The Pastor's Sermon - Good Friday - 6 April, 2012

• When it comes to Good Friday, we've all heard it all before. We've heard the readings and the readings really do speak for themselves. What then is a preacher to say?
• I asked that question in prayer earlier this week, and the answer came almost immediately. “Tell them how much I love them.” A wonderful idea and not an easy task. What words are there to convey the over-whelming, fearsome, terrifying love of God? How do we speak of the mystery of the days we celebrate?
• At Christmas, we proclaim that Jesus became truly human. On Good Friday, we come face-to-face with the reality of his true humanity. We also come face-to-face with his true divinity. In dying, Jesus experienced all that it means to be human. In why he game himself to death and what his death means to our lives, we experience what it means for Jesus to be divine.
• Each of us has a story; I've heard many of them and all of them are amazing. In those stories, we could wonder where God was. (It is possible that we don't wonder about this at all.) We might ask the question: “Where was God when I lost my home/ my loved one/ my health/ my job/ my hope? Where was God when all this took place?”
• The answer depends on where we see God. If we see God as beyond our lives, as a judge, above and beyond all we experience, we will have an answer and it will be terrible. If we see God as being in another place rather than a judge's bench, we will have a different answer. If God is a judge and judges us by how we respond to what fills our lives, then God is a tester and a weight-er of our intentions and our life. God would be a punisher for whatever we might imagine to be our offenses or God would just be vastly indifferent to our pain, our fear, our sadness... and our anger.
• If on the other hand, God does not sit in judgment, but stands beside us in our pain, our fear, our sadness, and even our anger, then we are looking at a different sort of God.
• Here we look at the God of Good Friday and of Easter. Here we look at the God who is not above and beyond the cross. We know, rather, a God who is with us in all things. Here we look at a God who hangs on the cross; on OUR God... who hangs upon the cross.
• We'd like to hear of Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday and skip what's in between, but there isn't a road to Easter that does not take us in front of the cross. And the only road to Easter is through the terrifying and ever-close love of God expressed in the cross. There is no other road to Resurrection.
• Let me end with a verse from Paul's letter to the Galatians: May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Galatians 6:14)