April 18 -- Good Friday

Listen to this sermon HERE.

“It is finished.”  These are Jesus final words from the cross.
But what do they mean.  What is finished?!

Today used to be called the Triumph of the Cross Day.  Also, God’s Friday, but through the years and through translations and through the addition of another “o”, it changed to become what we call today Good Friday.  And it is.

Today is not a funeral for Jesus.  In the last 50 years Christians have almost started treating Good Friday as Jesus’ funeral...I think, in part, the 7-last-words-from-the-cross format has contributed to that--and that’s what I grew up with--but that’s mixing up the richness of the 4 very different Gospels, and loosing their uniqueness.  That’s like taking 4 paintings, one from Picasso, from Monet, from DaVinci, and from Pollock mashing them all together into just one painting.  No, we read only from John on Good Friday.  And there, Jesus does not suffer or show any fear at all...Did you notice that?  Did you hear any cries of pain from this narrative that the Evangelist John?  No cries like “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” -- as in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew.  As one scholar puts it, such an outburst would be a “theological impossibility” for Jesus in the Gospel of John.  He goes on: “God and Jesus are united...and his death fills him neither with despair nor a sense of abandonment by God.”

  

Good Friday is good because of John’s version.  If we didn’t have John’s version, we would not have called this day Triumph of the Cross Day or Good Friday.  Since the fifth century, the Gospel of John has been called “the eagle” and symbolized as such -- “soaring the highest” as Luther said, “and seeing the farthest what Jesus’ death on the cross truly means.”  It means, that victory through the cross is ours.  Jesus reigns from the cross -- what to the world as a symbol of hatred and violence and oppression -- is to God the very place of love poured out upon the world.  The water of life gushing from his pierced side.  

It is because of John’s telling, that Christians call this day good and victorious.  And to pinpoint the exact moment, it is precisely when Jesus says, “It is finished.” 

So...again, what is finished?  What does that mean?

To unpack those three crucial words and to drive home the point even more in a different form, I want you to listen to Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John’s Passion.  He never did services on the Seven Last (very different) Words of Jesus from the cross.  Bach plunged only into the pool of the Gospel John on Good Friday.  We were in Germany two years ago, where I learned what a theologian Bach was.  

This week I sent out a link of Bach’s St. John’s Passion, a two hour musical presentation of the chapters that I just read.  Anybody listen to it?  Bach’s Passion compositions so Luther-an in their structure in that they state the text itself directly first, then they comment on it, and Bach puts his listeners into the story...much like Luther did in his sermons, or many artists through the centuries do in their paintings -- many times putting even themselves -- into the biblical scenes they paint.  Bach does this musically with Jesus’ crucifixion.  Where are we standing during all this?

1:21:34  -- Jesus has just--in a beautiful aria--stated calmly “It is finished,” bowed his head, and gave us his last breath.  First compare to St. Matthew’s Passion, where at this same point: “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” melody.  Compare that to what you’re about to hear...

Mein teurer Heiland, laß dich fragen,
Jesu, der du warest tot,
Da du nunmehr ans Kreuz geschlagen
Und selbst gesagt: 
Es ist vollbracht,
Lebest nun ohn Ende,
Bin ich vom Sterben frei gemacht?
In der letzten Todesnot,
Nirgend mich hinwende
Kann ich durch deine Pein und Sterben
Das Himmelreich ererben?
Ist aller Welt Erlösung da?
Als zu dir, der mich versühnt,
O du lieber Herre!
Du kannst vor Schmerzen 
zwar nichts sagen;
Gib mir nur, was du verdient,
Doch neigest du das Haupt
Und sprichst stillschweigend: ja.
Mehr ich nicht begehre!


“Don’t cry for me,” Jesus says, to his mother and to the disciple whom he loved, “Don’t cry for me, but love one another.”  Don’t gaze up here at me now, turn to your neighbor and share this love that I have for you with them.

We’re going to sing “I heard the voice of Jesus say.”
Haunting?  Beautiful.  Come unto me and rest.  We take refuge in the cross, we glory in the cross.  And at the foot of the cross we can’t help but pray, not for Jesus but because of Jesus to pray for the world.  Let us glory in the cross this Good Friday: quiet joy.  

Let us lay down our weary heads upon Jesus‘ body, poured out for us in love.  Jesus bow of his head is a yes.  “And more we do not desire.”  AMEN.