Good Friday Sermon

Good Friday

April 14, 2017

Faith Episcopal Church

The Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

I don’t know for sure what makes it so hard to hear the Passion read out loud.  Is it the suffering of Jesus? Or is it seeing the incredible cruelty of which humanity is capable?  When we read the Passion, like we did tonight, we can’t help but realize that very few people in this story demonstrate anything positive about themselves. Instead, what we hear 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.  When the Romans conquered a people they didn’t worry about making them friends. They just wanted to control them. They decided the best way of doing it was fear. So over time they developed different ways to punish people that would elicit fear.  

Crucifixion was the most elegant of them all because crucifixion was designed to maximize the humiliation. Maximize the pain. Maximize the time it would take to die. They were always done in public places so when people were walking down the street, going to work or to go get their groceries, they might see a person or five or a hundred hanging on a wall or tied to a tree 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 that 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 I might have been one of the ones who were cheering and waving palms as Jesus entered the city. But once He got arrested, I wouldn’t have had anything to do with it. I would have stayed home, stayed away, not wanted to get involved.

I doubt I would have been there yelling “Crucify Him.”  That’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 here tonight, where would you be in this story?  I would 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 in this story except his mother and John.  Even Joseph of Arimathea, who offers his grave, had been silent because he was afraid.  He was a secret follower of Jesus.  

I once heard of an ancient tradition of theological reflection where people wondered 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?  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.  

In the Matthew version of the Passion, Judas, when he saw that Jesus was going to be killed, realized what he had done.  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. I can 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 bring hope. He can take each part of us that is dead and he can transform it, forgive it, love it, and resurrect it.  

This was a very bad Friday in many ways for the people in this story we read today, but we know that this is not the end. It is not the final chapter.  

And that’s why we call it Good Friday.

Palm Sunday

When we are going through difficult times we want to talk to someone who has been through what we are going through. We want someone who understands.

Christ, through his passion, knows; he truly understands – and offers hope.

Palm Sunday Sermon

2012

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Philippians 2:5-11

Mark 15:1-39

I have found that when we are going through difficult times in our lives we want to talk to someone whose been through that themselves. When my husband was in a bad motorcycle accident he wanted to talk someone else who had been in a body cast and broken a leg. Someone who had gone through that. When I found out I was going to have brain surgery I wanted to find someone who had experienced that. I didn’t want to listen to anyone else.

When we are going through difficult times, like when we are grieving the death of someone we love, we get comfort from those who have experienced it already. Or when we are trying to lose weight we want to have the person who is helping us show us a picture of when they were grossly overweight. We don’t want some slim thing that has never known what it means to count calories. We want someone who understands. That is part of the beauty and power of the alcoholic anonymous program, and other 12 step programs. They realize that when you are struggling with something the best person to help is someone who has been through that themselves. That’s who we want to talk to. That is who we want to get support from.

Today we are reminded that Jesus has been through all of it. He knows all of human experience. At the beginning of the service we celebrate him coming into Jerusalem like a super star. People were cheering and throwing things on the path in front of him. What a glorious thing. How many of us fantasize sometime in our lives being in a position like that?

We also know that when Lazarus died Jesus wept. He knew what it meant to grieve.

And in his passion we see all of human experience in one day. He knows what it is like to be betrayed by a friend, to have those you rely upon disappear and not be there to help you, to find that the religion and the community that you supported and cared about and cared for you your whole life turns on you, condemns you, to have false accusations made about you, to have people spit on you, to be tortured, abused, mocked, nailed naked to a cross to die. And at the end Jesus says, “My God, my God why have abandoned me?” Jesus even knew what it was like to feel abandoned by God.

He knew fear; he knew hurt; he knew pain. He knows it all. That’s what Paul is alluding to as he tries to describe the nature of this Christ, this Jesus, when he writes, “Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born into human likeness.” Here he is alluding to and trying to describe the great mystery of the Christian faith, that somehow God Almighty, God the creator of the universe, the source and ground of all being, that in which everything else exists, that somehow, some way that God came into human form to experience all of what it meant to be a human being - birth, childhood, adolescence, teaching, struggle, friendship, pain, abandonment. All of it.

