God’s unending, never-failing, unconditional commitment to us. Good Friday 2022. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

John 18:1-19:42

There is a world of suffering out there. We certainly see it with all of the atrocities in Ukraine. But the Ukrainians are not the ones who are suffering right now. Under Taliban rule, the people of Afghanistan are suffering mightily with the loss of personal freedom, the collapse of their economy, and almost nine million of them on the brink of starvation. Then, of course, there is Covid. In the United States alone, almost one million people have died - worldwide it’s six million. And that’s just some of the suffering that makes the news. All of us know people who are dealing with chronic pain, mental anguish or tremendous loss. If it’s not touching our lives personally, it’s close by for sure. That’s because, whether we like it or not, suffering and death is an integral part of life.

 And Good Friday offers no escape. Jesus is arrested, tied up, interrogated, tortured, and executed. After that his executioners take his clothes and divide it among themselves. The story of the cross is always a story of suffering and death. There is just no way around it. And yet one has to wonder, how is it that something so violently brutal is at the center of our faith?

 Some say that it’s because the crucifixion was all part of God’s plan. That it had to be that way.  Jesus had to suffer and die on the cross because we were so bad. That God had to have something - some kind of payment, some kind of blood satisfaction - in order to enable him to love us. As if divine love is ultimately transactional - given when earned and withheld when not. Did God really say, “I created you, but I can only love and accept you if and only if…you are perfect, you are flawless, you are without sin. But since that’s impossible, I’ve got a workaround. I’ll accept the death of my son, Jesus, instead.”  I don’t know what that is, but I know one thing, it’s not love. Even we who are imperfect, flawed, and sinful are able to grasp that true love, real love is in no way transactional. It doesn’t even operate in the realm of earning or deserving. It just is. Love just loves.

 And God is love. Love that is made incarnate in Jesus the Christ. Jesus who dies on the cross not to convince God in heaven to love us, but to reveal to us just how much we are already loved. The cross shows us in the most starkest of ways that God loved us so much that he chose not to sit back in heaven, removed from the pain and struggles of life in this world, but to join us in it - in the ups and downs, the hopes and disappointments, the frailties and faults of life in this world. All so that we could really see and know God’s unending, never-failing, unconditional commitment to us. When we look at the cross we are offered a vision of love - with no strings attached.

 God in Christ Jesus suffers and dies because we suffer and die. That is part of every human story. And God became human so that we might not ever be alone in that part of our story for the cross stands in the middle of it. No matter what we face we are never alone, never forgotten, never abandoned. But that's not to say it’s not difficult.

 You know, almost everyone ran away from Jesus’ cross on Good Friday. I don’t think it’s because most of the disciples were weak or unfaithful or bad. I think it’s because the cross, Jesus’ cross, and the crosses in our own lives, are just so darn painful which makes us desperately want to get  away from them. We rush to find something good in the horrific. We attempt to explain suffering away. We seek to make sense of things that make no sense. We want to jump from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday and put flowers on the cross before it’s time. Try as we might, we cannot get around the cross of suffering and death in this life. We can only go through it.

 Good Friday does not offer us easy answers or a quick escape. More than any other day of the Church year, suffering is held before us. It’s a hard day. And let me tell you I don’t like it. I don’t really want to face suffering - mine or anyone else’s. Maybe you feel the same. Nonetheless, there, in the middle of our lives and in the center of our faith  stands the cross. 

 And you’ve probably already figured this out that Jesus didn’t necessarily come to take us down from the crosses of our lives. Rather he came so that he could get up there with us. Because that is what love does. And it is from there, with us, that he loves and loves and loves us to the end - which really isn’t the end but just our beginning.

 Today is not called Easy Friday. It’s not called Happy Friday. And it’s certainly not called Painless Friday. It’s called Good Friday. It’s good because the love revealed on the cross - a love that loves with no strings attached - is what ultimately carries us through our sufferings and deaths. It did yesterday. It does today. It will tomorrow and forever more.