Good Friday Message:  Why is this Friday, of all days, called Good?

We are gathered here tonight primarily as descendents, inheritors of a promise. We are members of a historical people, with our ancestors extending back thousands of years, generation after generation. And it is through the story of these people that we find our roots, our foundation tonight.

We are not a people who define our faith in God only by what God has done or not done in our lifetimes. We are a people who look back into the past and find that the God who created us has been actively working and sustaining and shaping his creation long before any of us in this room breathed our first breath and will be actively working and sustaining and shaping his creation long after we have gone.

We are not the center of this story. The world and the gospel are not centered on us. The center of the story is the God who created us, and this God has good news for all of his creation. He has not left us alone, we are not the ones in charge, and the greatest thing we can do as people, whether we run a Fortune 500 business or dig ditches for a living, is to follow freely and completely in the footsteps of Jesus.

We live in a broken world, a world that is very dark, but this world is not hopeless, the darkness has not won, and our God has given us the opportunity to seek the light and truth that comes from being a part of this historical people, our founding fathers and mothers are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ruth, Job, Nehemiah, Malachi, Bartholomew, James, Mary Magdalene, and our LORD Jesus.

And if we are God’s people, we long for the healing of this world, for justice, for truth. And it is this sort of longing that we find in the people of Israel around 40 A.D. For the greater part of 500 years, they have been under the thumb of the pagan Greek and then Roman Empires. They’ve been occupied, exploited, stomped on, murdered, persecuted, and all of this because God has judged them for their unfaithfulness. They LONG for redemption, LONG for one to set them free.

And at the beginning of the Passover here around 40 AD, expectation has been building. Supposedly a man from Nazareth has arisen who teaches with authority, who heals miraculously, and who is attracting a large following. Could this be the Messiah? This man is a polarizing figure; the Romans have heard and become uneasy, the temple authorities see their power challenged. And on this day, a crowd gathers outside Jerusalem that quickly swells into great numbers, children dance and scream out joy, and adults lay down their cloaks. It is this man! Jesus! He has come to Jerusalem! Could this be the Messiah? The crowd shouts, HOSANNA! Praise to the Son of David! The King is coming! The King is coming! The revolution is beginning! Israel will be restored!

This is a time of celebration, of expectation. “The time of suffering has come to an end!” most people would have thought, but the disciples, if they paid any attention to the teachings of Jesus, during this loud gathering may have had something tickling in the back of their mind during the triumphal procession, faint memories of Jesus saying to them time and time and time again, “my children, I will be with you only a little longer,” and “I am going away and will be coming back to you," and “the Son of Man will be arrested, crucified, raised up.” They may carry these memories buried way back in their heads, but the memories aren’t faint because of time and things getting fuzzy, they’re faint because what Jesus has been teaching doesn’t line up with what the disciples want to hear, what the disciples have thought was the truth about the Messiah. 

The faint sense of discomfort the disciples may have felt during this triumphant experience may have intensified when a disciple, caught up in the excitement of the moment, may have looked at Jesus as the crowds were yelling Hosanna!, only to find that Jesus didn’t look triumphal, didn’t look kingly, didn’t look like a revolutionary general, but was instead WEEPING!

Now what in the world did the disciple think was happening?: 

“What is Jesus weeping for?" he may have said, "Joy? Excitement? Is he overwhelmed by the people’s praise? Is he anticipating sitting on the throne with Israel restored?"

(He or she may have been tempted to see it that way, and in fact several disciples would have looked at those tears and seen (JOY!), while others would have looked at Jesus and been disturbed by what they saw, that those tears didn’t fit the occasion, didn’t seem normal for what was taking place. And if they got close enough to Jesus, they would have heard him say, “Jerusalem, if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.”

Either way, the truth of the matter is that most persons celebrating on that day, laying down their cloaks and waving their palms, expected Jesus (as the Messiah in the way they thought the Messiah would be) to launch his revolution to overthrow the Romans and the corrupt temple authorities, that this procession into the city would throw fear into the hearts of those in power and Jesus would start making things happen.

So the anticipation was building rapidly, and Jesus, instead of taking away that anticipation, fed the hysteria by promptly going to the temple (the center of the Israelite life, mind you) and turning over tables, fashioning a whip and driving the animals out, and lacing into the traders and sellers.

The temple authorities grow angry when they hear and see the children shouting Hosanna and praises to this Jesus, and Jesus calls them on the carpet, saying, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the pros titutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the pros titutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.” And he tells parable after parable to those gathered around mocking the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, exposing their self-righteousness and hypocrisy.  This is NOT the Jesus meek and mild of our childhood Sunday School classes that bleeds over into our adult belief system too.

See, what is happening is that the scene is building to a climax, the crowd is becoming unruly, the authorities’ authority is being ignored, the system isn’t working cleanly, and the Roman authorities are certainly uneasy, as Passover is the time of year when the Jews are unsettled and ripe for revolution.

The scene continues to build toward revolution when, after Judas leaves to betray him, Jesus tells the disciples, “Find a sword. If you have only one, find two. Get ready.” So the disciples report back; “We have a couple.” The revolution is beginning, the war is coming. And so the scene shifts, several hours later, Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. We can almost smell the evil in the air as Satan is feeding the pride and anger of the Jewish authorities, feeding Jesus’ disciples’ confusion about what is happening, and Jesus feels it, and he prays and prays and prays until his sweat turns into blood with the extreme amount of stress he is under.

Jesus returns to his disciples, and informs them, “Arise. My time has come.” Again, the disciples may have read this as the time that Jesus would be revealed as the Messiah, the warrior-king, like King David.

