A brief Good Friday sermon for my internship congregation, St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church in Dubuque, Iowa. The Good Friday service on April 3, 2015, was a Tenebrae service, so the sermon came at the beginning of the service. After the sermon, the rest of the service consisted of John’s Passion Narrative interspersed with hymn verses and a responsive litany. Candles were extinguished after each reading.
You’ve probably noticed this service is different than every other service in the church year. For one thing, the sermon is at the beginning, not after the readings. There’s no communion. Really, this service is a continuation of last night’s worship, where we stripped the altar as a symbol of Jesus’ suffering and death.
Last night, on Maundy Thursday, we heard part of the story of Jesus’ journey towards the cross, about Jesus’ love for his disciples and his command for them follow his example of foot-washing and to serve one another and the world in love.
Tonight, we continue the story. This service is a descent into the darkness of the crucifixion.
Six weeks ago, as we entered the season of Lent, we gathered for Ash Wednesday, and we heard the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
During that service, I described the Christmas season as being about who Jesus is, establishing Jesus’ identity first as a human baby, then revealing him to also be the Son of God, God in human flesh. In Lent, we’ve explored more of who we are. We are dust, and to dust we shall return. We are temporary, helpless without God redeeming us in our dustiness.
If you’ve been here for the midweek services, you’ve heard various people explore how the cross of Christ connects to the tree of life, about the contrasts between being rejected and accepted, encumbered and empowered, and condemned and absolved.
Tonight, as we hear about Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross, I invite you to think about Jesus’ identity, about how the Crucified One is also the Savior.
As we move through John’s passion narrative, we’ll hear Jesus identified as a person from a specific town, Jesus of Nazareth, as the Son of God, as the King of the Jews, and as I AM, the very name of God.
There’s other allusions in the story to Jesus as the Passover lamb in the wine being offered on a branch of hyssop, an important connection to the Passover celebration. It matters who Jesus is.
Listen tonight for the details of the story. I’ve heard this story many times, and I keep noticing new things. John puts so much detail in.
For example, in verse 6, when the soldiers come to arrest Jesus, he asks them who they’re looking for, they say Jesus, and he says, “I am he.” And they step back and they fall to the ground. Do they recognize something of his identity as God even as they arrest him? Do they have any idea what they’re doing? Do we have any idea what’s happening as Jesus is betrayed, arrested, and condemned?
The classic question of Good Friday is “Why do we call this day, ‘good’?” Why, when we hear about Jesus dying, when we hear about the Son of God unjustly suffering, do we call this good?
But it is good, because it is on the cross that God’s love for us is revealed. God loves you enough to die for you, to redeem you from the power of sin and death. God has come to be with us in every way, including suffering and death.
The cross is for us. Jesus’ suffering is on our behalf.
God’s power is revealed not in the parades and the apparent victory of Palm Sunday’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, but on the cross, in the moment of defeat, in the scandal of God dying.
On the cross, Jesus takes the sins of the world on himself and puts them to death. Everything we do wrong, all the suffering in the world, Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denial, even your suffering, my suffering, everything is put to death on the cross.
And we know how the story ends. The darkness doesn’t win. Death does not get the last word. Because of the resurrection we’ll celebrate on Sunday, the cross itself is transformed from a symbol of suffering, execution, and death, to the chief symbol of our faith, of the hope we have, to the image of God’s love.
Tonight, we participate in a Tenebrae service. Tenebrae is simply the Latin word for darkness, or shadows. As we hear the story of Jesus’ suffering and death, we see the consequence of our sin.
Using words from Psalm 22, we reflect on the darkness in the world, and in our lives. The Psalm responses reflect on the separation between a perfect God and us, the sinful, rebellious creation. God appears infinitely far away, and we feel abandoned.
But those responses contrast with the story we celebrate tonight, the story of God who refuses to abandon us, who has instead come to suffer with us, who has taken what separates us and put it to death on the cross.
As we picture the darkness of the reality that required God to come and die for us, the sanctuary will get darker and darker.
After we hear again the story of God’s incredible love for us, we’ll bring our prayers, everything that’s on our hearts, to God, to the foot of the cross. Our service tonight concludes in silence as we ponder Jesus’ sacrifice for us and anticipate Easter and the coming resurrection.
We know what’s coming on Sunday morning, and we need that hope of resurrection.
But tonight, I encourage you to live into the darkness. Don’t jump ahead to Sunday. Come along with the disciples as they experience the events of that weekend.
Reflect on the scandal of God dying on the cross, innocent, yet punished for us as a criminal. And reflect on the love of the God who has died for you.
We begin with the passion story, according to John’s gospel.