St. Charles' Episcopal Church – St. Charles, IL

Good Friday - Year C  

Friday April 6, 2007 

Genesis 22:1-18 -- Psalm 40:1-14 -- Hebrews 10:1-25 -- John 19:1-37 

Rev. William R. Nesbit, Jr.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

It is over. If I may borrow a line from Herman Melville, It is the damp drizzly November of our souls. Here we sit huddled inside this church, afraid of the truth, very much like the disciples almost two thousand years ago. We are so afraid of this truth that many people don't even come to church on Good Friday. They don't want to deal with it. It's such a depressing day. It’s as bad as Ash Wednesday ... no, it’s even worse. Don't be fooled, it has nothing to do with time commitments. What it's really about is death.

In this modern world where we work so hard to fool ourselves into thinking we are in control, somehow we have come to the conclusion that it's possible, even appropriate to live life without limits. Just do it! Right and wrong are no longer absolute, they depend on the circumstances. Standing in the way of this wash of relativism there is one demon that we have been unable to subdue, one dragon we have been unable to slay. That demon/dragon is death. Death is the great separator, and will ever be thus. It is death that takes away from us all that we love. Our friends. Our family. Our belongings. Our dreams. All that we are, and all that we may yet be; All are consumed by death. The only control that we have ever been able to exert over death is that we can inflict it upon another. Sadly, we have gotten very good at that. And so because we cannot conquer death, we choose to flee from it.

Our society locks death away into the back rooms of our hospitals. We hide death under sheets and in body bags. Even our language attempts to dismiss the reality of death. We speak of people passing away, or passing on. But in spite of all that society is trying to tell you, make no mistake about it. Death is very real. Today we remember the death of Jesus. On this day we are forced to look again at the human response to God's great gift of the incarnation, the brutal torture and death of Jesus Christ on the cross at Golgotha. It is painful to see. It hurts! And if the crucifixion were just something that happened once in history it would be bad enough, but it is more. As we remember the crucifixion we are forced to look into the darkness that lies within each of us. As we shout "Crucify him!" we are forced to a new awareness of how we crucify Christ daily in so many different ways. How with every selfish act we bring our hammer down on the head of that nail. How in our indifference to injustice we hear the echo of the clang of iron on iron, the dull thud of nails biting flesh and wood. And we are forced to look again on the one whom we have pierced. In this new/old awareness we see again for the first time the "little death" of sin that separates us from God and prevents us from becoming all we are, and all we are meant to be. Here we sit, like the beloved disciple, at the foot of the cross as the Savior of the world struggles to take his last breath and we do nothing trapped by the weight of our own sin and the fear of our own death. Why ever do they call this day Good Friday?

Yet into this deep darkness a little light shines. The great mystery of the crucifixion is that through his death on the cross Jesus redeems death. And by his victory on the cross, Christ restores all of life, from birth to death, into what God intended it to be all along.“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”This is the great joy, the good news of the crucifixion. This is why we call today good. If God can reach down into that great dark of the crucifixion, and redeem the horror of torture and death on the cross, then we need not fear the "little death" of sin that lies within us. We need only offer ourselves up, sin and all, to God in thanksgiving. For now nothing can separate us from the steadfast love of God. In the mystery of the Crucifixion, sin and death have met their match. We are delivered from the power of sin and death. The great separator is redeemed. Death itself is transformed from separation to release. Like Christ himself giving up his spirit for us, death becomes release from all that separates us from God; from all that limits our love of God. This is why we as the body of Christ take for our symbol the instrument of torture that is the cross. By the cross we are changed; indeed all of life is changed. Things that were cast down are raised up. Things that have grown old are being made new. By the cross we see that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made. Amen.