The Good Friday Sermon

It is finished. St John gives these as the last words Jesus utters before his death. Not “it’s all over”, or “I am finished,” but “it is finished.” The project is done. The mission is completed. The purpose has been accomplished. John tells us that death is part of God’s plan to lead us to life. He even calls the death of Jesus his glory, the crowning moment of his earthly ministry. We struggle with the notion that a death can be anything other than tragedy. Why did Jesus have to die? Why did my loved one die? Why do we have to die?

On Good Friday we arrive inexorably at this sad, lonely place at the foot of the Cross. This year it’s even lonelier than usual, as we observe the days of the Passion alone in our homes. I remember a Good Friday when the church I served had not yet started to offer the liturgy of the day, when the only service available was the ecumenical preaching of the seven sayings from the Cross in a Methodist church where there were no kneelers. I left that service feeling incomplete: it didn’t feel like Good Friday until I got down on my knees.

So I went across town to my church, where we had stripped the altar and chancel the night before. The heat was off; it was a chilly, rainy day; and the worship space looked forlorn and abandoned, like the body of someone who has died without friends. I slipped into a pew and opened a prayer book to the Solemn Collects. “Dear people of God: our heavenly Father sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved ... we pray, therefore, for people everywhere according to their needs.” As I prayed, I felt like Good Friday was complete. It is finished.

In some ways, praying alone is very appropriate on this day. We need time and space to ponder this mystery. Jesus is the way, the truth, the life. His way is a way of peace, of healing, of love, and he encounters obstruction every step of that way. Telling truth to power puts him on a collision course with the corrupt structures of the world. And now he willingly hands over his life - John’s language makes clear that this is done only with his consent - so that we, who do not deserve it, will receive the free gift of eternal life in him. It is a deep mystery, that God should yield to the forces of evil in order that good might triumph.

It is finished: the salvific work of God is accomplished. Jesus has come into his glory and we are redeemed. But there is more to come. We watch and wait in prayer for the final mighty act that proclaims to the world that Jesus is king. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Amen.

Good Friday 2020
Penelope Bridges

The Good Friday Sermon

This is the day we remember the story of Jesus, a man who lived among the vulnerable. He was a man who moved among people who had been forgotten, who had been outcast. He touched the untouchables. He loved the unloveable.

We remember his story today as we re-tell how he was arrested after being betrayed by one whom he loved. We remember how he was bounced around after that, from Annas, to Caiphus, to Pilate. Each of them wanted him dead, but nobody wanted to do the deed. While the text calls out the Jews, it was not the Jews in general who persecuted him but a select few religious leaders. They were in an unholy alliance with a head of state who lead the charge; they each had something to lose if this young Jewish man from Nazareth kept influencing their people to change. So they needed him to die.

We remember the story today of Jesus, accused, tried, tortured, and killed by powers that preyed on mob rule. We hear of Judas, who betrayed everything. We recall the story of the mob itself that was all-too-ready to be divided, that leaned perhaps just a little too easily into being manipulated. We hear the story of Peter, who wanted desperately to resist, and begins the story by cutting off the ear of one of the arresting parties in an effort to show his loyalty to the cause, but in the end succumbs to his fear of the cost of standing firm, and denies everything-- three times.

And here we are. We are left in a world broken by powers that prey on mob rule. We learn more and more each day about the way we have been manipulated by fake news-- all of us, by people of all sorts and political persuasions and background, each of us just a little too ready to read, share, and react to anything written to titillate us, to agree with our worldview, to bend us against one another, to get us to shout crucify at those we already don't like.

I want to be one who resists. How often, though, when it comes down to it I find I may not be willing to pay the cost of resistance. Like Peter, my initial energy turns to fear and denial. No, like Peter I don't know if I am ready to be as committed as I initially thought. Peter was so human that way.

And so we are left in this broken world. And wars rage on. And as we have learned about so much this Lent in the Forum, refugees and immigrants are left in the dust, crucified. And children die in the crossfire of our inaction. And the poor are left hungry. And the weak and the vulnerable, the very ones Jesus came to walk with, are left to die.

I believe we are good, us humans. I don't see much point in self-degrading guilt. But this is a day also to remember that our human family is capable of destruction. Individually, we cannot choose not to participate in that. Putting gas in my car is an act of destruction of the earth, and I am complicit, as are well all. It's unavoidability does not detract or lessen its truth. There are lots of other ways we are all complicit in the brokenness of this human condition, in crucifixion.

