GOOD  FRIDAY: 

SIN, LOVE, SILENCE 

AND UNDERSTANDING

[I don't have to preach this Good Friday so I checked out what I preached on in the past. Here is a long sermon - a bit wordy and a bit heady. It was given to a small group of Redemptorist novices and Redemptoristine Nuns. Did I put whoever was there asleep?]

INTRODUCTION

Good Friday 1988.

Good Afternoon

This afternoon I would like to present some vignettes, some examples, some stories, and some quotes on the Cross. My hope would be to provide some thoughts and feelings for meditation and prayer. It will be sort of like a kaleidoscope of colors and images. If they help, good; if not, bad Friday. 

Good Friday has a space of its own. It doesn’t need words. In fact, the Cross, the central symbol of our life as Christians, is wordless. So we have our own meanings and feelings and sometimes, words, about the Cross. 

We wear the cross around our necks and we put it on our walls. Why? What meanings do we give to Christ on the Cross?

Christ on the Cross speaks to us on Good Friday or Bad Fridays or any day or any night of the week. 

Stop! Look! Listen!

Having said that I will try to put together some words about the Cross.

OUTLINE

I’ll put my reflections and stories under 4 headings -- like the four arms of the cross: Sin, Silence, Love and Understanding. 

1) SIN

When we look at the Cross, we see SIN.

We see evil. We see cruelty.

The cross is not only the tree of the knowledge of good. It’s also the tree of the knowledge of evil. It  shows how cruel people can be to people.

Pierre Benoit in his book, The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, says that in the time of Jesus, the worst way to be killed was to be burnt alive. (Cf. p. 166) After that was crucifixion.

So the cross represents horror and hurt - especially towards one another. The Cross represents all the sins of the world. It represents all the evil that people inflict on each other. Loud and clear, we see Jesus as a victim of sin.

The questions that hit me when I reflect upon the cross this way are these: Why did they kill Jesus? Why did they do it ? And why do we crucify each other? Why do we hurt one another?

But, let’s stick with Jesus. Why did they hate him? What did he do to deserve this? Why was Jesus killed?

I found a sermon by Edward Schillebeeckx entitled, “God as a Loud Cry” (Mark 15. 37; Matt 27.50)  It’s in his book, God Among Us (N.Y. Crossroad, 1983), pp. 73 - 77.

It’s worth reflecting upon. It's worth asking: why did they kill Jesus?

Schillebeeckx answers, “Jesus died because of his radical respect for human life which is not reconciled and needs to be reconciled.” (p. 77.) 

Why did they kill Jesus? Jesus treated people with respect. That was radical. Jesus refused to treat people as anonymous. He would not play society’s games, when and where human beings were treated as things or as less than human. He went against the Master/Servant system. He spoke out for the oppressed. His life style was one that excluded no one. He cared about people - all people. He went against classes and caste - such as:

                    male / female,

                    rich / poor,

                    leper / clean,

                    the elite religious people / the slobs,

                    etc. / etc.

He was against using people or ripping people off, especially in the marketplace or the synagogue. He was with the suffering and those who were treated unjustly by others. He spoke to all, but he seems to have had a preference for the outcast. He went against privilege. His was for radical love. He was radical. He put his ax, his words, his questions and his actions to the roots of things.

According to Jesus, the purpose of life here on earth is  to create. From all appearances that seems to be why God started it all. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). 

Read the 15th chapter of the Gospel of John. The purpose of life is to be fruitful and not to be a withered branch that is useless. Our glory and the Father is “glorified in our bearing much fruit and becoming his disciples” (John 15:8). Life continues and life goes on when we are doing the Father’s will. When we live life to the full, we bring about the kingdom. (Cf. John 10:10). Everything is to be as the Father planned and created it. When it’s not taking place there is a need for re-planning. There is the need for creative ways to bring about universal reconciliation.

So Jesus was creative. He worked to bring about the Kingdom, the vision, the plan, the dream of the Father. This was the reason why God created the world in the first place.

As Jesus walked around, he noticed that too often people looked like lost sheep without a shepherd. People were being fed to the wolves or led to the slaughter. Too many people were sleep walking.

Life was not to be lived by fate or games or compulsion or by dominating other people. 

People are not to be valued by prestige, productivity and success. If we take that position, we can devalue those who are not productive or successful. Someone who is labeled, "sick" or "handicapped" can be also labeled as "usless" or a "drain". Will we get to the day when someone advocates killing them? Will people want to abort and terminate the retarded, the ugly or the unwanted? 

Questions: do we label people as replaceable or irreplaceable? If we do that,  then when they are replaceable, do we see people as disposable? Do we see some people as waste products? When we hold that “progress is our most important product”, then those who are not progressing can be dumped as an “anonymous, replaceable pawn” in the words of Schillebeeckx.

Why was Jesus killed? He didn’t see the Kingdom happening. In the fullness of time, he saw the kingdom as God's Dream and God's Will and tried to bring it about by word and action. He started to make demands, and he demanded too much. 

