesus doesn’t seem to have saved us from much of anything, or perhaps salvation is limited to helping us break a few bad habits. Some of us return to the scene of the crucifixion feeling sorry for ourselves (and perhaps for Jesus as well) and ask what, or who, Good Friday is good for. 

Saint John leaves us standing in front of a tomb with a stone nobody can move and Jesus on the other side, as if to say, “The good news is behind you on that cross; figure it out.”

II.

Back in the garden at the dawn of time, our ancestors began a project most of us have been trying to complete by any means necessary. They and we want to be gods: ageless, all-knowing, and completely in control of our lives, if not other people’s lives for good measure. They began with theft and deceit before quickly moving on to murder, and the world has been soaked in blood ever since. We continue to abuse and belittle and kill in an attempt to cover our tracks and ignore the problem. This isn’t just wanton violence, either. Death is an intrinsic part of how we order our lives. We moderns prefer our meat drained of blood and wrapped in plastic on the shelf, our vegetables in tidy rows as they have already begun to decay. It is impossible for us to conceive of reality any other way. 

It goes without saying that Jesus is caught up and carried away by this circus of death, whatever else the stories may mean. It goes without saying that state-sanctioned, religiously-motivated violence is still with us. The images coming to us from a concentration camp in El Salvador are seared into my memory as I turn to an icon of the third Station of the Cross: “Jesus falls for the first time.” In both images men stand hunched over, hands bound, stripped of their clothing, and led away while their captors look on with contempt. Everyone involved has been stripped of their humanity as the powerful continue their pursuit of unlimited control, idly picking their teeth with the bones of God’s children. The afflicted Christ—El Salvador; The Savior—is very much still with us.

Facing the world’s suffering and our own is a critical step to finding Jesus, but leaving ourselves simply acknowledging the truth of the world we have created is still letting Death have the final word. We have not yet told the whole truth of the matter. We have not yet found good news that brings the circus to an end.

III.

Why do we do this? 

What is Good Friday good for? 

Each of the Gospels tell us there was a group of women who stayed with Jesus all the way to the end. Only John tells us that his mother was among them, joined by the disciple whom Jesus loved, which is to say that she is joined by you and me. Every year we are offered the chance to slip across the boundaries of time and insert ourselves into this sad scene, where we are met by everyone who has ever knelt with the Blessed Mother at the foot of the cross. Together with all the beloved disciples across the ages, we begin to see as the prophet Isaiah did that although the unlovely and unwanted are easy to find, something extraordinary is happening in this case with every labored breath. God’s servant is lifted up high above the earth, crushed because of our transgressions and none of his own, to shut the mouths and break the rule of petty tyrants, and it astonishes us all. 

Most sacrifices throughout history have been made by unwilling victims, both human and animal. But whispering in our ear from the far side of the resurrection with clearer sight and greater understanding, the author of Hebrews is able to see what is so unfathomable in the moment. Here is God sent by God, both butcher and sacrifice, offering himself as one last murder that contains and ends all others. Here God’s flesh is opened as a curtain so we can see at last into the heart of God and the divinity we so desperately crave. Here the God of eternity folds all time in on itself and in one eternal moment of salvation every drop of blood spilled throughout all the generations finds itself here coursing through the veins of Christ crucified. All of it—every pain, every indignity, every suffering, every abuse, every humiliation—is absorbed into the infinite well of life that is the Word who was in the beginning with God, who brings all things into being, and what comes into being through the Word is life. When Death and all his friends come to claim him Jesus cries that it is finished, that they are finished, that all the bloodshed of all the ages—past, present, and yet to come—has been consumed and the Lord of Life will not be vanquished. 

IV.

Every Good Friday we pause to consider these things, but we are not entirely frozen in time. We still gather today on this side of Easter. Hebrews joyfully reminds us of the confidence and hope we have precisely because we follow a crucified God. Those of us who have been sprinkled clean with the blood of the Lamb have nothing to fear. We place ourselves under the protection of his cross, in wonder and in thanks.

This confidence has fueled countless of the faithful throughout history. Oppressive regimes have been toppled without violence, both here and abroad. The suffering have endured the impossible in every generation. The end of the power of death is the end of fear. If we are gathered here today it is to cling to this hope, whether again or for the first time, and having done so, to consider how we might provoke each other to good deeds that will startle the world.

Stay here, beloved disciples: behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, reigning in glory as one who has been slain. 

That is what Good Friday is good for. 

That is why we do this.

With appreciation to Br. Aidan Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, p. 33ff