When Judas betrays Jesus, the disciples cry out, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” (they obviously didn't wait for an answer)  It seems Peter had one of the swords the disciples had brought along, and Peter did what seemed natural, he struck out against the servant of the High Priest, protecting Jesus, inciting violence.

And it is here, at the height of the climax, when all seems to point towards Jesus living into the destiny that everyone had planned out for him, when the disciples are using the sword that Jesus told them to get, that everything gets turned completely upside-down for them.

Jesus cries out, “Peter! Put your sword back in its place! Those who live by the sword will die by the sword, do you think I cannot call on my Father and he will send down twelve legions of angels under my command? And you think you can solve this with a sword.” And the disciples find that all this sword business has simply been an extended object lesson over several hours from the master teacher that the sword solves nothing. They’re even more confused when Jesus goes to the servant of the high priest who suffered violence from Peter and re-attaches and heals his ear on the spot; the enemy who has come to abduct him!

And then the situation reaches an ironic conclusion when Jesus says, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs?” (when a rebellion was exactly what they expected the Messiah to lead)

And then Jesus, a man powerful enough to wave his fingers and knock the whole crowd to the ground, allows himself to be arrested, unjustly accused, scourged and beaten, and is crucified like the thousands of others the Romans had executed by crucifixion. To the disciples, he has failed, to the Roman soldier and the temple authorities, he has been exposed as an imposter, a faker. Good riddance.

Which brings us back to the question: Why and how is Good Friday good?

I suggest an important part of the answer is that it reveals God’s purposes for his creation are much higher than what we often settle for.

This is shown very clearly in the Bible when we read through the story, starting near the beginning, when in Genesis 12 God approached a young Middle Eastern man named Abram and gave him a promise; “I’m going to bless you. But not so you can sit high and mighty and laugh at others that don’t have it. No, I’m blessing you in order for you to be a blessing to others."

After this, God spoke to Abram's descendents, saying in Isaiah 49,

"It is too small a thing for you to be my servant…I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth." This is what the LORD says—who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you."

Israel was told they had been blessed, not because they were anything special, and in fact, they were told straight out in Deuteronomy 7, “The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the LORD loved you.”

Yet Israel, instead of hearing and living into this expectation allowed themselves to fall into the temptation to obsess over what God was doing for them, rather than focusing on the reality that they had been blessed to humbly witness to the world the truth about us all. They got selfish, like we do, they got complacent and lazy, like we do. They expected the Messiah to come running a sword through all the evil pagans because Israel clearly was holy.

And so, it wasn’t a surprise, then, that when their Messiah, Jesus arrived, they didn’t recognize him. Instead of being the completion of what they had waited for, had longed for, he became a stumbling block to them. 

And in case we thought the Israelites were the only ones who could take their attention off the world and pay attention to themselves, the Roman Empire occupying them at this time was obsessed with keeping and extending what they had, and since then, the French have been obsessed with the French, the Germans with the Germans, the English with the English, and the United States with the United States; each of us in our little corner of the globe, like a pre-school playroom seeing who can have the most toys at the expense of the others.

But history has displayed time and time and time and time again that nations and people with power have obsessed over this power and done whatever necessary to keep that power and influence and all have gone bankrupt in their fear, only to have another power rise to take their place.

It’s a vicious cycle, a wheel that keeps turning and turning, with one group rising up, fragmenting and falling, and another rising to take their place. And every time a nation is about to lose their position as King of the Mountain, they turn the world into a bloodbath because of their fear.  This is the world and the desires the Israelites had that we all share; unless there is something that calls us out of it.

If that’s the cycle and it’s shredding the world, how do we break it? How do we solve it?

By obeying the God whose purposes are higher than ours often are. The God who said;
" If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?"

This same God said, “Do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

This same God spoke through Peter to say, “Do not live the rest of this earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.”

God’s solution was to send his son to display a pure example of his purposes, to shape a number of disciples to listen to, watch, and follow his example, and all this so that these disciples would eventually be from many nations, races, languages, cultures, and understanding; all witnessing to the world of God’s purposes, all learning each day a little more about how to stand in awe of their Creator and serve him in joy and with life.

On Good Friday, we see the pinnacle of God’s great love, when on the cross, God scoffed at the power of the Romans and corrupt Israelite expectations, and in the resurrection laughed in their faces, saying “You cannot possibly stand in the way of my purposes!”

Good Friday is good because God has not left us alone in our rebellion, in our selfishness, in our fears, in our petty violence and racism. Good Friday is good because this powerful God who could say “I’m starting over,” and in an instant this entire vast universe we exist in would cease to exist, this God, instead of destroying us all, humbled himself, taking the form of a servant, and became obedient to death, knowing how weak and confused and closed-minded we are, knowing that we needed an example.

But the fact remains that for every other person in this story other than Jesus, the way things panned out was deeply confusing, even after the resurrection. Before, they thought they knew what was true, what would happen. Jesus, however, showed them the purposes of God were higher and bigger than they imagined. 

Tonight is Good Friday, it is not yet Easter, and we must sit here and be honest with ourselves that often, when we hear Jesus speak, when God lays out his expectations for us, often we say, “No, God...no...nope...that doesn’t sound like a good life.” Soren Kierkegaard said, “Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging ourselves to act accordingly. 'My God,' we will say, 'if I do that, my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?'”  We all have said that in some form or another.

So here on Good Friday, we will sit in that place of honesty, we will confess to God that we have rebelled, and we will promise to seek the life he expects. We will not run to Easter ahead of time, will not forget that that Friday was so dark because we were so deeply in rebellion. We will embrace the darkness, the confusion, and we.          will.            wait.                    for Easter.