Whenever we become prophetic about how people treat others wrongly or unfairly,  the crowd screams, "Crucify him or her!"

Or as Schillebeeckx puts it, “Thus Good Friday points to the unconditional character of Jesus’ message and his life-style of universal reconciliation, excluding no one. This message, as an element of Jesus’ action, was closer to his heart than the consequences of it for his own life. This of itself points to the definitive validity of any praxis of life. This of itself is valid in and of itself, and not on the basis of any subsequent success that it may have. Without the radicalism of this message and this action, Jesus’ death would not have become inevitable. His death is therefore neither a tragic coincidence nor a sorry combination of circumstances.” (p. 75)

Schillebeeckx goes on, “Not that Jesus sought his death. But where the radicalism of his caring identification with the suffering and the wrong inflicted on others knows no bounds and will not be deterred in any way, this world is dealt a fatal blow. In that case the world adopts even more radical opposition to the threat posed by love and the one posing the threat is immediately put out of the way.” (p. 75).

Why was Jesus killed? Sin kills people and speaking out against it also kills people. Sin is a vicious circle. Conversion means yelling out: “Stop the merry-go-round, actually, the killing-go-round, I want to get off.”

Now, as Schillebeeckx puts it, it wasn’t till afterwards, well after their Easter experience, that the disciples recognized all this. It took time. 

How about us? Have we yet got a glimpse on what Jesus was about?

This was his Father business. Jesus said it when he was 12 in the temple at Jerusalem. He said it on the cross when he put all into his Father’s hands,

And when he died, he cried loud cries. Sin causes screams like that!

2)  LOVE

The second reflection on the cross that I would like to offer is that of love. This is what I hear as the main message of Saint Alphonsus about the cross. He keeps repeating himself and the saints when he tells us to study the cross. Read the cross as you would read  a book, and you’ll hear God say to you loud and clear, “I love you.”

Look at a cross and you’ll hear Jesus saying, “Take a look at me here dying for you and you will hear me loving you.”

We all know the words of Jesus, “Greater love than this no one has than that they lay down their life for their friends.” The other day, we might have heard in the news the story about an old man in New York who jumped in front of a bus to try to save 2 boys. They were hurt, but lived because of the action of the man. He was killed. “Greater love than this, no one has, that they lay down their life for their friends.”

When we love others we give them our life. “This is my body given to you. This is my blood which is being poured out for you.”

When I teach about Carl Jung’s personality types, I like to use the following story to explain the difference between a feeler and a thinker. A thinker would never use this story when he or she was preaching or teaching. A feeler might. However, the story is kind of smushy.

Story: A little girl was sitting on her front porch one summer morning. She was all by herself and wished some friends were around. Not having any she wrote a letter with crayons on a piece of paper. When she finished it, she folded the note neatly and went and put it in the arm of a tree. Now a mailman was coming up the block, so maybe it was a game she played with him. His job was to give out mail. Now he was about to receive a letter. Well, he went up and took the letter from the tree. He opened it and read, “To anyone, I love you.”

Now that is smushy. But Jesus from the tree of the cross has been saying for 2,000 years. “To anyone, to everyone, I love you.”

We look at the cross and discover how much God loves us.

In preparing for this homily, I read several Good Friday homilies. In one of them I found a “smushy” story that hit me. I am a feeler. It’s from the life of Elizabeth and Robert Browning.

Story: One morning after breakfast, Elizabeth Barrett Browning left her husband in the dining room and went upstairs. A servant cleared the table where he expected to work. After the servant had left, soft footsteps sounded behind him and his wife’s hand on his shoulder kept him from turning so he could see her face. She slipped a manuscript into his pocket saying, “Please read this, and if you do not like it, tear it up.” Then she fled back upstairs while Robert read this beautiful love poem by a woman to the man of her choice. In it are the lines,

                  “The face of all the world

                    is changed, I think,

                    since first I heard

                    the footstep of thy soul.”

Critics of her poetry say that most of her poetry, except her love poems to her husband, are stiff, mechanical and without life. Somebody had told her to write about what’s in her life, in her heart, her experiences, and not about ancient history and stuff out there. The result were the great poems, “How do I love thee, let me count the ways.”

Well, I tell that story to say that the cross is a poem that Jesus hands to us. Hopefully we won’t tear it up or find it without life. It’s a great love poem that says over and over. “How do I love you?  Jesus is saying, "Take some time to read my love poem over and over again and count all the ways I’m saying to you over and over again. 'I love you.'"

For us here this afternoon, Jesus is the one we love. He is the one whom we decided to leave home and let go of our fishing nets for and follow. Can we say with Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

                   “The face of all the world

                   is changed,  I think,

                   since first I heard

                   the footsteps of thy soul.”

In a season like Lent, in a week like Holy Week, on a day like today, we look to Jesus, the center and core of our life, the person we are willing to live and die for. We entered this life in love with him, we continue in this life in love with him, and we hope to die in this life in love with him.

