GOod Friday 2013

After our Lenten preparation, we have entered into the reality of Holy Week, gone are the palm branches and the shouts of Hosanna, gone are the coats thrown in the dusty road to carpet the route of the king, and gone is the donkey.  Today is Good Friday.

Each year it gets harder for me to remember what life was like before my ordination.  However, I do know that I first felt the call to ordination around this time during Lent.

I remember that each year, I finished work on Maundy Thursday in the evening, and when most of my colleagues flew away for a few days, I would go to church.  In those days, we would be given no less than three holiday days, so I wouldn’t return to work until Wednesday.

I would live the Paschal Triduum, (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday) up until the first service of Easter, when the light of Christ was brought into the church on Saturday night, lit from a fire outside the church.  After the great celebration of Easter, I would have two days to reflect and relax, before returning to work.

There was the rather quirky “Easter Monday” with no religious significance, but it was another day off...the Tuesday was just an extra day.

It didn’t take me long to realise that we should have probably have finished work on the Wednesday of Holy Week, and gone back a day earlier, so that we could travel the last hours with Christ to the cross.

I was like a child in a sweetshop – the churches in which I grew up we didn’t really do Holy Week, just Easter Day, and for me, there was always something missing.

One of the standards from the pulpit, is when clergy say ‘There can be no Easter without Christmas, and no Christmas without Easter” merrily going on to unpack that in a thousand or so words.

But they should say the same sort of thing each Holy Week, when the device is much better used.  I’ll have a go…

There can be no Easter Day without Good Friday – no resurrection without crucifixion.  There can also be no proper understanding of Easter without an understanding of Good Friday.

Welcome to Good Friday…

We meet today to recall the important events in the life of Jesus and the history of the Hebrew slaves.  However merely remembering doesn’t do justice to the events of the betrayal and the arrest of Jesus.

Each Good Friday, we are being presented with the story of our salvation so that it might speak to us, in our own lives, in our own city, today.  We are being encouraged to look, once again about the great gift of faith we have.  We don’t do enough remembering, we rarely do enough thinking about faith…

Have a think about this…The EXODUS, remembered by the Jewish people at this time isn’t a faint memory of something that happened to distant relations, but an experience that is shared by each new generation, that shapes the community of faith and each and every family in Judaism.

It will be St. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, who will remind us of this fact.  He writes to the early church because he thinks they have forgotten the link between the death of Christ and the Exodus.

If Paul were writing to the church today, he might well remind us of the connectedness of what we do in church, and how this should affect the lives of the people in the community around us.

The story of GOOD FRIDAY is not a simple tale about humility and service; it is the ultimate act of servanthood.

By virtue of his death, doing for us that which we couldn’t do for ourselves, Jesus of Nazareth radically challenges conventional, hierarchical ideas about leaders and followers. 

No other leader is worthy, never has been and never will be, and we will constantly strive to act as Jesus did. 

This constant striving is in the remembering, and like our Jewish brothers and sisters, this is an experience that should be shared by each new generation, it should shape our community of faith and each family in Christianity.

This is, of course, another example of Jesus bringing a new promise from God that sits perfectly with the promises given in the past.

The Good News of God in Jesus of Nazareth is not merely a theological exercise but it is an explanation, a demonstration, and an experience. At the Last Supper, Jesus shows the full extent of his love, and on the Cross…well….

Today, God is asking us if we can see the importance of sacrificial love in humility.  It is the only love that can save humanity from itself.

I can’t get a bit of scripture out of my mind, it’s like a pop song that is going around my head, and it’s difficult.  It jumps off the page.  Paul writes to the Romans;

“Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.”

And today, the Son of God dies for the good, the bad, the righteous and the unrighteous alike.  He dies for you, he dies for me, and for all people, for all eternity…

How can I understand, comprehend or appreciate that?  Well I try to live up to the standard.  I pray every day and I stand behind the altar and remember what he said.

And so, we are left with the standard.  The standard Christ instituted on this day, and the standard that we should live out in our lives.

Let us, in humility, follow Jesus today and in our lives.