Sermon for Good Friday

"Behold your son…Behold your mother" (John 19:26-27)

We don't want to linger at the Cross. Who wants to dwell on such torture, such shame and such despair? In 2004, everybody was talking about Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ, with its unremitting violence and blood and tears. But not everybody was interested. One member of my parish, when I asked him if he had seen it, sniffed, "I have no interest in seeing that movie." I think that he considered Gibson's film to be manipulative, an attempt to shock people into repentance for sin rather than winning them over to Christ by Christ's love. On the morning of Good Friday that year, I was listening to a Christian music station. The radio host began to speak in somber tones about Jesus's death on the cross. But soon I heard in the background the slowly building swell of violins and drums. I recognized it as the music you hear at the end of Gibson's film as the risen Jesus walks triumphantly out of his tomb. And as the music built to its crescendo, the man said, "It's Friday. But Sunday's coming!" And I thought, "My friend; could you not stay at the cross for one hour? Our Lord stayed for three."

I believe that too many churches want to hurry to the Resurrection. I've seen it at least twice this week. At the Palm Sunday community service, we sang a hymn that I hadn't sung in decades, "Because He Lives, I can face tomorrow." I may not have sung it in a long, long time. But I remembered it like it was yesterday in the Baptist church of my youth. And yet, here we were, on Palm Sunday, Passion Sunday, singing about the Resurrection, still a week away. At the Noon lunch on Wednesday this week at Mt. Calvary; our speaker gave his message from the story of Jesus and the two companions on the road to Emmaus. Again, a wonderful story, but why this week, when our Lord has been walking toward the cross, should we hurry ahead of him. That's not where he is today. Today, from noon to 3, he hangs on the cross to which he has been nailed. And in that vision, we look and see a strange glory.

According to our tradition, John is the "Beloved Disciple" who has written the Gospel from which we have read today. Unlike the rest of the early Christian churches, who celebrated Jesus's Resurrection on a Sunday, those churches founded by John celebrated the resurrection on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, the anniversary of his crucifixion. I'm not advocating changing any dates. But if we want to know fully the glory of the Resurrection, we must first know the strange glory emanating from the cross. And no more strange is the glory than that which radiates between Jesus and his mother.

It was just last week that celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation, the announcement by the Angel Gabriel to the Blesses Virgin Mary that she had been chosen to bear God's Son if she would agree. The Annunciation is celebrated on March 25th, nine months before our celebration of Jesus's birth on December 25th. It is time for the wearing of white stoles, of decking the altar in white, and on that one day in Lent, having permission to say the A-word. And yet, in most years, Jesus's Incarnation is closely linked to his crucifixion. "Behold, the slave of the Lord," the teenage girl answered. "Let it happen to me as you have said." Could she possibly have understood how her "yes" would bring her to this day? Would she have said, "Yes" if she had known? Would any of us?

Our son was diagnosed with asthma at the age of four. For years afterward followed lots of inhalants and nebulizer treatments, and many missed days of school. The worst was in 7th grade, just two weeks before Easter, when he had pneumonia. After that, I began to fear that some germ might come along that was too strong, and our son too weak, to fight off. I wrestled with God in my prayers. I had lost my mother at the age of 17. Wasn't that enough tragedy for one lifetime God? I don't know for sure if this was the answer to my prayer, but as he entered adolescence, and his lungs got bigger, he improved quite a bit. He still needs regular medication to keep his allergies in check. But he has been much healthier, and for that I am thankful. But the truth I did discover is that our children do not belong to us. They belong to God, and we have temporary custody.

That was a truth that Mary discovered earlier in John's Gospel, at the wedding in Cana. The wine is running out. Knowing what Jesus can do, his mother says to him, "They have no wine," to which her son replies, "What does this have to do with you and me? My hour has not yet arrived." It's not a rebuke, but a gentle reminder that Jesus has greater things in mind that even his mother can imagine. And so his mother, and first disciple, says, "Do whatever he tells you" (John 2:3-5). Yes, Jesus does what his mother asks of him, but not on her authority, but on his. Mary was Jesus's mother, and his first disciple, his first apprentice. It's not easy being a student-apprentice. You mostly learn by doing, which means you learn by doing it wrong. And there were times when Mary got it wrong. When she came to Jesus and acted as though her status as his mother gave her access through the crowds around him, Jesus answered, "Who are my mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother" (Mark 3:31-35).

But this, this is the hardest lesson of all! The Angel Gabriel had promised her that this child hanging on the cross would "be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end" (Luke 1:32-33). What of that promise now? But Jesus sees his mother, and proceeds to teach her one more lesson. "Woman, look at your son beside you," and to the Beloved Disciple, "Look at your mother beside you" (Jn 19:26-27). Jesus lives in all those who put their trust in his word. And all those who believe in Jesus, yesterday, today and forever; have for their mother, she who brought Jesus Christ into this world. Jesus says to all of us, "Look at your mother beside you." On this Friday, Mary lost a Son, briefly, but gave birth to billions of children.

What a strange glory it is to see in this death a birth. But of course, this is not just any death. This is Jesus, God in the flesh, who dies, and this assures that if God can die, then death never has the final word. And even in death there is birth. There are new beginnings. There are new possibilities. Yes, someone you love has died, and something in you has died. What will you do now? Will you give up on life? Or will you see all the life around you, and commit yourself to nurturing that life, to building up that life. God is not a God of death. God does not display his power by taking us or those we love when it is supposedly their "time." Our God is the God of the living. Even in his death, our Lord gives new life to his mother in his mystical body the Church. In all our deaths, the God who has gone before us in death gives us new life, new beginnings and new possibilities.

None of this is to minimize Mary's grief, or ours. We must grieve, as even the Father grieves on this day. But as we grieve in darkness, remember that Jesus is with us in that darkness. And so is his mother. And so are all those saints and sinners who have come, with their sadness, to the foot of the cross. And let us all see there, in the mother of us all and in each other, a strange glory