In John’s gospel it says, “He was with God, and he was God.” In the creeds we say that he was of one being with the father. Those are all trying to use human language to describe something that is beyond what we can quite comprehend. This great mystery that somehow God came into human form to experience all that human beings experience.

Because of that we can go to Christ, we can speak to God of our pain, and our fears, and our abandonment. Christ understands, he experienced it, he knows what it was like. We are not communicating with a being that has no idea of what we have been through, but to one who has walked there, who has suffered, and even knows what it feels like to be abandoned. To be totally alone.

We have that kind of a friend who has walked there before us and therefore can help us through whatever it is, whether it be grief, or physical pain, or emotional lose or questioning even the presence of God, because he knows, he knows.

In addition to that, the reason we want to talk to someone who has walked through the journey we are on is because we want to see that there is something ahead, that there is something beyond the struggle right now, that there is hope, that what we are going through at this moment is not the final word. And that is what we are offered through Christ, because even though his last words on the cross were “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” his last word was his resurrection. And the final word is always, always God’s abounding love.

Palm/Passion Sunday

Each year we begin Holy Week with the emotional roller of Palm/Passion Sunday. I posted this sermon back in 2014, but still like it the best of the ones I have given on Palm/Passion Sunday so I decided to repost it today.

Passion/Palm Sunday

March 28, 1999

St. Alban’s, Brentwood, CA

The Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Passion According to St. Matthew

         What an emotional roller coaster this Sunday is. We move from the emotional high and joy of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem to his death on the cross in less than an hour. What an emotional roller coaster it was for Jesus’ followers during that week of the Passover so many years ago. The service this morning is designed to encourage us to feel these emotions, to get a taste of the experience of that fateful week. We are asked to speak the words that represent so much of the story.

We cheer, “Hosanna in the highest”

And quickly, before we know it, we shout “Let him be crucified!”

We mock “He saved others; he cannot save himself”

and we speak those words from the psalm “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”

         Let us think about this incredible week from the perspective of Jesus’ followers. What a high, what a rush it must have been for them when Jesus was welcomed to Jerusalem. All Jesus’ talk of death must have been easily forgotten in all the excitement. Finally he was being acknowledged. Finally all the wandering and sacrificing was coming to fruition. Finally he was being hailed as the savior, as the new king, everything was going to be wonderful from now on. Such joy they must have felt. Such confidence in God. Such a sense that everything was fine now and would always be fine. A joy that they were sure would last forever. A total faith in this man who was being celebrated. There were no doubts then, no questions, no fear, just unbridled joy.

         Most of us have felt like that at some point in our spiritual lives. Perhaps after we first were introduced to Christ, or came back to the church. Perhaps during or after a spiritual retreat, where we felt Christ’s presence so clearly, so totally, that all the questions were gone. Perhaps after having a particularly profound personal experience where we knew, we knew deep in our hearts, that Christ was there with us. At such times there is a deep joy. Not the sort of superficial joy that we might get when things go right in our lives, but a deep joyousness that wells up from the depths of our beings. A joyousness that fills our lives. A joy that makes us want to shout “Thank You.” A joy that burst from us in songs of praise. When we feel this, when we experience this, we feel that it will never end. We feel a sureness in our faith, and unquestioning confidence in the truth of our Lord. And we really feel that this will never end, that finally we have found the answer, that all our questions all our doubts have been swept away. We sing Hosanna, Hosanna in our hearts and feel that if we did not sing it, the very rocks would shout out.

         But that high, that spiritual high, does not last forever. The spiritual journey is not that simple, that straight forward. We discover that we must come down from the mountain top. And sometimes the climb down is steep, as it was for Jesus’ disciples. In less than a week, everything had changed. What should have been a triumphant conclusion to the story, quickly turned to tragedy. The hopes and dreams that had been put on the carpenter from Nazareth were being shattered at an alarming rate. And the followers self concepts were also being shattered. All that is the worst in human beings was coming up.

         Betrayal. With the news about Judas, the others must have though, “How could one of us betray him? Could I have betrayed him?” 

         Cowardice. All the disciples fled and hid. No one stayed and stood beside him. What had happened to the fearlessness they had felt just a few days before when the crowds were on their side?

         Denial. Peter, his closest disciple, denies he even knew him. “Would I have denied him if I were in Peter’s position?”

