Good Friday John 18,19 18 April 2003
Rev. Roger Haugen
“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother. ‘Woman, here is your son’. Then he said to the disciple: ‘here is your mother’. And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” 19:26,27
It happens so quickly, and unexpectedly. You are rushing about your busy life when suddenly, a clerk at a store or a person at work breaks the smooth flow of life with their pain. It may be tears that are so close to the surface that we know the person could break down with the least expression of empathy or caring. It may be the distance that isn’t usually there that says, if we are to take the time to notice, “I am hurting, and there is no one to share it with.”
How will we react? Do we push ahead with our own schedule? Do we dare to touch the pain of the other, knowing that our world will need to stop in order to care for this one? No matter how we react, our own isolated world is broken into, the world in which we live is pushed wider, forcing us to recognize that there are other people out there.
I always find it interesting that as we begin the season of Lent, the Academy Awards happen. Hollywood is such a pervading part of our culture that it is interesting to watch the Academy Awards while the high season of the Christian church begins to unfold. Hollywood builds an unreal culture with all sorts of images about how life should be, what is important, what is not. There was outrage at this years Awards that the realities of war should get in the way of festivities. One of the greatest illusions that Hollywood lays upon us is that in the midst of tragedy, all of life stops around it. Movie after movie enters into the tragedies of a person’s life and it is as if all life around that person stops. The entire movie is centred around that one event. That is part of the medium of film, but it is not real. In real life, all around a person struck with tragedy, people continue to eat, to buy groceries, drive cars and go to work.
That is what happens in real life. Often as I sit with someone in the hospital, it is almost cruel to look out and see people outside the hospital windows, about their life: people in their gardens in spring, raking lawns when inside the hospital this person is dying. Most of the time we are isolated from tragedy and death that is happening all around us.
Good Friday is something like that. Jesus died and the world went along pretty much as normal. This is the most important week of our lives as Christians but the world goes on pretty much as usual. For many, this is just another long weekend, the annual Rod and Custom show.
When I imagine the happenings on that day so many years ago, I see it in my imagination with Hollywood eyes. Jesus walking through the city with everyone watching, the crosses looming so large, the dark foreboding sky, all eyes focused on the cross. The reality was likely much different. Life went on, likely, as usual for most of Jerusalem. The drama unfolded with soldiers doing their duties, chief priests worked into a murderous fervour, but really only an annoyance to the local government. Some years ago there was a national gathering of youth in Saskatoon. Part of the events had a fair going on in the Field House with jugglers, people selling all sorts of things, people about a whole lot of different activities, all 1000 of them. Quietly from one entrance came a person carrying a cross. They wound their way through the hustle and bustle and only a few took notice. There was a crucifixion staged at one point of the day but many didn’t even know it had happened. Life is like that.
The Christian church for centuries has made the death of Jesus the central thing that happened on that day in Jerusalem, because it is the most important thing about that day for those of us who confess to be Christian. We also need to acknowledge that for most of the world today it isn’t the most important thing. We got an idea of that today as we walked the cross here this morning from Battleford. There were those who recognized what we were doing and honked, but there were far more people who were simply driving somewhere along the highway and saw a strange sight. Their amused bewilderment showed in their faces, and then they carried on.
The problem with my romantic view of Good Friday, and maybe yours as well, is that it can separate life from death. A romantic view of Good Friday does not allow for all the Good Fridays of our lives, those daily crucifixions that threaten to destroy us and those that happen to all the other people around us. The truth is, Jesus died in the midst of life. So will we. Death is a part of life and Jesus claimed victory over all of death that day on Good Friday.
Whatever our image of that first Good Friday, it is important for us to see how close life and death were for Jesus and are for us. God’s love reaches even those without heroic deaths or lives. God’s love is for those people driving by on the highway, for those dying in hospital beds, for those stuck in unfulfilled lives. An unromantic view of Good Friday frees it from one day of the year.
It is good to remember one of the last things that Jesus did from the cross. Just as he had done all through his ministry, he brought people together to care for one another. “Here John, here is your mother. Here mother, here is your son. Take care of each other.” It is still the message for us today. In the midst of trouble, of grief, of death and war, stand together, care for one another. Remember this day but let it also inform and transform the rest of the year as well.
Today, Good Friday, is one of the most honest of days, for it dares mention the word that all of us know is there, but no one wants to talk about: death.
Jesus died. So will we. That is Good Friday in a nutshell. And when we celebrate Easter, we will see what we hope and pray for, life and healing. We will celebrate that those words, “It is finished!” are words for us. Even in the midst of death on Good Friday, or any other day, Jesus meets us with life and the crucifixions are turned into resurrections. Wait and see!