Good Friday 2017 Sermon - St Gabriel, Portland

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In Matthew’s Gospel, these are Jesus’ last words on the cross. That we hear them tonight in this psalm reminds us that they were a prayer, for the psalms are the Book of Common Prayer for the Jewish people.  If the Jesus in today’s Gospel story is more accepting—“it is finished,” he says—this anguished, confused feeling of forsakenness must have been the inward cry of Jesus’ mother as she watched her son die a tortuous death.

This son of hers, who had shown such promise that the temple elders remarked upon his learnedness even when he was a boy. This son, who healed, and taught, and prayed for others so selflessly. This son who, Mary, like any Jewish mother, probably wished had stayed home more, so that she might have kept him safe and warm, and he could have been a comfort to her in her old age.     

 Do you remember when Gabriel came to Mary about this extraordinary life she was carrying?  Do you suppose she called out to Gabriel:   “Did you forget what you told me?  That he was to have the throne of David? That he was to reign over the house of Jacob forever?  Why did you take him? How will I go on without him?  My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!?!” 

There is no getting around the grief at the heart of the crucifixion. There is no getting around the fact that it is a story of death.  And so when we hear that cry, it is our cry too. Why did Jesus have to die this way? Why did his disciples betray and deny him?  Why did his own people abandon him?  Why. Why. Why.  

 Christ and Artist, Marc Chagall

For that matter, why do we need a holy day to focus on his death?  What is so good about Good Friday?  It is certainly not uncommon in the church to jump directly from Palm Sunday to Easter.  We are Easter people, the argument goes.  Even our burial rite is essentially an Easter liturgy.  And yet a small but mighty band of Christ-followers faithfully revisit the scene of the crime every year. We listen again to the jeers, the insults, the humiliations heaped upon Jesus; we watch the disciples sleeping through his final hours; we envision the flogging, the brutal crucifixion of our savior, and we feel it. We FEEL it.

And it’s not like we don’t know how the story ends. The joke at the time of the movie Titanic was to ask your friends if they had seen it, and if they said no, you would say, “the boat sinks--ha ha, spoiled the ending.” No. We know the ending--we know we are present today at a service in commemoration of the one who rose again, the one who is among us even now, on this Good Friday, in spirit.  We have not forgotten we are Easter people. And yet, we are here.

Thomas Lynch, a poet and undertaker, wrote, “The defining truth of Christianity—an empty tomb—proceeds from the defining truth of our humanity:  we fill tombs. We need a ritual wheel,” he says, “that works the space between the living and the dead—where we must deal with our humanity and our Christianity, our spiritual and natural realities, our flesh, our fears, our faith and hopes, our bodies and our souls.”

This is what Good Friday is about—it is a day of “good grief.” It is the wheel with which we turn over this beautiful paradox of Christ in his divinity and his humanity, in his resurrection, and yet one who died.  And so, even though he rose again, we take the time to work through again the grim truth of his death, remembering that people woke up the next morning and remembered that the one they loved was gone from them.  And they cried out in pain:  “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

One of the great outcomes of the council that produced the Nicene Creed was that it established as doctrine that Jesus was both fully human, and fully divine. That Jesus’ body was not merely a shell—but an actual body—is essential to God’s promise.  He walked as one of us. He experienced mortality and the pangs of death. And yet he also rose again and came to us in Spirit, proof for us, we mere mortals, that he had destroyed death’s power to separate us from the God of love.  And so he gave us something to hope for, and something productive to do with our grief—not to deny the sorrow, but to move through it, allowing the pain of loss to be transformed into gratitude for life of the one we have lost.  This is an enduring love—and it does not die—it is with us forever.  

Two years ago, on Good Friday, I went to a service of prayer and song and reflections on the last words of Jesus at St. David’s. Mother LouAnn was there and offered one of the reflections. It so happens at that time I was working on a class paper. The assignment was to write on reconciliation of the self, and for my topic, I chose the loss of my parents and brother in an accident when I was 14. I have had many years to contemplate this loss. I was not bound up in it. I am a strong person. I have thrived. In fact, I have written and spoken so many words on it, I wondered if there was anything new to say.  But one of the things I brought to that service was the question, why, after all these years, do I still cling to my identity as an orphan?  Even if my parents had not died, I would be long past the time I depended on them. My friends were starting to lose their parents. There is nothing unusual about a woman of my age with no parents. So why do I carry my orphanhood with me?

And as I meditated on the cross that day, I considered also the questions I asked earlier. Why do we sit and stare at the cross? Is it because we haven’t moved beyond Jesus’ death? Why do we still need it, if we believe Jesus has transformed death?  

Through the hours of listening and praying, I realized we need to contemplate the cross, first, because we cannot and must not deny death. There is no doubt that Jesus died—in fact, he was executed—he gave himself over to his executioners. This human death is essential to our faith and to our understanding of the incarnation. But the second is that in his resurrection, Jesus confronted the evil of the world and conquered it by his love. The whole story of Jesus must include both the death AND the resurrection. To take on only Easter is to forget that, where there is resurrection, three days earlier, there had only been death and sorrow.  

The cross is the location of that transformation. In Jesus’ day, crucifixion was the most violent death the state could impose—a symbol only of pain, and terror, and suffering.  But no longer for us-- for us, the cross holds up death transformed.

One of the words which came from the Latin word for cross—crux, the root of the word crucifixion—is the word crucible. Crucible. I have meditated on the meanings of this word. One is, “a ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures.” Early scientists believed that a kind of alchemy could happen out of the crucible. I thought of the image of the refiner’s fire.  Another definition for crucible is, “a place or occasion of severe test or trial.”  

I think this is where the idea for the word crucible, out of cross, came from:  The shape of the cross is a meeting point, where two things come together and out of their meeting, something new is possible: Death and life, order and chaos, good and evil, all existing in tension with each other.  Richard Rohr talks about the cross holding the middle, where death, or loss, or pain, or violence is not denied, but does not take over.  The cross holds through the test and holds the tension so that growth and life are possible.  At this cross, this crucible, we are tested, and it is strong enough to hold us.

On that Good Friday two years ago, I came to see that orphanhood was my cross.  I did not choose to ascend to it, for it contained my suffering, confusion, loneliness, fear, and sadness. But it was also where I met my strength, and resilience, and memories gathered up of the good gifts my parents had given me, and of my sweet brother; and it was where Christ met me. So I rose again. I rose as someone different, a more whole person, who could love in a deeper and greater way, who could be with people in grief. I now view my orphanhood as a kind of holy privilege. It is a badge of honor I wear for the lives of my parents and brother, a badge of love, tested, and enduring.  It was a crucible forged equally by tears, courage, despair, and strength—forged by that refiner’s fire—and made into love. 

What is your cross?  What is your crucible?  Perhaps it is not the pain of loss by death. Perhaps it is the pain and loss of innocence, or security, safety, of your idealism, or youth. As you approach the cross tonight, bring that with you, and lay it on the cross before God, a God strong enough to hold your pain, and to meet it with God’s transforming love.

Yes, we know how the story ends, for we live in hope of the resurrection. That is why we are here tonight, even in our grief, because we know it is a good grief. For God has not abandoned us, and will never forsake us. Christ is gazing down at us from the cross, and we can hear him through the words of this ancient prayer: 

“I order you, O Sleeper, to awake.
I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell.
Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.
Rise up, work of my hands, you were created in my image.
Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you.
Together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.”