April 18, 2003 | Good Friday

Not a Day for Spectators

John A. Cairns
Dean, Academy for Faith and Life,
Fourth Presbyterian Church

John 18:28–32; 19:1–8

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This is the scene in the middle of the night: there is the triumph of the capture mixed with the urgency of the business necessary to bring everything to a satisfactory conclusion. So the local religious leaders begin to make the circuit. First to Annas, the retired, honorary high priest; then to Caiaphas, the current high priest; and finally to Pilate, the Roman prefect (or governor) in Judea. And it is this third stop where arrest becomes public spectacle; where semi-interested observers become an unruly crowd and where an uncertain judge renders a final verdict.

Here is theater of the first order. Those who were in the know and those who were merely out and about in the middle of the night quickly figured out that something interesting, fascinating, noteworthy was going on, and they closed in to see what it was. Watching and walking from place to place, exchanging observations and rumors—it became a lively way to pass the night. And in the early hours of the morning, it got even better. The man was brought out on Pilate’s balcony dressed in royal purple with a bizarre crown on his head. At the prompting of a few instigators, the growing crowd erupted with chants of “Crucify him! Crucify him!” It was high drama, indeed.

What comes next is captured in a Good Friday tradition that picks up the drama with Pilate’s judgment. The fourteen Stations of the Cross have become a way to depict the events that proceed through the rest of the day. In some religious traditions, there is a pilgrimage from station to station so that the faithful can follow the progress of the drama and mentally reenact the story of that long-ago Friday. Today, around the world, millions will make that journey, some moving through the streets of their city and some moving just a few steps from station to station (as is the case when viewing the exhibit by artist Melanie Twelves out in the Loggia). This is the way the events of the day are marked and remembered:

Jesus is condemned to death.
Jesus carries his cross.
Jesus falls the first time.
Jesus meets his mother.
Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry his cross.
Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.
Jesus falls the second time.
Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem.
Jesus falls a third time.
Jesus is stripped of his garments.
Jesus is nailed to the cross.
Jesus is raised upon the cross and dies.
The body of Jesus is taken down from the cross.
Jesus is laid in the tomb.

On that fateful Friday long ago, the curious walked and watched. For generation upon generation since, the faithful have reviewed and reflected. And throughout the centuries, artists of deep conviction and deep suspicion have offered us an opportunity to see it all again through their eyes. It comes at us in the intensity of an El Greco painting with its gaunt-faced Christ and its palette of reds and blacks; in a Hemingway short story dialogue among the soldiers on the crucifixion detail; and in the rock music of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Good Friday—a day in history, a day recorded and reenacted and remembered by generations and generations over the centuries to the point where we can see clearly in our minds the events of that day. We can put faces on the principal players; we can hear the various voices; we can paint the backdrops and feel the tensions. When we sing “Were You There?” we can use our imaginations to answer yes. Yes, even if we cannot place ourselves in the midst of the play or the painting, because we can be those who are able to look on—the beneficiaries of storytellers and artists and Gospel writers who have etched Good Friday into our minds and our senses.

If Good Friday was simply a day in history, that would be enough. More than enough really. To be able to picture—to be drawn into a 2000-year-old event is a rare privilege. But this is more than a day in history, more than an event for spectators. What we are dealing with today—what we are still trying to unravel—is the power of this Friday. What we want to get a handle on is the connection between what happened on that long-ago and faraway hill called Golgotha and the way our lives take shape. How does it matter? What does it do to us? for us? in us?

Incarnation is a word you hear. Incarnation—God come in the flesh; God with skin and bones and shape and voice; God with human form, human struggles, human touch. This one called Jesus, the arrested one being hustled through the streets of the city, is God made visible—no, better yet, is God’s love made visible.

What we see today is not a picture of a man and a cross. What we see is love like we’ve never seen it before, a costly but grace-filled sacrifice offered for all humanity. In fact, to say we have seen it is not exactly accurate. We have recognized it. We have felt it. We have been enfolded by it. One minute we were looking at a potential hero dying on a cross, spectators at a horrible spectacle. One minute we were responding to the question, “Were you there?” with a knowing nod of the head. Then abruptly the scene no longer mattered. Artists’ paintings, the poetry of hymn writers, Hollywood movies, and Sunday school dioramas mattered not at all. What mattered was God’s love. Somehow in the midst of that Friday, in the midst of this Friday, it is all about love. Love amazing in its depth and its power. Love that takes the initiative, that pursues us, pursues us, to use the words of Francis Thompson, like the Hound of Heaven.

No longer is Good Friday a spectator event. We have been rousted from our seats by the hound of heaven, pursued by a love that will not let us go. We have been drawn into the action in a way that grabs ahold of us and causes us to be abruptly awakened people, different people than we’ve ever been before.

Seeing is only the beginning. Picturing the spectacle—seeing Jesus fall, and then fall again, and then be nailed to the cross and die—as vivid as that may be, does not mean anything, does not speak to our lives of quiet despair and pervasive fear, does not connect to who we are. But the outpouring of divine love that fills this drama, that speaks, that matters—that is what changes the world, changes our lives.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who came to prominence with her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, has a word that fits this day. She writes,

We have been training for a dark time such as this. . . . For many decades, souls just like us have been felled and left for dead in so many ways over and over, brought down by naïveté, by lack of love, by being ambushed and assaulted by various cultural and personal shocks in the extreme. We have a history of being gutted, and yet remember this especially. . . . Over and over again we have been the living proof that that which has been exiled, lost, or foundered can be restored to life again. (“Do Not Lose Heart,” an article distributed electronically)

We are restored to life by the persistence of God’s love.

Today will change you, not because of what you have seen or pictured or imagined, but because of what has planted itself within you. Love, divine love, made visible as never before, pursuing us like the hound of heaven. Grabbing hold of us in a way that can’t be resisted. Changing us in a way we could not have imagined. We are left gasping for breath, overwhelmed by a love able to overcome our anxious minds and fear-filled souls, able to overcome our sin and guilt and sorrow and shame. Able to overcome our loneliness and separation. Able to restore us to life.

In that moment of recognition, that moment of awareness, you and I are transformed—and so is this day that is now called good.

Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church