So we are here today looking at the cross, looking at the one we love and who loves us.

                   “The face of all the world

                   is changed, I think,

                   since first I heard

                   the footsteps of thy soul.”

3) SILENCE

And besides SIN and LOVE, the third thing we feel when we look at the cross is silence. I cannot but think that there was a lot of silence at Calvary.

Yesterday, Holy Thursday, we sat around the altar. We were close together. It was a celebration, the Passover Meal, the Last Supper. We want to be together in celebration when we eat, and not scattered all over the place.

Today, Good Friday, is a different feeling and experience. We are not in a dining room. It’s as if we are in a Funeral Parlor. And when we go into a funeral parlor, we become quiet. We walk in and look for a seat to be quiet and silent with our own thoughts and feelings about the person in the coffin, who has died. So that was why we set up the chairs in the chapel rather close together yesterday and with plenty of space today.

It must have been quiet at Calvary. 

When we watch the evening news and see some kid in Palestine who was shot and killed or some woman being beaten with clubs, we say, “Oh no!” We put our hand to our mouth. Our jaw becomes tight. Violence brings on silence. Stunned. Quiet. Numb. Frozen. 

Think of any tragedy. Think of any death. We walk into a funeral parlor. We say a few things. If it was a tragic death, we might say something like, “I don’ t know what to say.” We hope our flowers or card, but especially our presence makes up what we lack in words.

S I L E N C E ............

S I L E N C E ............

S I L E N C E ............

4) UNDERSTANDING:

And the fourth and last message that I would like to reflect upon about the cross is that Jesus not only says from the cross, “I love you”, but he also says, “I understand.” We have to stand under the cross and hear Jesus say to us, “I understand.” When we are in pain, stand under the cross till you hear the words, “I understand.” Jesus has been there for centuries saying just that. Our God understands.

I was reading a sermon for Good Friday by a Rev. Marie Fortune. It is entitled, “My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?” It’s in a collection of sermons by women, SPINNING A SACRED YARN, (Pilgrim Press, N.Y. 1982). And in that sermon she says that there are countless women who feel like Christ felt as he was abandoned on the cross. There are so many women who are screaming out, “My God, My Friends, My Clergymen, My Counselors, Why have you forsaken me?” Try to understand what has happened to me.

Her experience was with sexual and domestic violence in the United States. Her experience was that churches so often minimized family violence. “It’s not a big deal - it doesn’t happen that often.”

Then she makes this comment, “Particularly since the Second World War, theologians have addressed at great length the issues of violence and nonviolence: the theory of a ‘just’ war; the question of whether Hitler should have been assassinated in order to stop his violence; the civil rights movement and the practice of nonviolence as a strategy for change; the debate over whether or not violence can be justified to resist political and economic oppression in the Third World; and now, how to counter the unimaginable violence of nuclear arms. All very serious and pressing questions for us to ponder as Christians.”

She goes on, “Yet nowhere do I find an attempt to theologize about the experience of personal violence in our lives here and now, today. My hunch is that this is because most contemporary American (male) theologians have never been mugged, have not been taught to fear rape as a daily threat, and do not acknowledge the fact that 60 percent of couples will experience physical violence at some point in their relationship and that the family is the most violent institution in the United States. Thus, for them violence is an academic, societal issue for debate, rather than a personal human experience known to many in our society.” (pp. 67 - 68).

Well, having read that, and being male, and living here in this granite castle with a tower, and never having been mugged, I felt guilt. I felt that I don’t understand.

So I need to listen more, pray more, theologize more. And hopefully, I will be more aware of domestic violence in our land or better, in individuals here in our lives.

Then a sentence in Marie Fortune’s sermon jumped off the page and into my brain. Perhaps it was because I was in a car accident once where the windshield was smashed. She quotes a Marge Pierce who describes the experience of rape this way, “There is no difference between being raped and going head first through a windshield except that afterwards you are afraid not of cars but half the human race.” (p.69)

I understand. Do I? 

Do I understand you? Do you understand me? Do you understand what it is to be me? Do I understand what it is to be you. To be standing up here on Good Friday and babbling out words, when I rather be quiet and alone and have someone else preach and hopefully reach me with a sentence or a story or two, so that I will be closer to the person that I think my God wants me to be.

And In that loneliness, and in that wanting to be alone, I sit under the twelfth station or in my room or in the chapel here and look up at the cross and hopefully will hear from Jesus, “I understand.” And hopefully, having been understood, I will understand others better. And maybe someday, some Good Friday afternoon, I’ll be able to grasp a little bit more what Jesus went through and I too will be able to say to him, “ I understand.”

CONCLUSION

Good afternoon. Good Friday. Thank you for listening and for trying to understand some of things that I was trying to say. Thank you.

O

O  O  O 

O 

Picture on top: Crucifix in St. Stephan's Church in Vienna, Austria.