The Story We’d Rather Avoid
A sermon by Ted Virts
Good Friday Meditation
Sonoma Ca
Theme:
Letting go of the symbol of the cross may make some sense on a rational level. But on
a holistic level its value as a symbol is immense. Its power is its ability to embrace and
thereby allow us into the full reality of suffering. Suffering cannot be confined to
rationality. The experience of suffering makes no rational sense. The power of the
cross as a symbol is that it helps us to locate our common predicament in the world –
that we experience suffering – in a common experience of God. God is so incarnate
with us that God even experiences that which we experience in its reality. God stands
in solidarity with us, born out of love for us.
Kathleen T. Talvacchia
Texts (read following the sermon) :
Psalm 22:1-7
Mark 15: 25-41
“And the curtain of the temple was torn in two...”
Good Friday. A crucifixion.
What’s going on here?
Believers around the globe gather and the feeling are heavy and sad and cold and somber.
The coldness, and fear too, have to do with death and betrayal and loss.
John’s gospel points us to these days of Friday through Sunday and says,” God is revealed
here” (that’s what ‘glory’ means). Paul says we serve Christ and him crucified.
The church, though clumsy in its explanation has said, look, look here...
It is feeling mostly. Feelings of weight and sadness and terrifying silence, lost hope and resigned
trust.
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Ladislaus Boros writes words that speak of the feelings - of Jesus as Mark describes him
perhaps, feelings of Jesus disciples, our own on this day “Our relationship to God is like a nightmare; we are running towards something unattainable;
the more we run, the further the road stretches in front of our feet. Events take their course, as
though our fervent supplications were never heard. We have to endure the sight of people
whom we love deeply and for whom we pray in faith cast about on a sea of pain, fear, horror
and confusion. We are often able to overcome this embitterment of faith only in a love that
does not seek knowledge. In an ultimate silence before God, we then fall, without asking
questions into the arms of God who is inscrutable, unimaginable and immeasurable , into the
arms of a God who is silent. This conquest of the heart, bringing an end to lamentation and
imposing silence is something holy. It is the final culmination of a life of faith and becomes a
confident trust that resists any impulse to rebel. This is the most perfect gift that someone who
is disappointed and weary for God can offer to God.” 1
Good Friday. A crucifixion. What is going on here?
In the midst of the death watch, if you would see God, the church says, look here, something
happens.
It is feelings mostly. In the words of Thomas Merton “For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such... silence can be
frightening. Looking at these figures, I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the
habitual, half-tried vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the
rocks themselves, became evident and obvious...
I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else remains but I
have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have gotten beyond the shadow and
the disguise.”2
A crucifixion. What is going on here?
I don’t like Good Friday.
1Ladislaus
Boros, God is With Us, Search Press, 1967. Quoted in Daybook, Spring 1994.
2The
Asian Journals of Thomas Merton, Naomi Burton et.al. eds., New Directions, 1973. Quoted in
Daybook, Spring 1994.
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I wish we could talk about God’s rescuing us always with a mighty hand and an outstretched
arm. But Good Friday is about the silence of God.
I wish there were a formula or learning or task I could do to pull myself up from my own sense
of loss to a state of bliss. But our shortcomings are always in front of us.
I don’t like Good Friday. It’s too personal. We see, too closely, God’s anguish and pain and
hurt. God’s self is a little too visible.
I get caught up by what I see and what I read.
I don’t like betrayal.
I don’t like abandonment.
I don’t like torture.
I don’t like pain.
I don’t like innocent victims.
I don’t like Good Friday because I know how capable I am of going along with hatred and
disgust and ridicule and judgment and cruelty and selfishness.
I know how easily and how often I have abandoned and betrayed others. I know how easily
and how often I have broken promises and how often I have caused others serious pain.
There are those who are at ease about the Good Friday story. But they have not really entered
the story. They are seeing it only from Easter’s answer, and thereby they miss the question
raised by Good Friday’s cross.
I don’t like Good Friday because it is the honest truth about you and about me and about the
human condition.
I don’t believe that Jesus had to die. We humans could have listened.
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I don’t believe that Jesus died instead of us.
I do believe that Jesus suffered and that God suffers because of that part of us that participates
in the betrayal, the cruelty, the abandonment, the selfishness and injustice and the judgmental
exclusiveness that put Jesus to death on the cross.
Jesus died because rulers plotted against him, because the power structures were corrupt,
because the religious leaders were threatened by the direction he was taking the people,
because the high priest Caiphus argued in favor it, because Judas betrayed him, because Peter
denied him, because the people were swayed by propaganda and mob mentality, because even
the people who believed in Jesus kept quiet, were afraid, and turned away. Jesus died because
people killed him – people not that different from you and from me.3
Jesus suffered and that God suffers because of that part of us that participates in the betrayal,
the cruelty, the abandonment, the selfishness and injustice and the judgmental exclusiveness
that put Jesus to death on the cross.
A crucifixion. What is going on here?
I believe that on Good Friday, God got tired of words and let us see what evil humans are
capable of.
On Good Friday, God shows us all that God chooses to endure for love of us.
And on Easter, God shows us that we cannot drive God away.
On Good Friday God shows us how costly it is for God to love us.
On Good Friday God shows us that what we do matters to God’s very self.
3
Thanks to the Rev. Sharon delGado for the “Jesus died because” summary.
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Good Friday begins the final act of a divine-human drama.
Do you see it?
God acts and is fully present in the man Jesus.
Humans re-act with quick and shallow support, followed by boredom, followed by hostility,
followed by betrayal, abandonment and crucifixion.
We would expect God’s wrath, but the drama is still in progress...
Do you remember the parable Jesus tells about the wicked tenants. The tenants rent land
from the owner and beat up his servant, and then bruise another servant, and finally the Owner
sends his son whom the tenants kill. Jesus asks, What will the owner do to them? (Luke 20:9
ff)
The drama is still in progress on Easter. What will the owner do? On Easter God does the
unexpected.
God proves that God’s mercy is stronger than God’s judgment.
God proves that God’s mercy is stronger than God’s judgment.
A crucifixion. What’s going on here? The drama is still in progress.
We as believers have in our hands the completion of the final act.
What will we do?
God’s gamble with us, God’s hope that we’ll “get it” about God’s unconditional love, that we’ll
“get it” about the suffering that God endures to lead us to wholeness and true freedom, God’s
high stakes gamble moves to you.
It is up close and personal.
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Your choices matter to God and to each of God’s children.
Jesus was not the first, nor, may God forgive us, is Jesus the last to suffer horribly because of
the choices we humans make in response to one who loves without condition.
What will you do? It’s up close and personal. Your choices matter. What will it be?
Compassion or condemnation?
Forgiveness or judgment?
love or exclusion?
commitment or convenience?
God or selfishness?
Giving or getting?
It is into a very real world that God comes. A world mixed with beauty and betrayal; a world
where hopelessness is all too easy to come by.
A crucifixion. What’s going on here.
The feeling is heavy and cold and sorrow filled.
And yet... in spite of the coldness and loss and guilt and the weight of fallen dreams,
Life forces itself through the winter of death itself.
What will you do?
Look here the saints say, You cannot drive God away.
Look here, It is Good Friday, look here
It is the full revelation of God.
It is the full revelation of ourselves.
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God’s gamble with you is at its highest and riskiest point. God’s trump card is played on
Easter.
In spite of the cost of loving, God is faithful. It is the full revelation of God’s faithfulness.
But…the drama is still in progress.
What will you do?
What will you do?
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