Rebecca Sheridan
Good Friday, March 30, 2018
John 18:1-19:42
Jesus’ last words on the cross were, “It is finished.” What was finished with Jesus’ death on the cross? Christians have spent the next 2000+ years thinking about, writing about, speculating about that answer. I will not claim to offer a definitive answer tonight! For the most part, having those powerful words of Jesus’ crucifixion from John’s gospel ring in our ears is enough. Recently I watched a video of Richard Delbene, an Episcopalian priest who helps people learn how to pray. He talked about our traditional view of God as someone “Up there” not being a very helpful one. If God is only “up there,” God is somehow unreachable, distant, uncaring, uninvolved. Good Friday reminds us that God is not just “up there.” In fact, God came down here to meet us in our lowest of lows, as deniers, betrayers, murderers, sinners ALL of us, to save us from ourselves. To save us FOR each other and FOR the world that God so loved and made. And so perhaps it is enough on this holiest of nights to remember that it is finished, here on the cross. God came down for us in Jesus Christ as a little baby in a manger, to grow into a man full of grace and truth to teach us, heal us, love us and save us. That’s it. We don’t have to go anywhere else or do anything else to get up to where God is, God is here, with Jesus, with us, on the cross.
In John’s story of Jesus’ crucifixion, it is easy to place ourselves in the uncomfortable spot of the one who like Peter, has denied Jesus. Or like Judas, who has betrayed Jesus. Or like Pilate, has handed over Jesus to be crucified. Or like the crowds, quickly goes from loving Jesus to hating him and wanting him to be killed, shouting “Crucify him!” To live a cross-shaped life as Jesus lived is to recognize that Jesus came to restore relationships with each other, as we remembered last night, but also to restore our relationship with God, in the vertical. Jesus came down from a heavenly throne, from a kingdom not of this world, to live in our world, to save us from ourselves. It is wise for us to reflect tonight then on a God who still lives in our midst and in our messiness, who is not just up there, seated on a throne watching stoically but here living, dying, rising with us. God is present, on the cross, here tonight, with us now in our suffering, in our mistakes, in our greatest weaknesses offering redemption and new life. That is why this is Good Friday. That is partly what Jesus means when he says, “It is finished.” It is enough to know that God came down for us, to love us and restore our relationships with God and one another. Amen.