The Cross and Failure

The Church of the Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

April 3, 2015

Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Psalm 22

Hebrews 10:16-25

John 18:1-19:42

The Cross and Failure

            It’s Good Friday – a somber and sad day, for sure, but you and I know – we are anticipating - that Easter is on the horizon.

            It’s Good Friday but we all live in the time after Easter.

            That’s true for us and it was true for the people who wrote the gospels – who all wrote decades after the earthly life of Jesus.

            When they wrote the story of Jesus they knew what was going to happen – what had happened on Easter Day.

            Actually, if they hadn’t known about – hadn’t experienced - the Resurrection there would have been not much point in remembering Jesus. If they hadn’t known about the Resurrection Jesus might be just a footnote – another would-be messiah – a failure among countless failures throughout history.

            The truth is that on that first Good Friday in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, pretty much everybody who knew about Jesus must have thought that the cross was indeed the end of the story of this teacher and healer – this would-be messiah – this supposed king of the Jews - from Galilee.

            Pretty much everybody must have thought that the life of Jesus of Nazareth had ended in a disappointing, humiliating, bloody, and all too final, failure.

            Certainly the religious officials and Pontius Pilate who had condemned him to death must have thought Jesus was a failure and whatever kind of movement he was trying to start with all that kingdom of God talk – well, obviously that was all a big failure, too.

            What must Jesus’ family have thought in Jerusalem or back in Nazareth that day? All along, they had been kind of embarrassed by Jesus anyway, thinking he must have had a demon, urging him to come home, to be a small-town artisan like his father, Joseph.

            And, now, they must have thought, look what had happened? Failure.

            Judas Iscariot must have felt a crushing sense of failure. Whatever he was trying to achieve by betraying Jesus – perhaps provoke him into being the kind of messiah he and other wanted – a king riding a mighty horse instead of a humble colt – well, whatever Judas had wanted, that had ended in failure as well.

            And, Jesus’ other followers – what must have been running through their minds that day in Jerusalem?

            Yes, sure, there were all the amazing, sometimes confusing, head-scratch-causing teachings of Jesus.

            Yes, sure, there were the miracles and signs – demons expelled, sight restored, loaves and fish multiplied, even the dead raised.

            But, clearly they had followed the wrong rabbi. I mean, look at him up there, hanging on the cross like a common criminal, a failure.

            And then of course the disciples themselves had failed most spectacularly.

            They had all – or nearly all – abandoned him during his greatest moment of need – had left him to his excruciating and shameful death.

            And no one failed more spectacularly than Peter.

            The “rock” proved to be not so solid after all – denying his Lord to save his own skin and then overcome with guilt and remorse when he realized what he had done and remembered that Jesus had known that he would fail the test.

            And then there’s Jesus himself.

            Perhaps our brother Jesus also sensed failure as he seemed to be forsaken by everybody, seemingly forsaken even by God.

            Failure seemed to be all around in Jerusalem on that first Good Friday.

            Well, we don’t have to read the Bible to learn about failure, do we?

            All of us carry around a sense of failure.

            Sometimes we really have failed – we’ve failed to achieve our goals – we’ve failed to be as “successful” as we had hoped – we’ve failed to be as “successful” as our brother or sister, as our neighbor across the street - we’ve failed to live up to our highest ideals – we’ve failed to be the people that we say are – we’ve failed to be the people that everybody thinks we are.

            Sometimes we just have a general feeling of failure – that somehow we’re just not good enough, not smart enough, not talented enough – that we have failed to make the most out of our lives.

            And then there’s the human failure all around us.

            We saw that so clearly this morning on our Stations of the Cross procession – the failure of senseless violence – the failure of us to look out for each other – the failure to be outraged that so many of our people have to put bars on the windows of their houses – the failure to be outraged that so many of our young men are living behind bars.

            We all know a whole lot about failure, don’t we?

            During Lent some of us over at St. Paul’s read a book called Looking Through the Cross. It’s very good and I recommend it.

            In the book there’s a chapter called “The Cross and Failure” – and I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

            First off the author points out that the only reason we know about Peter’s colossal failure is because Peter must have told and retold the story of his denying Jesus to save his own skin.

            Why would he do that?

            Like all of us, wouldn’t he have preferred to keep this horribly humiliating failure as quiet as possible.

            The author suggests that Peter must have told the story because he knew from his own experience that God took his failure – can take our failures – and creates new life and new possibilities.

            Peter the denier became truly the Rock who gave away his life for Christ.

            God does God’s best work with failures – or what seem to be failures.

            As the author writes, “The story of the cross introduces us to a God who loves failures: in fact he can do more with failures than he can with those who have never experienced their own frailty and weakness.”

            And so this morning we – with all of our personal and collective failures – we carried the cross into the midst of failure – into places of violence and despair – and I trust that God used us this morning and will continue to use us to transform our community, turning failure into hope, transforming death into life.

            And I know this – we know this – because, like the writers of the gospel, we live in the time after Easter – the time when God took what everybody thought was failure – when God took Jesus, who everybody thought was a failure – God took the seeming failure of a crucified Jesus dead in the tomb and raised him to new life – doing most spectacularly what God always does – turning failure into hope, transforming death into life.

            Amen.