Thank you for being here…I’m serious!
Holy Week isn’t particularly popular. And Good Friday? C’mon…
So THANK YOU for spending these hours to witness with Jesus as he slips from this life to eternal life, an existence promised to be so glorious and peaceful that at times, we long for it while at other times, most of the time, we fight against it, with all that we are and all that we have.
And it is this very human of behaviors, fighting against the inevitability of death, that we witness happening to Jesus on the cross of Good Friday.
I think this is what makes Holy Week in general and Good Friday in particular so unpopular----we are people of life, not people of death---we are people of hope not people fear---we are people of joy not people of despair.
Holy Week in general and Good Friday in particular brings us face to face with the one absolute guaranteed fact of life: death.
Now we know, those of us gathered here, that Easter will always follow Good Friday, that joy returns after despair, that hope will defeat fear and that out of death comes, always, glorious, glorious life.
But on this most holy of afternoons, during these three hours of darkness it isn’t Easter yet. Death has not been defeated, Pain is very real and the Savior of our world; our Teacher, our Hope, our Lord and our God has been nailed to a cross and life—his beautiful precious human life---is slipping out of his body. He’s in agony, he’s scared, he’s weakening. It looks---it feels--as if the despair, fear and death of the empire has won and that the joy, hope and life of the babe born in the manger has been utterly, thoroughly and completely beaten. That the love and light of Jesus has been snuffed out and the hate and darkness of tyranny has won.
But….and thank God for this BUT….our faith, the Faith given to us through the prophets of old, the Faith taught to us by the prophets of the not so recent past, give us what, to others must appear to be a foolish, outlandish, immature and absurd faith that death does not, and never will have the final word.
So when Jesus says “It is Finished,” this is not a proclamation of defeat, it is as scholars have said for generations, a proclamation of victory.
Jesus was proclaiming that his work as God taking on the flesh of this world, as the man Jesus, was finished.
And while that makes sense to me----haven’t you ever finished a long and painful task and although exhausted and maybe even in pain, you’re able to look at what you’ve accomplished and say, with satisfaction, “It is Finished!”----However, I can’t help but “hear” these words of Jesus as being tinged with less triumph than scholars would lead us to believe.
Look around the scene---everyone but a handful of women and the beloved disciple remain----Judas has betrayed, Peter denied and the others? Philip, James, Andrew, Thomas and all the rest have left. They’ve slipped into the temple crowds, hiding as best they can, denying all that has been, securing their place back into the status quo---can Jesus really feel victorious?
Yes, his earthly life is coming to an end: he’s taught all he could teach, he’s healed all he could heal, he’s challenged the temple authorities to the very end--- but the work?
The challenges to tyranny, the commandment to love one another, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the broken-hearted…. that work?
It’s so very far from finished.
And so, on this Good Friday, we must admit that this work—this good and holy work is not finished and will not be finished, will not be complete—the victory of God will not be won until:
No one can walk into a school and kill an 8 year old boy who was simply in his special ed classroom, learning.
It won’t be finished, it won’t be complete, the victory of God will not be won until:
A young black man walking down the street doesn’t have to fear for his life at the hands of police officers simply because he is walking, or driving or hanging out while black.
It won’t be finished, it won’t be complete, the victory of God will not be won until:
The 130 million girls with no access to education will be able to go to school without fear and without reproach. That women will get paid an equal wage for equal work and that women and girls the world over will have full and complete control over their bodies. Always and forever.
It won’t be finished, it won’t be complete, the victory of God will not be won until:
The horror of climate change is accepted as fact and all the strength and wisdom of this world is given over to protecting what is left
It won’t be finished, it won’t be complete, the victory of God will not be won until:
The lost are found, the blind see, the naked clothed and the hungry fed.
It won’t be finished, it won’t be complete, the victory of God will not be won until:
We---you and me---go out into the world and do the work we have been given to do.
And what is that work?
To love.
Fully and Completely and Always.
To ask ourselves, not in the trite way of bracelets and t-shirts, but in the true and full way of Jesus on the cross, what would Jesus do?
For only in doing what it is that Jesus would have us do, only in loving everyone, everywhere, always, NO EXCEPTIONS—and that means NO MATTER WHAT---is it truly finished.
My friends, as Jesus breathes his last upon that cross, may we all be of good courage to do what we know is right. May we always walk the way of Christ crucified, the way of hope and faith and love.
The way that will lead us, at the end to sigh with our Savior, It is Finished, It is Finished, It is, indeed Finished…Thanks Be to God.
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