Good Friday 2018 Sermon

Similar to last year’s Good Friday service, our 2018 Good Friday worship at St. Peter Lutheran Church began with a responsive reading from Isaiah 52:13-53:12, a reading from Hebrews 10:16-25, and then moved into a Tenebrae service with the Passion story from John 18 and 19, with responses from Psalm 22. I did try a new arrangement for candles this year that I thought enhanced the service – see the picture to the left.

This brief sermon came between the Hebrews reading and the Tenebrae service passion readings from John. You can find the full Good Friday Tenebrae service order from last year here.

Be sure to read last night’s Maundy Thursday sermon as well.

One week ago today, a 25 year old gunman claiming allegiance to ISIS took hostages in a supermarket in the French town of Carcassone. As police responded, a 43 year old lieutenant colonel named Arnaud Beltrame offered himself in exchange for one of the hostages. As he went in to take her place, he kept his cell phone on, giving the police outside a way to hear what was going on.

When police stormed the market, the gunman shot Beltrame, and he died later that night. His funeral was two days ago, on Wednesday, and he’s been rightfully hailed as a hero by President Macron and the French public for giving up his life for the sake of the hostages.

You have to wonder what could motivate someone to take a hostage’s place, don’t you? This man willingly went above the call of his duty as a police officer at the cost of his own life to save the life of a stranger.

As it turns out, Beltrame had been born into a family with little religious practice, but in 2008, at the age of 33, he was baptized into the Catholic church. Two years later, he was confirmed and received his first communion.

Perhaps, as most media reports emphasized, he was simply a good police officer, well-liked and focused on serving his community. Certainly, going into public service means being willing to risk, even give up your life for others. That’s part of being a police officer or firefighter or soldier or any similar profession.

But to intentionally, willingly take the place of someone else, to give up your life for their sake, that’s also a testimony to Christ. As his priest who was going to conduct his wedding service on June 9th wrote, “Only his faith can explain the madness of this sacrifice, which is today the admiration of all.”




Speaking to his disciples shortly before his own death, Jesus said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

As we heard last night on Maundy Thursday, on the last night Jesus was with his disciples, he gave them this same command again, saying “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Tonight, on Good Friday, we see how it is that Jesus loves us. We see how far God is willing to go to save our lives. We see Jesus take our sin and the death that it leads to.

We see Jesus, the sinless lamb of God, dying in our place, taking the punishment that belongs to us.

Part of the miracle, of course, is that Jesus isn’t just dying for strangers who might or might not be good people worth saving; he’s dying for people who he knows everything about. He knows our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, everything we try to hide, the thoughts no one else knows. And knowing every little bit of the junk in our lives, he loves us enough to go to the cross for us.

We get to lay our sins at the foot of the cross, knowing that in Jesus’ death, they are forgiven.

As we just read from Isaiah, in those words written centuries earlier, “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases…he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”

We are here to worship the God whose love for us is revealed on the cross, whose victory 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.

As you hear the story tonight, I invite you to reflect on the kind of love that would take the place of a hostage, that takes our place, releasing us from our bondage to sin, setting us free from our captivity.

We worship a God who has come into the darkness of our world, the darkness of a world where terrorists attack supermarkets, and gunmen attack students, and leaders threaten nuclear war, and where cancer attacks our neighbors and relatives, and where the message of peace and love is met with violence and threats and execution.

God looks into this sinful world with love, and comes to suffer with us. God comes to take what is broken in this world and put it to death on the cross. God comes to bring hope and light into our dark world.




The responses we’ll read tonight from Psalm 22 reflect on the darkness in our world and in our lives. The Psalmist cries out, asking God “Why have you forsaken me?” But those responses contrast with what we see in Jesus, God in the flesh, who not only refuses to abandon us, but instead comes to suffer with us, to experience everything this world has to offer.

As we move through the story, we’ll extinguish candles, moving farther into the darkness, and we’ll conclude our worship service tonight in silence, in the silence and darkness of Jesus’ death.

But death is not the end of the story. John began his gospel with the promise that the light shines even in the darkness, and the darkness did not, has not, will not overcome it.

We have confidence to approach God, confidence to face life, because of the sacrifice Jesus made for us, and the new and living way he opened for us. Good Friday is good because it’s not the end of the story, because even death cannot stop God.

I hope all of you will come back for the Easter vigil tomorrow night and to celebrate the good news of the resurrection on Sunday morning.

Tonight, witness the extent of God’s love for you. We begin the passion story according to John’s Gospel.