All too human (Good Friday)

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 52.13-53:end, Psalm 22, John 18:1-19:end

Good Friday does not require a sermon. The liturgy of Good Friday and the reading of the Passion, the centre point of the Christian faith, convey the meaning of the day in plain language. I pause here then only briefly to make a few notes specifically about the Passion of St John, that I hope may aid our reflection on the events we remember today.

St John wishes to confuse the reader. When she thinks she is hearing of Jesus’ humanity, she is really discovering his divinity. And when she thinks she is hearing of his divinity, she finds his humanity.

So as Jesus’ miracles reach their zenith in the raising of Lazarus, Jesus wields the power of life over death, we have the climactic shortest verse of the King James Bible:
“Jesus wept.” Where we expect power, we have compassion. Where we expect frailty, we glimpse the divine.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Passion. While the other Gospels portray an increasingly out of control rag-doll Jesus as the authorities encircle him like a gathering darkness; in John, Jesus remains in control. There’s no agony in the garden here; he can say to Pilate — ‘You have no power over me unless it had been given you from above’; on the cross he calmly arranges for his friend to take care of his mother. In the other Gospels, here Jesus is most like us as his life is taken from him, with the saving postscript in the divine moment of resurrection on Easter morning. For John, the cross is the hour for which Jesus has come. Here God is revealed, with his purpose, his mission: the revelation of God’s love for the world. But having said that, there is no miracle. No display of power, other than endurance and love. John wants you to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, not because of the resurrection, but because of the crucifixion. Not because of a miracle, power, but because of love, service, sacrifice.

The So-What of this concerns first how we see divinity and power. Our instinct is to first think of God as mighty, powerful. Philosophers of religion talk about divine omnipotence. We see God in miracles, from creation to the parting of the red sea to the raising of the dead. When we are faced with tragedy, the death of a friend, a worldwide pandemic, we ask — like the media — where was God in this? Because it’s all too human.

John wants us to think differently. Here, Christ has been lifted up as the revelation of divine love. There is folly. There is suffering. There is no miracle. But nowhere in history is God so very present and visible. God is here, not in power, but in love. 

We hear this in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice when Portia argues:

       [The Monarch’s] sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
       The attribute to awe and majesty,
       Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
       But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
       It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings
       It is an attribute to God himself;
       And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
      When mercy seasons justice.

The world sees more folly and suffering than miracles. Can we though look on this and see God? See it through the lens of this Passion? Find in our own agony and crucifixion God’s love? But more, are we able to reflect that divine love through the darkness we are inhabiting; to remain faithful, hopeful and loving, despite the absence of the longed-for miracle. Despite our suffering, and that of those we love?

Most of us, most of the time, exist between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, not tested beyond our powers and yet still short of the glory of the resurrection miracle. But these are strange days and our humanity, our vulnerability, is before us like never before. Good Friday reminds us that God is closest too us in our frailty; that through patience, endurance and love we will find God. Amen.