Good Friday is not about our goodness, lack thereof, or intent to do goodness. It is about the systems we create in this fallen world that destroy goodness despite ourselves, despite our desire for the good. The message of this day is that we can't break goodness, despite ourselves. A love greater than us bears the wounds we inflict, despite the apparent victory of the brokenness of this day.

Good Friday is a time to acknowledge that there are things that we cannot mend ourselves today, places where we need a goodness that extends beyond ourselves. There are fences that we build, this human family, that rip us apart, and in so doing we make ourselves powerless to rip them down. The disciples, waiting at the tomb on Friday night, had no power themselves either in the midst of the darkness.

But in Christ, even though this day may be dark, they, and we, still wait. And we still hope.

The Rev. Canon Jeff Martinhauk
Good Friday B, March 30, 2018
St. Paul's Cathedral, San Diego
John 18:1-19:42

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Sources Consulted:
Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2. Ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 2010.

Good Friday: Noon Meditation

This collect we just read ties together the Blessed Virgin Mary, vocation, and service empowered by the Holy Spirit.

But this day feels like a hard day to be reminded of that.

Mary, on this day, sits at the foot of the cross, and we are reminded of her agony as she watched her son die. We hold her up as the exemplar of saying yes to God, of living into her God-given vocation. But on this day, might she wonder, if only for a moment, if she couldn't have been spared this grief, this desolation, if only she hadn't answered the call to serve, if only she hadn't said yes to God?

This loving mother gazes at the product of her experience in discipleship, and the years flash by. Birth in the most difficult of circumstances, the flight to Egypt to flee danger, and the precocious boyhood years where he knew everything. Now he is a fully grown man, pierced by a spear, hanging on a cross, lifeless.

And I imagine she must cry out at some level- why did you ask this of me? There is no answer.

Would she have said yes to God on that day so long ago, when she was asked to risk everything to conceive this child, now a man dead before her, if she had known this was where it would lead her? There is no answer. "What was it for?," she might cry out.

I image that the lack of answers, like the Byrd lament we just heard, leaves her in desolation. What answers could satisfy? Sitting at the foot of the cross, she has no idea of the wonder and joy that will come in just a few days, despite the world's attempts to inflict harm upon this gift of love she bore into it when she said yes to God.

So still, she is there, in grief, at the foot of the cross. A mother and a son. And she did say yes. And there, hanging on the cross is the salvation of the world. And she, and we, can do nothing but lament, and wait, and hope for things yet unseen.

The Rev. Canon Jeff Martinhauk
Meditation for Noon Good Friday, March 30, 2018
St. Paul's Cathedral, San Diego

The Good Friday Sermon: A Better Way

It was an unspeakably violent and depraved act. The rulers of an oppressed people inflicting an agonizing death on the innocent. What were they thinking? Where was their humanity? As we once again grieve the passion and death of Jesus two thousand years ago at the hands of the Romans, in collaboration with a corrupt religious establishment, we must also grieve the outrageous acts of our own day. There is little difference between the actions then of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem and the actions in our day of Assad in Damascus against his own people.

El muerte del inocente en la Cruz fue un acto de violencia indescriptible. Tenemos que lamentar los eventos del pasado y del presente. La violencia del gobierno de Syria contra su propia pueblo no es diferente de la violencia de Poncio Pilato contra nuestro Señor.

The faces of the dead and dying in Syria haunt my memory, with bloody noses and pale faces, eyes open and staring, the massacre given pointed focus by the image of Aya and Ahmed, 9-month-old twins, lifeless in the arms of their devastated father. Unspeakable.

Las caras de los niños muertos se permanezcan en mi memoria.

As we come to the Cross tonight we cannot pretend that violence against innocents is something confined to history books or the Bible. It is here, with us, now, in the news reports, in the statistics of child abuse and domestic violence, in the living memories of native Americans and European Jews, and still, as it was 2000 years ago, in the daily lives of the Palestinian people.

Sabemos que la violencia contra los inocentes ocurre en nuestro era, en nuestro mundo.

We come to venerate a single Cross. Imagine, though, if we were to erect a cross for each one of these victims. There would be a forest of crosses, each bearing silent witness to a life cut short.

Podemos imaginar un bosque de las cruces, cada uno de las cuales da testimonio de una vida terminada de repente.

Our culture responds to such tragedy by calling for retaliation, punishment, answering one attack with another. In Syria, an air strike to destroy the base whence the chemical attack originated. In Afghanistan a bomb dropped with almost unimaginable reach and power. A message sent. More lives lost. America's status restored. But the dead are still dead. We have apparently restored some kind of balance, but what balance can exist while violence is the answer to violence? How is an airstrike justified while we refuse to open our doors to the victims of the attacks?

