April 2, 2021
/Good Friday
Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Ps 22 ; John 18:1-19:42
The Rev. Bradley Varnell
“For this I was born, and for this I have come into the word: to bear witness to the truth.”
The passion of Jesus is nothing if it not a great, cosmic moment of truth telling. Earlier on in John, in chapter 12, Jesus speaks of his passion, his hour, and says “now is the judgement of the world…” In his crucifixion Jesus judges the world. Now, of course, as our story goes those who put Jesus on the cross, Pilate, the Romans, the Judean authorities, are the ones who seem to judge Jesus. They find him to be a political threat, a potential disturber of the peace. Passover is soon to occur, Jerusalem has swelled in size with pilgrims from all over the known world, and the folks in charge cannot have some would-be Messiah stoking flames of insurrection. Better for one man to perish than the entire nation.
So Jesus is crucified. Raised up with bandits and revolutionaries to die the kind of death so horrible that it wasn’t spoken of my polite, well-to-do Romans. Crucifixion was a way to make an example of someone. To show others what happened when you dared to make waves again Rome’s power. Crucifixion showed the judgement of Rome. Keep in mind that judgement is, primarily, about truth telling. A judgement is a determination. When we judge we say “this is how things are.” Rome, in crucifying Jesus, says “this is how things are: we are in charge. We are in power.” The religious authorities, in offering Jesus to the Romans say “this is how things are: this man is no all-powerful messiah.” They judge Jesus.
But here, on the cross, Jesus also judges. Here, on the cross, Jesus passes judgement on the entire world. Here, on the cross, Jesus Christ – the Word of God made flesh, God in human form – reveals the way things are: humanity is so enmeshed in sin and evil, so caught up with the forces of death, that God himself is killed. Remember all the way back in John chapter 1 John speaks about Jesus’ coming into the world. John writes “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Jesus is the light of the World who shows us just how dark our world is – especially on the cross. On this cross we see how dark things really are. We see how far humanity will go to keep power, order, “peace” in place. We see how the innocent must die for the Kings of the World to stay firmly placed on their thrones. But the cross reveals more: not only is Jesus condemned by an unjust government, he is betrayed by his fellow countrymen, abandoned by his friends, denied by Peter, abused by the guards. At every moment in the story of Jesus’ passion we see how fickle human hearts can be! We see how the incredible diversity of ways we can fail to love.
The passion, in short, lays bare before us the reality of sin: ways of life, habits, attitudes, systems that all work together to create death – relational death, biological death, and even spiritual death. Jesus – the Word made flesh – is life itself. The word is the source of life, and to turn from the Word as humans did as soon as we could speak, is to unleash sin into the world. It is to turn to ways of existence that can only lead to death. Sin isn’t about breaking rules, sin is about living in such a way that only death can come about. The long story of Scripture is the story of sin’s infection of our world, of the way in which death has become so imbedded in God’s good creation that it is impossible to imagine existence without it. It is a testament to how deep the infection goes that we cannot think life without also thinking death. Creation was brought into being to enjoy relationship with God and to know God is to know life itself. This is the power of sin at work in us – that we die.
Jesus judges us on the cross. Jesus reveals the nature of our world. But it matters that it is Jesus that does it. If anyone else were to have died in this way they may well have exposed our sin, but they could do nothing to help us. That it is Jesus, however, means that our judge is also our physician. “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” From his birth in human history, Jesus Christ – God made man – took all that is ours and made it his own. Jesus united in himself God and humanity, Jesus brought us closer to God than we could ever imagine. The power and love and light of God pulsated through Jesus’ body and into our own. The Word stooped down to humanity, so that he might raise us up to God! What matters is that on the cross our judge is Jesus, the Word, God. God encounters death on the cross – relational death, biological death, and even spiritual death – and death could not contain him. The life of God bursts through to the other side of death. On Easter, Jesus Christ moves beyond death, beyond life afflicted with death into the life which God created all humanity for: the fullness of life with God, life that simply cannot be stopped by death.
The cross is our salvation because the cross has put death to death. The cross has opened for us a path from this life – with its sin and suffering – to life with God, to the promise of new life, recreated life. Because of Jesus, nothing is ever lost to death. Because of Jesus, everything that is, everything that God has created has a future.
Just today I was reading something which a professor of mine from seminary, Dr. Kavin Rowe, wrote that just gob smacked me. He writes, “there is no place in human existence where crucifixion does not apply and no place where resurrection is not possible.” The death which Jesus meets on the cross is all around us in some way, maybe hidden, maybe not. The death of relationship, of our bodies, of our spirits. But because of Jesus, no death we meet, no death we encounter, no death which will ever touch us is the end. As sure as death surrounds us, so does resurrection. Amen.