Good Friday April 14, 2017
Gen 22:1-18 Ps 22
Heb.10:1-25 John 18:1-19:37
Since the Gospel of John was the last Gospel written, one can expect that the theological thinking and the mood of the Gospel will represent a much more "mature" Christian Movement. By the time the Gospel of John was written, Christians were brimming with confidence in the success of their message. Travelers could go from city to city in the Roman Empire and network and have almost immediate friendship, even intimate with those who shared their belief. Christian home church gatherings became almost like free airbnb throughout the Roman Empire. Christians were accessible to each other but still flying under the radar of the authorities.
Jesus died on the Cross but the Cross became to be presented as the providential and necessary act of God. If one has come to believe that the Cross was a pre-ordained plan of God for the salvation of the world, then the cross became presented as confident irony.
The Passion accounts in John's Gospel shares some of the main features of John's Gospel. It seems as though the writers of John had read the Platonic Dialogues wherein the famous Socrates is accused by the Athenian authorities of perverting the youth and he was accused of being impious or insulting the gods in the ways in which the Athenian authorities understood their gods and goddesses. To pay for his impiety, Socrates drank hemlock and died.
Jesus in the Gospel of John Passion account has a long dialogue with his interrogator, Pontius Pilate. They have a dialogue about the political meaning of kingship, about power, and about truth. Pilate, cynically asked, "And what is the Truth." But of course in the Gospel of John, we already know that Christ is both the eternal Word of God and the way, the truth and the life.
And part of the truth of the life of Jesus is his death. He denies that Pilate has power to crucify or to save him. And Jesus tells him, "It's not your call. The higher decision has been made for my death and you have no power except what is permitted to you by God." One can say that in the Gospel of John, Jesus could say, "I am the way, the truth, the life, and I am death, and I am after death, and I am the afterlife, after death."
It is almost uncomfortable to read John's Passion's account in that it seems to be too casual about the entire horrendous event.
Jesus tells Pilate that he is a puppet and it's already been arranged for the larger plan of salvation. And Jesus is shown to be in charge even in his severe state of suffering on the cross. In the midst of his suffering on the Cross, Jesus takes care of the custody of his mother; he commits her to the care of the mysterious disciple in John's Gospel who is referred as the one who Jesus loved.
In John's Gospel, Jesus does not say, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" Rather he cries, "It is finished." He seems to be a confident actor declaring his final line in a life play scripted by God.
The Gospel of John is also about Word and the written word. Christ is called the Word of God from the Beginning. So Christ is God becoming fully bi-lingual with human experience. And if God wants to fully learn how to speak human language, God has to experience human death too.
In the Gospel of John it is written that we can have valid belief through reading words about Jesus and have a faith that is even more blessed than the doubting Thomas who had to have the proof of seeing Jesus. The writer of the Gospel said that the Gospel was written so people might believe. And where does writing occur in the Passion account of John? "Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews," is written above the head of Jesus on the cross in three languages, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. This means that message of the Cross of Christ can be translated and spread throughout the world into the languages available to almost anyone. This was used by John with full irony intended. It was written by Pilate in scorn, but for the enlightened reader it was proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah to the entire world.
How do you and I approach the death of Jesus today on Good Friday? We accept the death of Jesus as God's full identity with the human experience of death and God's full identity with the real conditions of freedom which exist in this world. God created with freedom and for freedom and God too, submits to freedom and does not over-ride freedom. That is one of the awesome messages of the cross. This also means that to prevent events caused by the bullies of wealth and power, human beings have to exercise their freedom of resistance against oppression in our world. The cross of Christ is a reminder that freedom in the muscles of bullies can result in severe oppression. It is a stark call to all who are given wealth, power and knowledge to use it for the common good.
What we can also learn from the Cross of Jesus is that it is a unique event in the life of a unique person; an unrepeatable person. There won't be one exactly like him again. This means we cannot just assume that all death and suffering in the world will have similar outcomes to the death of Jesus. There are not immediate three day hence resurrections for most of the tyranny in the world. Genocide, slavery, torture, the cruel subjugation of indigenous people and women will never be redeemed in this visible world. The absolute horrendous deaths and terrible suffering of people in the past will never be redeemed in this life. We cannot be confident about the evil events in this world ever becoming the confident providence that has happened to the Cross of Jesus. This is why it is easy and necessary to defer to a reconstituted spiritual regeneration which will redeem and make a harmony of freedom in another level of existence.
St. Paul used the Cross of Jesus as a transformative way to get to another level of existence so that he could tolerate and continue to live in a world where the free conditions of life permitted the apparent victory of evil in significant horrendous events. St. Paul, himself was involved in the stoning of St. Stephen and he had to deal with the wrong use of his freedom in persecuting and bringing to death people who followed Jesus.
Today, you and I are invited to use the Cross of Jesus as a way to get to another level of existence and receive forgiveness for all of the times that we have misused the power of our freedom. We are invited to use the cross to tolerate and give ourselves orientation to the impairment of freedom when freedom has been expressed in oppression of others. We use of the cross of Jesus to accept our powerlessness in face of the things over which we have not control except to protest loudly.
We come to the cross of Christ with the hope that we will be able to "finish" our lives in ways that please God with sacrifice for the benefit of the common good of love and justice for all. Amen.