Atacamos al instalación militar y matamos a más personas. Este no es la respuesta. Y todavía no queremos abrir nuestras puertas a los víctimas.

There is a better way. This death, this man hanging broken on a Cross, shows us a better way. Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." His way is the way of the cross. It is the way of repudiating violence, of choosing out of love to submit to the worst humanity can offer, even though it means death. For this is not the end. Good Friday is not the end. The way leads us through suffering, even through the Cross, and we pause here tonight to weep, and to acknowledge our own complicity in all such violence, but there is more. We look beyond the Cross, beyond the darkness and the horror, and we see a glimmer of light, an empty tomb, a new dawn, a promise extended and kept, life that rises up from the grave.

Este muerte nos muestra un camino mejor, el camino del amor que se somete a lo peor de la humanidad. Más allá de la Cruz vemos una luz, una tumba vacía, una vida nueva.

The world's story is that violence is stemmed by violence. Our story is that violence is not only stemmed but entirely defeated by love, a love that is stronger than death. Once, a corrupt administration condemned an innocent to a cruel death. But in so doing, that government condemned itself, because a new administration was born out of the injustice, an administration of compassion, of generosity, of service, its emblem the empty cross, transformed from instrument of death to token of immeasurable love. And so we venerate the cross tonight, praying in the words of the ancient hymn:

Bend thy boughs, O tree of glory, thy relaxing sinews bend;
For a while the ancient rigor that thy birth bestowed, suspend;
And the King of heavenly beauty gently on thine arms extend.

Esta noche Veneramos la Cruz y esperemos que los almas de los inocentes matados llegan en el abrazo del Salvador sufriente, y que todos que lloran ahora puedan ser consolados por el sacrificio de nuestro Señor Jesucristo.

May the souls of all murdered innocents be gathered into the arms of the one who suffered so that all might know the fullness of life; and may all who weep tonight find comfort in the awful beauty of our Savior's sacrifice.

Good Friday Liturgy, April 14 2017
The Very Rev. Penelope Bridges

Good Friday meditation: this is what you get for saying "yes"

So this is what you get for saying yes.

The fruit of your body, the apple of your eye, bloodied, broken, gasping his last breaths while the brutal world, uncaring, continues its business.

Once, an angel visited a girl, its bright wings overshadowing her innocence. Dazzled by divinity, she said yes, and innocence departed. She endured the doubts, the taunts, the suspicion of her neighbors, because she had said yes. She risked being discarded by her fiancé and losing all social status, because she said yes. She carried the body and blood of God's son, holding him safe until she could deliver him, her great and unique gift, her child, God incarnate, the hope of the world, because she said yes.

This girl once sang a defiant song of triumph, spellbound by the angel's glory, affirmed in solidarity with cousin Elizabeth, fulfilled in the swelling that promised a healthy baby. My soul magnifies the Lord, she sang. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior. Where is that savior today? As Jesus croaks his last words, words of abandonment, from the Cross, Mary is left to wonder about broken promises, the promise God made to Abraham and to his seed for ever. How have the mighty been cast down? Where do the rich go hungry while the poor are filled with good things? This is not the vision the angel offered, this shame and loneliness and pain.

What mother hasn't known the secret grief of giving birth, the letting go of the most intimate bond, the ache of seeing the child grow up and away, reaching out to stretch, to risk, to fail or succeed without her gentle hands to steady, to caress, to heal?

And for Mary, now, all that love and care and grief comes to this, the bloody Cross, the jeering soldiers, the crushing of joy and hope, ah such a hope.

The Syrian mother cradles her child, poisoned by gas. The Sudanese mother buries the baby whom she could not nurse because she herself has nothing to eat. The Baltimore, or St Louis, or Atlanta mother screams her grief at city hall's door, her teenager lying cold and still in the city morgue with police bullets in him.

We say yes to new life, but the world has other ideas. Our children are exposed to danger, to injustice, to the brokenness of humanity and we cannot protect them. But we can stand with the mothers in their grief. We can hold accountable those in positions of power. We can engage in the vocation of the church, to bring about reconciliation among all people and with our God. And even as we join Mary in her agony, we can remember that this is not the end of the story. God's promises are sure, and all generations have and will call Mary blessed. Her son is broken today, but he will rise again. He will defeat the principalities and powers, he will bring new hope to those who are in despair, he will light the darkness for multitudes yet to come. The lowly shall be lifted up and God's mercy will endure.

All this shall come to pass, because she once carried the body and blood, because she once risked her future for an angel's word, because she once, in innocence and gentle obedience, said yes.

The Very Rev Penelope Bridges