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Sermon: Good Friday (A) - 22nd April 2011
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping 8:30 am
Readings: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22;1 Corinthians 1:18-31; John 18:1-19:42
There is nothing worse than coming into a story half-way through. You have to work so hard to figure out what is going on before you can make sense of the story. And this is what we have in today’s reading. Here we have Jesus facing this most awful death yet it begs the question, how did this happen? How did the story of Jesus get so out of control that it resulted in his execution?
If we go back to the beginning of John’s gospel we don’t get too far before we discover great hostility against Jesus. Its true that Jesus was popular with the crowds but it was also true that he was very unpopular with the leaders and the officials of Israel. John tells us of some of the more dramatic miracles that Jesus performed. He healed a man crippled for 38 years. He healed a man who had been born blind. Then he raised Lazarus who had been dead for four days.
These acts won Jesus great support and great popularity. The Jewish leaders were fearful that they would lose control of their nation and if that happened the Romans would march in and take control. But the other great concern these leaders had was the nature of Jesus’ teaching. Some of those dramatic healings had occurred on the Sabbath and the Jews were very strict that no work could be done on the Sabbath. Yet here was Jesus doing something which was clearly work.
Why was Jesus breaking the Law? Why was Jesus breaking the law and yet so unconcerned about it? In other places we know Jesus justified his actions by saying there was nothing wrong with doing good on the Sabbath. Keeping the Law was at the very centre of the Jewish faith. The Ten Commandments were a summary of all that they believed. Yet here was Jesus presenting himself as a religious leader who seemed unconcerned about the keeping of the law.
But second, the Jewish leaders were troubled by the way that Jesus kept referring to God as his father. They understood correctly the implications of the statement. If God were his father, then Jesus must be God as well. Not only that, the claim means that Jesus saw himself as equal with God. For the Jews, this was the worst of blasphemy. They would have hated Jesus for this teaching. But because Jesus was becoming more and more popular, more and more powerful, their hatred easily turned into plots to kill him.
So today is a sad day as we remember these events, as we remember the hatred, and the plotting and eventually the killing. But as we remember these sad things we should notice too that all this happens in a world like ours. Often our churches struggle with being distant and remote from the society it works in, but the world in which these events of Jesus’ life are played out sounds like a world like our world. As we meet today there are many things that can sadden us about our world. Just this year, we have seen the suffering and the staggering death toll of Japan. We have seen the destruction of the beauty of Christchurch and the deaths of many people. In Queensland and Victoria we have seen the ruin of the lives and livelihood brought on by the floods. Suffering and death are integral stories to the story of our world.
We have seen the desperate attempts of the people of Egypt and Libya and Tunisia to free themselves of regimes who would rather torture and kill to the provision of good, and fair, and decent government. Just this year we have seen brutality expressed in these various forms. And the Christian response is that God sent his son into this world to rescue it. It is the kind of world which would be the last place to send any child, specially one from heaven. Yet this was God’s response – not to give up on the world but to bless it, by getting involved with it, in spite of the cross.
Maybe not too many people these days remember Archbishop Marcus Loane. He was an academic, very clever, but very shy. He found it difficult to carry on a conversation with a stranger. But during World War Two he worked as an army chaplain. Each day he had to mix with battle-weary men, men entirely beyond his experience. Yet he quickly gained great respect for one main reason. On the Kokoda Trail he would visiti any troops in the most dangerous forward positions. There was nowhere he would not dare to go. Daily his life was in extreme danger. Yet the men knew that no matter where they went he would be with them no matter the cost.
This is the story of Good Friday, that God sent his son into the danger of this world to bring us back to him. The message is that no matter where we go, what we suffer, what we endure he will be with us no matter the cost to himself. The great hope of Good Friday is that Jesus faced the danger, and came to us anyway, already knowing how the story would end. And I think that is the point Henry Lawson was making when he wrote this poem….
Crucifixion – Henry Lawson
They sunk a post into the ground
Where their leaders bade them stop;
It was a man’s height, and they spiked
A crosspiece to the top.
They bound it well with thongs of hide,
To make it firm and good;
Then roughly, with His back to this,
Their enemy they stood.
They held His hands upon the piece,
And they spiked them to the wood.
They mocked Him then—the while He rocked
In agony His head—
With things that He had never done,
And He had never said—
With that which He had never been—
And in His face they spat.
They placed a plank beside the post,
And they spiked His feet to that.
They pelted Him, but not with stones,
Lest He should die too soon;
They stayed to mock His agony
All through the blazing noon.
They did not pelt with stones, lest they
Might kill Him unaware,
But with foul things that lay about
The filthy hovels there.
And this was how they murdered Him
They killed Him in his youth
Because He had been good to men,
Because He told the truth,
Because they did not understand
The things He felt and knew:
He only said the world-old words,
“They know not what they do.”
The flaunting harlots taunted Him;
He only bowed His head,
And prayed for public women then,
While “Save Thyself!” they said.
They went with soldiers to the camp,
And the rest went by-and-bye,
When they were weary of the sport—
And they left Him there to die.
He lingered yet, for He was strong,
But He shut His blighted eyes,
And shuddered oft, for round Him swarmed
The loathsome desert flies.
His throat was parched, His temples throbbed,
And when He drooped, the pain
That shot from all His wounds tenfold
Would draw Him up again.
Two thieves were nailed beside Him there—
They raved, their wounds they tore,
And though they both were stronger men,
They seemed to suffer more;
And while with agony great beads
Of sweat stood on His brow,
He’d comfort them in words like these:
“’Twill soon be ended now.”
His friends had all deserted Him—
They fled in deadly fear
(As friends desert a friend to-day,
Afraid of jibe and sneer):
The same poor human nature now,
As it has ever been—
Small credit to be crucified
Beside a Nazarene.
But when the people in the town
And the drunken soldiers slept,
From some mean huts that stood hard by
Three wretched women crept;
Like thieves, across the stony ground,
They came with stealthy tread,
And they had water in a gourd—
But they found that He was dead.
They brought some still more wretched men,
And O their hearts were good:
In terror, and with pains, they wrenched
The strong spikes from the wood;
They washed His body hurriedly,
For they had lives to save,
And they bore it off and hid it well,
Where none might find his grave.
His name is known where’er the foot
Of Christian man has trod.
They worship in cathedrals now,
They call Him - Son of God.
They ask for aid in His dear name
When they suffer care and pain,
And if He came on earth to-day,
They’d murder Him again.