The Church of St. Paul and Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
April 2, 2021
Good Friday
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22:1-11
Hebrews 10:1-25
John 19:1-42
The Hope of a Suffering God
Today we come to what must surely have seemed to be the end of the story of Jesus – the end of all the hope that he inspired among so many people – the end of the new life foreshadowed by the cleansing of lepers, the restoration of sight to the blind, the raising of the dead.
Of course, unlike the first disciples, we know that this was not the end of the story of Jesus – just the beginning, really.
So, without any irony, we can call today Good Friday.
But, it’s essential that we remember that, for most of our history, this day has been anything but good for our Jewish neighbors, our elder brothers and sisters in faith.
Over the centuries, our Christian ancestors forgot – or chose to forget – that just about everyone in the story I just read was Jewish – we forgot or chose to forget that this is a Jewish story – it’s a story of division among Jewish people – it’s a story of some Jewish leaders justifying the death of Jesus as a price to pay for keeping the peace under the brutal rule of the Romans.
Over the centuries, our Christian ancestors forgot – or chose to forget – that Jesus died at the hands of the Roman Empire, a cruel regime represented by Pontius Pilate – who, in the gospel sounds sort of reasonable, even regretful about this unpleasant business, but who was, in fact, more brutal than most.
Even worse than forgetting all of this, over time our Christian ancestors heard this old Jewish story and made the leap to blaming the Jews of their own time, punishing the Jews of their own time, for the death of Jesus centuries earlier.
Yes, for most of our history Good Friday has been a very bad day for the Jews.
I begin my Good Friday sermon this way every year, and it would be nice to think that we’ve all finally gotten the message, but, unfortunately, current events suggest otherwise.
We live in a time when the old demons of racism and prejudice and violence are on the loose – a time when people seen as “other” – very much including Jews - are in real danger.
So, once again, it must be said, Jesus was a victim of state-sponsored violence - killed by the Romans, who tolerated no threat to their rule.
In Jerusalem of two thousand years ago, crucifixion was a terrible but routine event.
The city was often punctured with crosses, each holding a decomposing body, each standing as a grim and effective warning to anyone who might think about challenging Roman power.
And yet, despite the suffering of Jesus, and the suffering of so many other people back then and today, we insist that today is Good Friday.
And it seems to me that today is Good Friday most of all because now we know for sure that God knows what it’s like to suffer – to really suffer – to experience rejection, torture, abandonment, and even death itself.
In and through Jesus, God does not stand aloof from us, but instead enters into the mess of life, willing to suffer alongside of us.
Some of you may remember William Sloane Coffin, chaplain at Yale, pastor of the Riverside Church. He was one of the best-known American pastors of a few decades ago.
Back in 1983, Coffin’s son Alex, twenty-four years old, was killed in a car accident. And, just ten days later William Sloane Coffin somehow managed to preach a remarkable, now famous, sermon, in which he said:
“My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”
“God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”
And in the same way, the heart of our suffering God was the first to break when Sidney and Alton took their last breaths – the heart of our suffering God was the first to break when each of the millions of people around the world succumbed to Covid – the heart of our suffering God was the first to break when broken men opened fire in Atlanta spas and a Boulder supermarket – the heart of our suffering God was the first to break when 16 year-old Kaheem Taylor was shot and killed in an apartment building lobby on Bergen Avenue, just a mile or two south of here.
And if God – who could have easily avoided all our suffering, standing aloof from us forever – if God is willing to suffer like we suffer, then we can be sure that God walks beside us, giving us the strength we need to endure our suffering – and, even more than that, giving us the grace and wisdom to someday stop hurting each other, to beat our swords into plowshares, to finally, finally, take down our crosses and put away our nails.
These are surely difficult days as we endure a virus that does not care if we’re tired of it – as we face economic uncertainty, political instability, and the resurgence of ugly hate and destructive violence against anyone seen as other, anyone we can blame for our troubles.
Yet, we insist that today is good, because today of all days we know for sure that God is here in the mess of life, suffering alongside of us, and showing us the way to new life.
The hope of a suffering God.
Amen.
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