Good Friday Sermon

Good Friday 2010

Transcribed from a sermon given at

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

I don’t know for sure what makes it so hard to hear The Passion.  Is it the suffering of Jesus or is it the incredible cruelty of which humanity is capable?  When we read The Passion, like we did tonight, and people read different parts, you begin to realize that very few people in this story come out with anything positive about them.  Instead, what you run into is betrayal, cowardice, self-centeredness, fear, power, and manipulation - all the things that make us human, at least all the negative things that make us human.

Everything that’s cruel about humanity is part of this story, even the word crucify.  The Romans tried to control people when they conquered them.  They didn’t worry about making them their friends.  They decided the best way of doing it was fear.  And so over time they developed different ways to punish people that would elicit fear. 

Crucifixion was the most elegant of them all because with crucifixion it was not just the fact that the person was nailed up on a tree or a wall or even tied so it would take longer.  It was designed to maximize the pain so that they would live as long as possible.  Then the bodies just hung there. 

Crucifixions were always done in public places so when people were going back and forth down the street to go get their groceries, they might see a person or five or a hundred hanging on a wall or up on a hill.  They might be dying, they might be dead, they might have the birds eating their flesh.  It was unbelievably cruel.

It’s hard to imagine how a culture could be that cruel.  Yet, when we read this story we hear echoes of ourselves.  We have all had times in our lives when we have been afraid and acted out of fear.  We have all had times when we have denied somebody else, kept quiet when we could have spoken up. 

I sometimes try to imagine who I would have been in the story.  I think the person that I would have been is one of the ones who was cheering Jesus as he came down into the city a week ago, but once He got arrested, I didn’t want anything to do with it, and I stayed home, and I stayed away.

I doubt I would have been there yelling “Crucify Him.”  It’s not my style.  But I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been there protesting.  I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been speaking up and saying, “Not Him” because I know how many times I see injustice in the world and I stay quiet. 

Each one of you, where would you be in this story?  I’d like to think I’d be standing at the cross.  Jesus’ friend who stood by his mother.  I doubt it.  I doubt it.  I know myself too well.  Nobody comes out very good from this story except his mother and John.  And even Joseph of Arimathea, who offers his grave, had been silent because he was afraid.  He was a secret follower of Jesus. 

When Bishop Mary was in Paso on Wednesday night, she said that there is a tradition of theological reflection that goes way back of people wondering what it was Jesus did in that part of the Apostles Creed where it says, “He descended into hell.”  What was he doing during that time in hell?  She said that one of the theories is that He was looking for Judas.  He was looking for the one who betrayed Him to get an opportunity to forgive Him. 

Because, you see, in the Matthew version of The Passion, Judas, when he sees that Jesus is going to be killed, realizes what he did.  He repented of it, but he was so disturbed, he went and killed himself.  It also says that Jesus didn’t lose any one of them.  So I could imagine Jesus looking for His friend Judas to tell him he was forgiven.  Just like Jesus comes looking for us who have all let him down in one way or another in our lives.  He comes looking for each one of us, each one of his friends, so He can tell us that we’re forgiven, that we’re loved, that it’s all going to be okay. 

In fact, it’s going to be more than okay.  Out of the sadness of our lives, out of the tragedy of our lives, out of the things we do wrong in our lives, Jesus can come and take that part of us that is dead and He can transform it, forgive it, love it, and resurrect it.  This was a bad Friday for most of the people in the story, but we know that it’s not the end of the story.  And that’s why we call it Good Friday.

Amen.