Good Friday – Year C
 Isaiah 52:13-53:12
 Psalm 22
 Hebrews 10:16-25
 John 18:1-19:42

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

Death is ever present…  it is unavoidable…  it is never to be sought out…  but sooner or later…  death comes for us…  I mean…  I’m a L’Chayim …  to life…  kind of guy…  life is good…  God said so in Genesis…  but after the eyes of the first people had been opened…  after they had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil…  which means that we had become moral creatures…  God had a moment…  because neither of the two creation stories indicates that we were created to be immortal…  Ch. 3:19…  says that Adam will return to the ground from which he was taken…  no…  immortality was never on the table…

But in Ch. 3:22…  while we don’t know to whom God is speaking…  God says…  Now that the man has become like one of us…  knowing good and evil…  what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life…  and eat…  and live forever…  and that’s why…  however we understand it…  humanity was banished from the Garden…  and cherubim were placed on its eastern border…  to protect the Tree of Life…  no…  according to this account in Genesis…  we were never intended to live forever…

And yet…  even as we know this…  even as we believe it…  even when it’s our experience…  we resist it…  we rebel against it…  I know from my own experience…  and from that of others…  that even when we know that death is coming…  even when it’s imminent…  even when it happens…  there is disbelief…  we say…   I can’t believe this is happening…  and we can know all of this…  but that doesn’t mean that we’re ready for it…  how could we be…  as Pastor Michael Fick wrote…  when someone dies… we may be faced with the complex work of defining our relationship to that person…  and we may experience a strong mix of love…  regret…  sadness…  hope…  and [ if that person had been sick and in pain…  maybe even some ] relief…  but often…  the dominant emotion we feel…  is grief…  and we grieve because we love… 

On March 20…  in our reading from Exodus…  God tells Moses to tell the Israelites that…  I AM has sent me to you…  and we may sometimes hear God’s name as I AM becoming who I AM becoming…  this is the same I AM in John 8:58… when Jesus said… before Abraham was… I AM…  and in today’s Gospel passage in Ch. 18:5 which is translated as…  I AM he… Jesus actually only said…  I AM… and 600 Roman soldiers fell to the ground…  and a few verses later…  in 18:17 and 18:25 Peter denies Jesus by simply adding the word not to the same form of the verb…  so what Peter is saying…  is that he is not becoming who Jesus invites him to become…  when Peter says I am not…  his voice becomes our voice every time we choose to not become who God invites us to become…  even though that becoming can be difficult and disturbing…

For the last few weeks…  news shows have preceded certain videos from Ukraine…  with a warning…  What you’re about to see is graphic and disturbing…  and it is…  and I’m inclined to look away so I don’t have to see apartments and homes in rubble…  blood stained pavement…  children with missing limbs…  bodies lying in the streets…  and hear stories of rape and torture…  but if…  the world over…  we don’t look at the travesty that’s being visited on an innocent people…  our collective outrage will be insufficient to stop it quickly enough… we are all in this together…  not looking makes it easier to do nothing…  my Lutheran bishop even said that not looking is unfaithful…  and in this…  we’re just like Peter…  denying we know Jesus…  denying that collectively…  we’re somehow complicit in all the places where the lust for power fosters tyranny and war…

And when in one moment…  we say…  Hosanna…  which means…  save or rescue us…  and in the next…  we shout Crucify him…  I wonder what part we play in preventing the light of Christ from shining…  and I wonder…  if we don’t take a long hard look at the ugliness of the cross…  how can we truly appreciate the glory of Easter…

Tonight…  all over the world…  Jews will be celebrating Passover…  at their seders they’ll ask:

Why is this night different from all other nights… they’ll recall their Exodus from 400 years of slavery in Egypt…  they’ll look forward with hope to new lives of peace…  and as they prepare…  they’ll set a place at table for Elijah…  table service for someone just in case they come…  for someone they hope comes…  the hope that God will make all things new…  and this hope comes from the prophet Malachi in Ch. 4:5 which says…  I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes…  great because it means fulfillment…  terrible because it means change… becoming who we are becoming…

And much of that hope…  is rooted in the goodness of creation…  we are called to speak the truth…  even if our voices shake…  and many of us know that speaking the truth can be dangerous… . it can lead to being shunned…  to getting fired…  or attacked…  or even killed…  when we stand on the balcony…  as so many of us have…  and speak truth…  like Martin Luther King, Jr. did…  perhaps like Patrick Lyoya did…  and disrupt the power structures that keep the status quo of haves and have nots…  or challenge the false selves in which so much has been invested… or fail to break down the barriers which divide us at so great a cost…  it can cost us our lives in one way or another…  it cost Jesus his…

Chaplain David Keck wrote…  the Gospel text is full of people who are certain of themselves… or who put on a show of being certain…  they were certain that entering the Roman headquarters would defile a devout Jew… yet… handing the Word of God over to death does not…  because Jesus was pointing us toward God’s solidarity with the vulnerable and suffering throughout all of creation…  and Jesus is inviting us to become that…

So why will this night be different from all other nights…  for us…  this is the night…  that out of love for all creation…  God in Christ freed us from anything that enslaves…  constrains…  or limits us…  so that each of us can die to our false selves…  and can become who we are becoming…  and we believe implicitly…  that the truth of resurrection…  and the hope…  not of immortality…  not of living one moment after another without end…  but of eternal life in Christ…  which is beyond time and space…  ends our grief…  because we will experience God’s love fully…  without end…  and without measure…  and this speaks louder to our hearts…  than the lies of fear and division speak to our heads…  but Holy God…  please make it so…