The Church of St.
Paul and Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
April 10, 2020
Good Friday
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22:11
Hebrews 10:1-25
John 19:1-42
The Lesson of the Cross
For
a very long time Christians learned exactly the wrong lesson from Good Friday, took
away exactly the wrong lesson from the Cross.
For
a very long time, Christians forgot – or chose to forget – that Jesus was a
victim of the Roman authorities who ruled the land of Israel and of the Jewish
authorities who did their best to limit any sign of rebellion, all in an
attempt to keep the peace and to maintain their own power.
For
a very long time, Christians heard the sad story that I just read and they
heard a story of Jews against Jesus, forgetting that just about everyone in
this story was Jewish, very much including Jesus of Nazareth, who lived and
died a faithful Jew.
And
because for so long Christians heard this story as a story of Jews against
Jesus they also heard it as a story of Jews against Christians, forgetting that
there were no Christians yet when Jesus died in agony on the cross.
And
since for so long Christians heard this story as a story of Jews against
Christians, Good Friday has been very bad news for our Jewish brothers and
sisters, right up to the present day.
I
always begin my Good Friday homily by talking about this ugly history, but it’s
especially important for us to face this legacy these days when anti-Semitism
is on the rise once again, with predictably horrific results, including right
here in Jersey City, just a few months ago.
The
lesson of the cross is not that Jews killed Jesus and it’s certainly not
that Jews today are somehow responsible for what happened two thousand years
ago.
No,
the cross has nothing to do blaming anyone, past or present.
Instead
of blame, the cross offers us Jesus’ greatest and clearest lesson of love.
This
year we have been forced to sacrifice a whole lot but one of the things I am
missing most is our Good Friday Stations of the Cross Procession.
As
many of you know, for the past six years on Good Friday morning we have
gathered with our bishop and fellow parishioners and Christians of all stripes,
from Pentecostals to Catholics, and we have walked the Way of the Cross through
the broken and glass-strewn sidewalks of Jersey City, remembering the suffering
endured by Jesus, stopping and praying at places of violence in our own time,
sprinkling Holy Water on these stained places, reminding us that no matter how
hard we try to profane it and call it bad, this is all God’s land and it is all
good.
For
me and I think a lot of us, the Stations of the Cross procession is our most
meaningful service of the year, somehow stripping away all of the religious
niceties and pieties that have accumulated on to Good Friday, reminding us that
at its heart this is the story of one man brutalized by violence - in this
case, state-sanctioned violence.
By
connecting the violence on the streets of Jersey City today to the violence
endured by Jesus two thousand years ago, we’re reminded that we’re talking
about the real suffering of a man who preached nothing but peace, a real man
who was abandoned by nearly everybody, even, it seemed for a time, abandoned by
his God.
But,
in our blood-soaked world, this particular suffering and death would hardly be
worth remembering or mentioning – just another sad story in a world filled with
them.
This
story would hardly be worth talking about, except that the victim is the Son of
God.
And
so on the hard wood of the Cross, Jesus teaches us his final, his most
shocking, and his most important lesson of love, stretching out his arms to
reveal the wideness of God’s love for us all – love wide enough to embrace the
worst suffering, even the loss of economic security, even senseless and
terrifying violence on the streets of Jersey City, even last breaths in the
Intensive Care Unit.
On the Cross,
Jesus offers love strong enough to endure death itself.
There is still one
more lesson of love yet to be taught and for us to learn, but
that will have to wait until Sunday morning.
For now, we sit at
the foot of the Cross.
And tomorrow
morning we’ll sit outside the sealed tomb.
But through it
all, during these holiest days, let’s learn – let’s remember - let’s marvel at -
just how much we are loved.
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