Good Friday meditation April 19, 2019
Community Worship Seven Last Words of Jesus
influenced
by the words from Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery from his Good Friday sermon preached
at Duke Chapel 2013
Ø
My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Mark 15:34
On
this Good Friday, the day we face the truth about death, we are stunned by the
words of Jesus as he ends his life with a cry out to God.
A cry of abandonment.
A cry of giving up.
A cry of rejection.
A cry of dismissal.
A cry of torment.
A cry of powerlessness.
A cry of desertion.
A cry of forsaken.
We
look to Jesus and yell back at him, ‘what’s up with you?!’
You’re
supposed to be the God of power for me.
You’re
supposed to be the God of energy;
the
God of wonder;
the
God of ‘I can do anything’;
the
God of miracles.
What’s
up with you Jesus, get down off that cross and come help me, come save me now!
Yet,
Jesus keeps hanging there.
He
keeps dying.
He
keeps on calling out to his Father.
He
bleeds.
He
bleeds a lot.
We
don’t like blood.
It
scares us and makes some of us faint.
We
don’t like to look at it and we certainly don’t like to sing about it.
We
feel like if we sing about the blood of Jesus we’ll forget about the love of
Jesus.
We
think if we sing about the blood of Jesus we are only thinking that it is his
blood that saves us. And being good theological students we know better than to
focus just on one part of Jesus. We really, really don’t want to get ourselves
up in arms with our church members by singing dirgy and sad and somber and
bloody hymns. As good Presbyterians we’ve taken a lot of those bloody hymns out
of our hymnbooks.
Bleh,
can’t we just sing the peppy songs and skip Good Friday. I mean this day is
really so depressing and our faith is happier than that.
And
if we really want to grow our churches and bring in more members we need to
provide for exciting and energetic entertainment. Right?
But,
the one thing we cannot hide is that Jesus
did die.
He
did die a horrible, bloody, agonizing death.
And
the prettier we make it,
the
more cleaned up it becomes,
the
more we end up worshipping a plastic coated Jesus.
Perhaps,
the bobble head Jesus for our car dashboards.
The
truth is Jesus cried out.
Jesus
screamed.
Jesus
yelled.
Jesus
howled, shrieked, hollered, wailed, squawked and shrieked.
Folks
it wasn’t pretty.
Jesus
did what one third of the authors of the Psalms did. He lamented.
Jesus
used the very words from Scripture to cry out to God.
He
used the words from Psalm 22.
Just
as Jesus used the words from Scripture in the desert, now that he is again in
the dry and thirsty land of death, he used the words from God to God.
We
wonder why his last words were filled with such grief and sadness.
If
Jesus is our Lord and we want him to be our joy and we want to let others
believe in him as their joy and salvation, how
can we justify this lamenting end of life?
We
watch him die alone. There on the cross, on Golgotha we watch Jesus forsaken
and wonder about the God who forsook us.
On
this Good Friday we wonder what we are supposed to do.
And
as we watch Jesus cry out we too cry out.
That’s
right.
We
cry out for our own losses when we thought God was not there.
We
cry out for our own death row experiences when we witnessed people die at the
hands of others unjustly.
We
cry out to God the very words from God, why have you forsaken us?!
Who
are the soldiers, the firefighters, the policemen all shot as they sought to
save? Shouldn’t we be crying out for them?
Who
are the children, the youth, the innocent walking and playing, and doing the
things that bring them joy only to be brutally murdered, assaulted, shot down
in cold blood, strung up in prison, knocked down in school rooms, destroyed as
they seek to grow up? Shouldn’t we be shrieking, yelling, screaming at the top
of our lungs to God with the words from God, why have you forsaken them?
Jesus
uses his voice to bring power to the word of God one more time.
As
he cries out his abandonment, God is right there tearing the curtain of the
Temple wide open!
Jesus’
loud cry does two things.
His
loud cry makes it clear that there is much in this world that is wrong. He
cries out so we too must cry out for all the wrong in this world.
We must use our voices at the top of our lungs to bring down the
imperial systems that deny, that dismiss, that diminish God’s people into
segregated sections.
Where
people are hungry all the time-there is no reason for this.
Where
people fight about religious institutions, there is no reason for this.
Where
people suffer at the cruelty of others, there is no reason for this.
If
we, the people Jesus has called to faith, do
not cry out, the stones themselves will-remember those words just last
Sunday-how soon we forget.
When
we say these things we are told not to preach politics from the pulpit and
somehow when we say we must speak up against tyranny or against systems that
are unjust, we are told to be quiet because that’s stirring the pot and its not
pretty and its unbecoming to a lady preacher…or a gentleman preacher…do not
rock the boat we are told.
And
what’s worse, we listen,
because
we want to keep our flock,
we
don’t want to be driven out of our congregations.
We
want our members to be happy and entertained by the joyful Jesus.
But,
Jesus
did cry out on that Good Friday and so should we on this Good Friday.
The
second thing that his cry to God brought was the bringing down of the curtain of division.
His
cry demolishes the religious order.
His
cry crumbles all that was walled up by rules, segregation, inequality, and
unites them across the barriers once set.
His loud cry made God accessible to all.
No
longer is a priest the way of conversation with God.
No
longer is a sacrifice made for forgiveness from God.
No
longer is a payment in the treasury needed for sanctification.
God
is open to all; for all of us to cry out together Abba, Father!
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| Community Pastors Preaching Good Friday together. |
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