Gen 22:1-18 Ps 22
Heb.10:1-25 John 18:1-19:37
Since the Gospel of John was the last Gospel written, one can expect that the theological thinking and the mood of the Gospel will represent a much more "mature" Christian Movement. By the time the Gospel of John was written, Christians were brimming with confidence in the success of their message. Travelers could go from city to city in the Roman Empire and network and have almost immediate friendship, even intimate with those who shared their belief. Christian home church gatherings became almost like free airbnb throughout the Roman Empire. Christians were accessible to each other but still flying under the radar of the authorities.
Jesus died on the Cross but the Cross became to be presented as the providential and necessary act of God. If one has come to believe that the Cross was a pre-ordained plan of God for the salvation of the world, then the cross became presented as confident irony.
The Passion accounts in John's Gospel shares some of the main features of John's Gospel. It seems as though the writers of John had read the Platonic Dialogues wherein the famous Socrates is accused by the Athenian authorities of perverting the youth and he was accused of being impious or insulting the gods in the ways in which the Athenian authorities understood their gods and goddesses. To pay for his impiety, Socrates drank hemlock and died.
Jesus in the Gospel of John Passion account has a long dialogue with his interrogator, Pontius Pilate. They have a dialogue about the political meaning of kingship, about power, and about truth. Pilate, cynically asked, "And what is the Truth." But of course in the Gospel of John, we already know that Christ is both the eternal Word of God and the way, the truth and the life.
And part of the truth of the life of Jesus is his death. He denies that Pilate has power to crucify or to save him. And Jesus tells him, "It's not your call. The higher decision has been made for my death and you have no power except what is permitted to you by God." One can say that in the Gospel of John, Jesus could say, "I am the way, the truth, the life, and I am death, and I am after death, and I am the afterlife, after death."
It is almost uncomfortable to read John's Passion's account in that it seems to be too casual about the entire horrendous event.
Jesus tells Pilate that he is a puppet and it's already been arranged for the larger plan of salvation. And Jesus is shown to be in charge even in his severe state of suffering on the cross. In the midst of his suffering on the Cross, Jesus takes care of the custody of his mother; he commits her to the care of the mysterious disciple in John's Gospel who is referred as the one who Jesus loved.
In John's Gospel, Jesus does not say, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" Rather he cries, "It is finished." He seems to be a confident actor declaring his final line in a life play scripted by God.
The Gospel of John is also about Word and the written word. Christ is called the Word of God from the Beginning. So Christ is God becoming fully bi-lingual with human experience. And if God wants to fully learn how to speak human language, God has to experience human death too.
In the Gospel of John it is written that we can have valid belief through reading words about Jesus and have a faith that is even more blessed than the doubting Thomas who had to have the proof of seeing Jesus. The writer of the Gospel said that the Gospel was written so people might believe. And where does writing occur in the Passion account of John? "Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews," is written above the head of Jesus on the cross in three languages, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. This means that message of the Cross of Christ can be translated and spread throughout the world into the languages available to almost anyone. This was used by John with full irony intended. It was written by Pilate in scorn, but for the enlightened reader it was proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah to the entire world.
How do you and I approach the death of Jesus today on Good Friday? We accept the death of Jesus as God's full identity with the human experience of death and God's full identity with the real conditions of freedom which exist in this world. God created with freedom and for freedom and God too, submits to freedom and does not over-ride freedom. That is one of the awesome messages of the cross. This also means that to prevent events caused by the bullies of wealth and power, human beings have to exercise their freedom of resistance against oppression in our world. The cross of Christ is a reminder that freedom in the muscles of bullies can result in severe oppression. It is a stark call to all who are given wealth, power and knowledge to use it for the common good.
What we can also learn from the Cross of Jesus is that it is a unique event in the life of a unique person; an unrepeatable person. There won't be one exactly like him again. This means we cannot just assume that all death and suffering in the world will have similar outcomes to the death of Jesus. There are not immediate three day hence resurrections for most of the tyranny in the world. Genocide, slavery, torture, the cruel subjugation of indigenous people and women will never be redeemed in this visible world. The absolute horrendous deaths and terrible suffering of people in the past will never be redeemed in this life. We cannot be confident about the evil events in this world ever becoming the confident providence that has happened to the Cross of Jesus. This is why it is easy and necessary to defer to a reconstituted spiritual regeneration which will redeem and make a harmony of freedom in another level of existence.
St. Paul used the Cross of Jesus as a transformative way to get to another level of existence so that he could tolerate and continue to live in a world where the free conditions of life permitted the apparent victory of evil in significant horrendous events. St. Paul, himself was involved in the stoning of St. Stephen and he had to deal with the wrong use of his freedom in persecuting and bringing to death people who followed Jesus.
Today, you and I are invited to use the Cross of Jesus as a way to get to another level of existence and receive forgiveness for all of the times that we have misused the power of our freedom. We are invited to use the cross to tolerate and give ourselves orientation to the impairment of freedom when freedom has been expressed in oppression of others. We use of the cross of Jesus to accept our powerlessness in face of the things over which we have not control except to protest loudly.
We come to the cross of Christ with the hope that we will be able to "finish" our lives in ways that please God with sacrifice for the benefit of the common good of love and justice for all. Amen.
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