Good Friday

This year on Good Friday, I had the privilege of preaching at the Communion from the Reserved Sacrament and Veneration of the Cross at St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo NY. I also chanted the Solemn Collects antiphonally with the bishop, but I thankfully didn't record that!

I preached on the propers for the day:
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42


All we like sheep have gone astray
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In his Gospel, St John offered a testimony to others of his experiences and thoughts about the mystery of God in Christ becoming man and taking flesh through Jesus of Nazareth. St John wrote his Gospel as a memory of Jesus’ life, of his ministry, and as we heard this evening, of his ignominious death. You may remember, however, that St. John does not begin this record of the story of Jesus of Nazareth with a birth, but begins it with the story of Christ before the Creation, of a Christ who is uncreated:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
The Passion St John records of Christ’s betrayal, scourging, trial, condemnation, crucifixion, death and burial began as the record of the God who became man, of the Word who was with God and through whom all things came into being. The Passion is the record of the murder of God, of our Lord who is uncreated and yet allowed himself to be subject to death. Of our Lord who is all love, but allowed himself to be subjected to hate. Of our Lord who is all mercy who allowed himself to be placed in the hands of persecutors.
After the death sentence had been pronounced, and wickedness given rein to destroy the God of Creation by hanging him on a cross, Christ was taken to a hill outside of the Holy City, to a hill called Golgotha., to the Place of the Skull. Tradition has given us the teaching that Golgotha was not just the Place of any skull, but of a particular skull. The Fathers of the early Church taught that buried in the dust of Golgotha was the skull of Adam, the skull of the first person, and that the bones of Adam were planted as a seed of Eden, of the inheritance given to us and to our ancestors out of love by the God of creation. For the God to be offered on the dusty hill was the God of all time, and his death would forever change all times, those that went before and those that followed.
In the late second century, St Melito, the bishop of Sardis, preached in the catacombs of his city to the faithful gathered to celebrate the mysteries of Christ’s death, much as we still do today. In that sermon, when speaking of the crucified Christ, St Melito proclaimed:
In Abel He was slain, in Isaac bound, in Jacob exiled, in Joseph sold, in Moses exposed to die. He was sacrificed in the Passover lamb, persecuted in David, dishonored in the prophets.
On a Friday, on the sixth day of the week, Christ stretched out his hands on the cross, on the new Tree of Life. In Eden, on a Friday, on the sixth day of the week, God had breathed life into Adam, and looked upon his creation, and saw that his Creation was good. Those whom God had created on the sixth day in Eden, men and women made in his own image would, on the sixth day in Jerusalem, nail their Creator to an instrument of painful death, and leave Him to hang in agony until dead. Christ came as a bridegroom, offering to be bound to humankind as in marriage. Instead of a ring of precious metal, on His hand, we placed iron nails into Him. His own mother, who had swaddled Him as an infant, watched as His dead body was wrapped in linen for burial, planted, like Adam, as a seed of Eden.
God created mankind in his likeness, and pronounced us good.
Good, but so far from perfect. From mankind have come acts of incomprehensible charity, of devotion, of piety and service. The scriptures recount the meekness of Job, the faith of Ruth, the trust of Mary, the love of John. God created us in his own image, and pronounced us good. Good, but so far from perfect.
For also from mankind have come acts of cruelty akin to the acts of the most depraved of hell: murder, envy, disdain and disregard for the downtrodden, contempt for love and life, murder of the very God made man. In the first Eden, God made us in his own image, pronounced us good, but not perfect.
Each of us carries within us the divine light of God, of the Creator who inspired Adam, who loved us and called us into life. We also bear the burden of our ability to ignore the love of God given to us. As Christ inhabits glory outside of time, as St. John recorded in the beginning of His Gospel, so too does Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion transcend time. Our choices freely made to turn away from the love of God, to seek a path of our own selfish choosing, to move toward sin rather than toward the good, all of this imperfection is the same imperfection that led imperfect men to condemn Christ, to flog him, to crucify him. Their actions in Jerusalem and our actions are the same. Their sin in killing the giver of life is the same sin each of us bears.
We might say: it was not my hand that placed the nail, not my voice that cried out for his death, not my whisper that denied him, not my kiss that betrayed him. The Polish poet Stanislaw Lec wrote: No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. Each action in the Passion that brought about the death of Christ was a small action, a single word, a single kiss, a single silence, a single sin. But combined, it led to a gasping God dying on a tree, condemned and forsaken by those to whom he came in love. My sin and your sin are not small, are not harmless, but are the very thorns that press down on Christ’s brow. My sin and your sin are very real things, very real pains, very real spears in Christ’s side. The sin of looking the other way when we are asked for help on the street is the same looking away when Pilate washed his hands. The sin of seeking comfort and peace and stability while others suffer and are destroyed by life’s inequalities is the same sin of the high priests. Ignoring the commandment to love one another as Christ loves us when a friend is grieving or a neighbor needs help is the same sin as Peter’s denial. I am not innocent of Christ’s death, you are not innocent of Christ’s death, for my sin and your sin stand before us, staring at us, as we look upon him whom we have pierced. The sin of the Romans, the sin of the Sanhedrin, the sin of Peter and Judas, my sin, your sin: they are all sin and they all lead to Golgotha, to Christ hanging dead on a tree in the garden.
We must acknowledge that we have sinned, and accept that we perpetuate the Passion by choosing selfishness and ignoring the call of God to love. Good Friday is not a story that happened 2,000 years ago, a story that has nothing to do with us, nothing to do with our lives. We must acknowledge our sin and beg Christ, even though we are the ones who placed him on the Cross, to remember us when he comes into his kingdom. Then, tomorrow, as Christ lays silent and still in the tomb, we can sit with Mary his mother, and weep that the Lord of life is taken from us, though we were complicit in it. When we accept that our own actions led to darkness falling upon the land, then we can move through the Passion into the embrace of Christ. Christ, on Golgotha, offers redemption to the world. But we cannot accept that offer and move toward redemption if we have not yet accepted that we need redemption, that we need Christ and his love to bring us from our dark self-love to a love of others that frees us, that acknowledges that we were made in God’s image in Eden, and that he proclaimed us good.
In the Prologue to his Gospel, St John also writes:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it

When we acknowledge that there are parts of ourselves that remain in darkness, then the Light can shine in us. When we call out our sins, when we name them, own them, and place our names next to the names of Pilate, of Judas, of Caiphas, of Peter, when we repent of our sins, beg foregiveness and mercy for our part in the Passion, pray for the grace of amendment of life then Christ the light shines in our darkness. All we like sheep have gone astray. The righteous one shall make many righteous.
Amen.