John 18:1-19:42
“There are no dances for dark days.
There is no music to bellow the pain.
The best we can do is to remain still and silent
And try to remember the face of God…
And how to kneel, and how to pray.”[i]
The poet Ann Weems, whose words I just read, lost her son just an hour
after his 21st birthday.
As I was thinking about her when I was writing this sermon I looked her
up on the internet only to find out that she herself died on March 17 of this
year. Ann wrote many poems and
Psalms of Lament to work her way through the grief and pain that she
experienced.
This poem is a fitting start to our time together tonight too as we
huddle beneath the cross. Lent is
over and we have advanced through Holy Week one day at a time. We enacted the drama of Jesus’ entry
into Jerusalem, his final Passover meal with his disciples, his betrayal and
arrest. And now this. His crucifixion.
Good Friday is a screeching halt in our journey. We are frozen on the path, we journey
no more. Not because we want to,
but because death by crucifixion immobilizes us so we don’t really know what to
do except to come together on this day and acknowledge the dreadful completion
of Christ’s life. It hurts to see
Jesus in this way. As Ann said, “The
best we can do is to remain still and silent, and try to remember the face of
God…and how to kneel, and how to pray.
Although you might want to move ahead to Easter because you cannot
bear the cross, it will be to your disadvantage. It will blind you to the stark reality of tonight. Jesus’ death is what we need to
concentrate on and death is never easy to bear. Tonight our focus is on the cross, nothing more, nothing
less.
Jesus’ story is our story.
It repulses us and, at the same, it draws us in. Without it, the Christian life has
little meaning. We can attach some
theological lingo to it like the theology of the cross of sacrifice and
expiation, of salvation and atonement and make it all work, if that’s what you
want. We could wrap it up in a
neat package, but if we do that, if we are to intellectualize it, then how are
we to feel the profound nature and sadness of this Good Friday?
Death has to happen before new life can come. Winter has to precede spring before the
crocus’ can blossom. And so here
we are, at the foot of the cross some 2,000 years later, wondering and waiting,
trying ‘to remember the face of God…and how to kneel, and how to pray.’
But we are not alone at the foot of Christ’s cross. We do not bear this sorrow alone. There are others with us. For in John’s Gospel he tells us that
Mary, Jesus’ mother is there, so is Mary the wife of Clopas as is Mary Magdalene. The three Mary’s who lovingly attend
Jesus to the end. His mother, bless
her, was there at the beginning of
his life, was there at the beginning of his ministry in Cana and now
accompanies him through his death.
It’s just what mothers do.
So with them we grieve together because that’s what people do when
someone is dying. They lift one
another up, they carry one another’s burdens, they help to ease the pain and
suffering of loss. They console
one another. I am so glad they are
here with us today and that we are legacies of their witness, their compassion
and their devotion to Jesus.
And the beloved disciple was there too perhaps with his arm around
Mary. Jesus watches the tender but tearful exchanges between
them. Jesus makes his wishes
known, ‘Please beloved one, take care of my mother. And mother, here is your son.’ In this act of care and concern he sows the
seeds for a new community that would eventually emerge. It is a community not of kin but of
caretakers for one another. [ii] So much happened that day at the cross
under a dark and threatening sky, it’s hard to fathom. And then, he gave up his spirit, he
breathed his last breath on this earth and he died.
Being at the bedside of one who is dying is both incredibly sad yet
oddly comforting. It is a gift
that we give to one another. We
speak in hushed tones, we give each other hugs, we offer Kleenex to wipe away
the tears and we tell stories as we watch and wait for our loved one to take
her last breath, the very last task that she will do upon this earth. If you are brave enough to witness that
moment you will know that all of life is contained in that very last breath
which is exhaled out.
That upon that last exhalation all of who we are, our accomplishments,
our disappointments, our very being is let out as we succumb to this life and
our souls ascend into the presence of God.
This week has been at the very least, troublesome with the attacks in
Brussels. How far will they
go? How close will they get? How much can we take? I feel as if each time another
radicalized suicide bomber detonates, or another bomb explodes that I fall
further into an abyss of fear and anger. Fear that it could happen anywhere at any time, to me,
to one of my loved ones, and anger that I feel so helpless to prevent it. I preach love and all that I see is
hate. And the sadness is
overwhelming.
Yet tonight, in all of its somber tones and darkened shades lies our
hope.
All of the pain and suffering of the world is acknowledged in Jesus’
pain and suffering. He bears the weight of the world’s anger, hatred, violence
and greed. All of your
pain and suffering is acknowledged in Jesus’ pain and suffering tonight. Whatever it is that you brought with you
tonight to the cross you can lay it down.
We hurt, we cry out, we suffer and experience deep sorrow, we sin, we
err, we go astray, we break covenant.
We are products of our human nature and all of that we can project onto
the cross of Jesus.
So when Jesus utters “it is finished” and breathes his last breath, we
can say, “it is all that we can bear Lord, thank you!” Jesus’ death reminds us
that the marks of humanity are bearable, the sin, the sadness, the sorrow, the
suffering are bearable and that we will be able to stand at the cross with
strength and with courage and faith, forgiveness and hope. This is what his
death means for us. In the ancient
words of the Indian poet Tagore, “Death is not extinguishing the light, but
putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”
So cast your gaze intently upon the cross. Pour your heart out upon this cross tonight and know that
you are in the company of the Mary’s and the beloved disciple and everyone else
who has faithfully stood at the cross of Jesus and waited, and watched and
tried to remember the face of God and how to kneel and how to pray.
Come now. The Sabbath is
rapidly approaching; Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are preparing his body
for burial now. Perhaps we can be
of some help.
Amen.
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