Sermon - Good Friday (4/10/2020)
Is. 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4:4-16, 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42
One of the key points that is highlighted especially in John’s telling of the Passion story is how Jesus fully embraces his identity throughout the narrative, how Jesus fully owns what he is doing, revealing to us the non-coercive, self-emptying, unconditional love of God that reveals how much our fear of death prevents us from loving as God does, but how Jesus overcomes that fear by showing God’s love to the end.
It starts in the beginning. The soldiers come to arrest Jesus. Who are you looking for? Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answers “I AM,” which in the Old Testament is one of the names of God. You remember Moses at the burning bush, when he asks God for a name – “Who should I say sent me?” and God responds “Tell them that I AM sent you.” God, the fullness of life and existence, the eternal I AM. Who are you looking for? Jesus of Nazareth. I told you that I AM. John says that even the soldiers who have come to arrest Jesus draw back in reverence as he identifies himself with the fullness of God’s life and being.
There are no coincidences in John’s gospel, so it’s not a coincidence that, when the woman near the fire looks to Peter and says, “Aren’t you one of this man’s disciples?” Peter says, “I am . . . not.” In the other gospels, Peter’s denial is remembered as him saying “I don’t know that man” or “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But John, as usual, tells the story in a way that reveals the deeper significance of Peter’s denial. It’s not so much that Peter is denying Jesus, it’s that Peter is denying his own identity as a disciple of Jesus. Peter is still captive to fear, and so he runs away from his own identity as a disciple, as a child of God. In contrast to Jesus who is so rooted in his relationship with the Father that none of Good Friday can disrupt him, Peter denies himself at the first opportunity.
In contrast to Peter, then, John tells us the story of another disciple, who is not named, just “the disciple Jesus loved.” This disciple, unlike Peter, has not run away. Jesus on the cross calls this disciple to care for the mother of Jesus. And he does so. He takes her into his home – literally, in the Greek, he takes her “into what is his own,” he makes her part of the family. This is what disciples of Jesus do … they reach out to one another, despite their fear, to become family to one another, to comfort one another and to be present to one another in the midst of grief and suffering.
One of the most insidious things about coronavirus – because it is so communicable, people in the hospital can’t have visitors. A friend in a high-risk group told me, the thing about this that is scary, I don’t want to have to die alone. And yet this is when physical separation is most important to keep people healthy and safe – but as human beings, when we are afraid and when we are suffering and when we are enduring loss, we need to know that we are not alone.
God, of course, is always with those who suffer. Jesus comes among us to live a fully human life so that God can always be close to and suffer with us in the worst moments of our lives. But for those who have learned from Jesus to put our faith in God and to trust God’s love and presence in all times and places, especially where God seems most absent – the disciples of Jesus care for those who grieve and suffer loss as members of their own family.
It was not until after Easter, not until Peter had met the risen Christ, not until Peter knew that Jesus could forgive him and still call him to be a disciple, that Peter could fully embrace his identity as a disciple of Jesus, as someone so secure in his identity as a beloved child of God that he could take risks for the sake of others. But even at the cross, the disciple whom Jesus loved already knew how to embrace that identity and put the love of God into practice by grieving with the mother of Jesus as a member of his own family.
You, too, are a disciple whom Jesus loves. You, too, are someone whom God has promised never to abandon, whom God has promised always to forgive. You, too, are not alone in your suffering. You, too, can rise above your fear and be Christ present in a world that is still full of suffering. May our observance of these three days, even when we are physically apart from one another, deepen our faith and trust in the loving presence of God, so we may be that presence for one another.