         Hatred. “How could the same crowd that had cheered him as messiah now be calling for his death?” “Do I have inside me the hidden hatred that could want to see someone dead?”

         Arrogance. Did Pilate really think he could wash his hands of this choice? Jesus’ followers must have wondered whether they too might have had some responsibility that they wanted to deny.

         Cruelty. Mocking a dying man. Mocking a gentle man dying in great agony. The worst of human cruelty emerged that day, that horrible and dark day.

         And hopelessness. That stark cry “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” The anguish of feeling forsaken by God. Jesus spoke not just for himself, but undoubtedly echoed the feelings of his followers. They had lost their leader, they had lost their dreams, they had lost their hope, they too felt forsaken by God.

         And what of us? What of our spiritual journeys? Most of us, I believe, have known all of those emotions. What happens when we no longer feel the presence of God? What happens inside us when we are no longer on the mountain top, praising God, but find ourselves suddenly in the valley?

         We have known betrayal. Most of us have felt betrayed at some point in our lives, sometimes by a close friend or relative. And, when we look at ourselves honestly, we have betrayed others, or certainly betrayed God when we have not acted as we know we could have.

         Cowardice. We all know cowardice. We all have experienced the horrible feeling of knowing that we have not stood with a friend in need. We all have wondered inside if we would have the courage that we read about in the saints who were willing to die for their beliefs, and, if you are like me, you suspect that you would have run away when the soldiers came.

         We have known denial. Who among us has not at some point chosen not to acknowledge their Christian beliefs because it would be too uncomfortable? The story of Peter’s denial lives on so clearly because we can all identify with it. We all know what it is like to take the easy way out.

         Hatred. We all like to believe that we are beyond hatred. That we would not be among the crowd yelling crucify him. But are we? I’m not sure about myself. If someone hurt or killed one of my children, would my broken heart cry out to have him killed? Is it that hard for us to assent to capital punishment when the crime is particularly ghastly? Who among us could be sure that with the right provocation we would not know hatred?

         Arrogance. If we can deny that we would know hatred, we certainly have to accept that we have all felt arrogant. In fact we even use our religiosity to feel better than others. I’m not like them, I’m purer, holier, more in tune with God. Arrogance, that we can wash our hands of what is happening around us, that we can deny responsibility for the acts of the crowd, as if we were not part of the crowd. As if we had done all in our power to stop it. We indeed can easily fall into arrogance, washing our hands of all the pain and suffering around us. Oh, yes, we do know arrogance.

         Cruelty. We hope and pray that we are not cruel, but sometimes our cruelty comes out. Every now and then we find ourselves saying or doing something that we know to be cruel. We find ourselves caught up in the crowd, in the teasing, in the mocking. We have all known cruelty.

         And finally hopelessness. We can easily identify with the ring of those words, those powerfully mournful words “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” We sometimes find ourselves unable to experience the presence of God. We discover that somehow we are no longer on the mountain top with God, but deep in a crevasse where we are unable to find God. Perhaps we find ourselves there because of grief, the loss of a loved one, of a job, of a position. Perhaps we find ourselves there because of illness. Perhaps there is nothing different in the outside world, but something has happened inside us, and we cannot find God. That joy, that love, that peace that we felt not so long ago is but a memory and we begin to wonder if it had been real at all. We all go through on our spiritual journeys times of hopelessness, times when we feel forsaken by God. The writer of the psalm, felt it, felt it so strongly that he was able to express it eloquently. Even Jesus felt it, Jesus who had lived his life fully in the presence of God, felt it gone, felt forsaken, felt that anguish.

         When we are deep in the experience of God’s presence it is hard to imagine or remember when we didn’t feel that wonderful love surrounding us. And when we feel forsaken, when it has gone away, it is hard to imagine or remember what it felt like to know God’s presence. We have all felt at times forsaken, hopeless. We have all had times when our hearts have cried out “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”

         We have all known times when even that is too much for our hearts to say, and all we can express is a deep and painful question “Why?”

         And sometimes we are left in the dark stillness of that question - waiting.

         Waiting for the first sliver of sunrise. Waiting for the dawn.  Waiting for the resurrection that transforms the darkness into light and our sorrow into joy. Waiting to know, to really know that even in the darkest tomb, in the most forsaken moment, God is still present and working.