Sermon: Good Friday 2013

The following sermon was preached on Friday, March 29, 2013 at St. Luke's Lutheran Church of Logan Square by seminarian Sarah Rossing.  This sermon was based on John 18:1-19:42.  Sarah is a second year Master of Divinity student at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. 

Here we are again. At the end of Lent, in the middle of the great Three Days before Easter, on the most haunting day of the liturgical calendar.  Vulnerability and emotions are at their peak, or maybe better yet, their darkest depths.In the days and weeks that have passed since we gathered for Ash Wednesday, the great pilgrimage of Lent has brought us face to face again with the cross and with ourselves.On Ash Wednesday, we heard the words of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew, calling us to mindfulness in the spiritual practices of prayer and fasting and the giving of alms.  Those words called us to return to God and relationship with all of creation, but they also asked us to consider why we do the things that we do.Why pray?  Why fast?  Why give ourselves away? Why does Jesus do this thing?On this night, there are new questions to ask and answers to seek at the end of a day that is supposedly “good.” The Passion narrative from the Gospel of John is full of questions.    The question in the garden - what are you looking for?  Another question with the religious authorities – what have you really been telling everyone?  Again with the political authorities – what have you done? And - don’t you know the power we have?But the question that caught and held my attention this time around comes in an unguarded, off-handed comment from Pilate. “What is truth?”  So now between the demonstration of loving service on Maundy Thursday and the joyful mystery of the coming resurrection, we sit here uncomfortably tonight with a host of characters and witnesses, aching for Jesus and a bit of truth.On Sunday, we recalled the political showdown already taking place in Jerusalem, between the political and religious authorities.  A showdown that Jesus engages from the back of a donkey, questioning and challenging imperial symbols of power. Last night, we heard and enacted the story of Jesus’ foot-washing with all of its vulnerability and risk on the last night of his journey to the cross.  Tonight we hear and feel the final messy, gut-wrenching chapter.Jesus goes willingly from the garden where has spent many sunlit hours with his disciples, he is bound and questioned by fearful Temple authorities who want what he says to not be true.   He is abandoned by even the staunchest of his followers who do want his teachings to be true, but at this late hour even they haven’t quite comprehended how radically different the Kingdom of God is than the Good Friday kind of world they live in.Then Jesus is presented to the guardian of Roman authority in this backwater outpost and questioned yet again. He is only to be beaten and publicly shamed before the final humiliation and agony of being nailed to a tree.The questions Pilate asks lead us to the last verbal testimony and teaching of Jesus before the physical testimony of his death. Who are you?  What are you doing?  What is truth?In setting himself against the all human authority and those who played the game set by violent and oppressive imperial rules, Jesus is testifying to the truth that has been woven in and out of the whole Gospel of John.  A truth that speaks to our own Good Friday hopes and fears.Some form of the word “truth” comes up in John’s gospel over fifty times.  "Grace and truth came through Jesus" (1:17), "Whoever lives by truth comes into the light" (3:21),  "You will know the truth and the truth will set you free" (8:32),  "I am the way, the truth and the life" (14:6).  "For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth" (18:37).In the world of John’s Gospel, talking about truth was a way of talking about what’s real.  What’s really-real.  When Jesus talks about truth, he’s talking about the Kingdom of God.  A new world order.  A way of life that turns all of our expectations in on themselves.  A Kingdom where vulnerability and service are credibility and power.  Where love means feeding each other, washing each others’ feet, standing up together in the face of fear and violence.In this new order, Jesus lays down his life willingly – knowing he can take it back up again, because no one has power over him. The love of God is stronger than the nothingness of death or any other force in this world.If this were the end of the story, we would tell it in quite a different way.  The anger of the crowds and skepticism of Pilate would make more sense.  They might make more sense anyway when our own fears and doubts loom large, when death seems stronger than life.   But this is the self-revelation of God, of truth that is greater than the worst, most shameful and publically violent death possible in the Roman Empire.Healing of the nations will not come from systems where violence and personal power struggles rule, but from the persistent and abundant love that face them down.  This is a God’s way of non-violence that will come out on the other side of death, free from fear, free to love each other.We live in a world where the darkness and violence of Good Friday still exist.  We heard on Sunday about the violence and inequality that threaten the lives of children across our city.  In the Supreme Court this week, there are some people trying to make hate legally stronger than love and equality.  Our jails are full.  Blue-lights flash on the same street corners where children walk to school, where our palm branches swayed a few short days ago.Into this, Jesus leads us to live lives of immense love for a world that will not always love us back.  A world where sometimes it is hard to love ourselves, let alone each other.Into this world, this cosmos, Jesus speaks, lives, acts divine truth out loud, in ways that can’t be ignored.  It is life that knows and surpasses the darkness of death and the crosses we make for ourselves and others.  We will continue to come to the cross, to seek the truth, to be drawn in by love and acts of real power.The Lord has acted for the healing of the nations, for a new creation, a new way of being that does not fear death, but can look it in the face and live a life of love against all odds.  Liberate us, O God, from the crosses we bear and the crosses we place each other on, the Good Friday violence that tries to cover up your truth.This is the story we tell, the one that we have been returning to over and again.  The truth is that in Jesus, God does not give in to the powers and wisdom of humankind.  The truth is that God has the first and the last word.  A word that does not fear darkness or a garden tomb.  A word that will heal the nations, that calls us to be agents of healing.The cross is empty tonight.  A stone still guards the tomb, but the story is not finished yet.