Sermon preached at Emmanuel, Stoughton, Good Friday 14th April 2017
by Ray Driscoll
God is love. It just rolls of the tongue sometimes doesn’t it? For those of us that have
been around the Christian community for a while, these words are instinctive, like an
well engrained habit, like the words thank you, or bless you, or holding the door open
for the person behind you. These words are woven into the fabric of our discourse
about God; they are the theological foundations of the liturgy of our lives; they are
both the cause and the content of our Godly devotion.
God is love? What does that mean? Do we really understand what we are saying when
we use such words? How sure are we of the accuracy of our own understanding of the
word love that we may apply it to God with any sense of assuredness? To put it another
way, can we confident that we know what love is? And while we are thinking about it,
how may we say anything about God at all? Can our words, and the understanding
that lay behind them truly hold him, truly do him the justice he deserves?
Yet we may say something of God, only because of the God-man, Jesus Christ. The
writer of the book of Colossians reminds us that he is the image of the invisible God.
The one in whom God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell. It is in this God-man,
Jesus Christ, that the words God and love can take root in reality. The writer of 1 John
articulates this explicitly; “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one
and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” Here the writer is saying
that Jesus is the explicit content of the words God and love, he is the final picture and
the primary source of any discussion and certainty we may have about these two
words. When it comes to these words, Christ is both the revelation and the event, the
object and the action, the word and the demonstration.
The miracle of the incarnation is that this revelation of God has come to us, not as an
idea or proposition, but in walking, talking, eating, interacting, lived-out human beingness. This revelation that was not as much understood but experienced, or perhaps
we might say he was understood through experience. As the message translation of
John 1 says, “the word became flesh and moved in to the neighbourhood”. God and
love are simultaneously revealed in and through life of Christ. God and love are an
event, a happening, taking place in the midst and mess of humanity a little over 2000
years ago.
And so the God event of Christ is the revelation of both God and love, and it is by the
accounts of those who were caught up in the event, the first witnesses, through whom
we can observe and encounter the story of the God-man for ourselves. These
witnesses give an account to this love; they articulate it and paint a portrait of it and
as we allow their stories to live we can see the content of this love; what it is made of,
what it looks like.
And what do we see? We see the kind of love that manifests itself in compassion on
the harassed and helpless crowds in Matthew 9. It is the kind of love that takes the
adulterous woman by the hand of forgiveness and opens up a bright new future. This
love offers rest to the weary, healing to the sick, food to the hungry. It embraces the
poor, the diseased and the marginalised. This is the side of the “God that is love” that
is familiar to us and is frequented by us in our worship and our devotions. This love is
safe to be with and straight-forward to live with. In some sense, this love is easy to
swallow and so very comfortable.
Yet Good Friday is the day in which this love takes a new shape and resounds with a
different tone. Though still compassionate and forgiving, the story of the God-man
from the night in Gethsemane is one in which love bears its teeth. This is love that digs
in, is stubborn, determined and full of resolve. On this day we see Christ’s eyes sharpen
with intensity and resolutedness, like a mother when she goes through transition in
the birthing process. This is risky love; that which drives a refugee to risk it all on the
chassis of a lorry for the possibility of a new future for them and their loved ones. This
love powers a nephew as he pushes the wheelchair of his marathon-loving uncle 26.2
miles so that he could taste the sweet feeling of a race just one more time. Braced and
ready for all that is to come, with gritted teeth and heels dug in, this is the other side
of that love, but it looks and feels a little different.
And so we reach one of the paradoxes of the cross; that this event in which God
submits to our violence and barbarity is also a moment in which love is actually the
aggressor, going face to face and toe to toe with sin and death itself, moving towards
them with determination and resolve. To return to 1 John again, “This is love: not that
we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our
sins”.
Sin is the resounding, if yet unpopular judgement of God on humanity given
throughout scripture. The bible reveals sin to be the bottom line of the human heart;
pervading our perception and experience of reality and distorting the image of God
within us. The bible gives us an account of sin in Genesis 3, in the encounter with the
great tempter, the serpent. If there is one thing that this account tells us, it is that sin
is a coin with many edges; as the forbidden fruit appeals to a multiple of Eve’s desires.
It appeals to her taste as it was good for food. It was appealing to her sight, as it looked
good and was pleasing to the eye. It was appealing to her intellect, as it was desirable
for gaining wisdom.
Those of us that have been through lent giving up chocolate or wine know this power
of this kind of temptation. Yet there is another, darker, more sinister element to the
sin of the human heart. Like a good salesman coming to the pinnacle of his sales pitch,
the serpent closes the deal promising that “when you eat of it your eyes will be opened
and you will be like God”. The KJV offers a more accurate and striking interpretation;
“your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as Gods”. Here we reach the sad foundation
of the sinful human heart; the spark that soon becomes the raging and all consuming
fire. For Adam and Eve, and for us, being God’s image bearers is not sufficient. For
them, and for us, carrying the stewardship of all that God has made on the earth is not
enough. In his sinfulness, mankind has loftier ambitions; to no longer be subject to
God, to remain no longer as the creature, but to know what God knows, to have the
power God has, to make their own decisions and be in charge of their own destiny as
God is. The root of all sin is the desire to be number one. It is the desire for control. It
is the thirst for power.
This is the story of the people of Israel. God’s covenant with them is just not enough.
Unwilling to submit to God’s authority, they repeatedly fashion their own gods,
stronger than the one true God, in a bid to control and overcome Yahweh. The striving
of humanity to displace God has run right through history and has been a characteristic
of every culture in every era. The reformation and desire to place man as the most
intelligent force in the cosmos; the American dream and the ideology of consumerism
that underpins it, the quest to subdue time that we might somehow escape it and be
in control of the years that we live. These have been our constructed idols past and
present; this is history repeating itself; the fruit eating of Genesis and the false idolatry
of Israel reveal the same sad truth; the core of the human heart and the root of all sin
is the desire for power, even over God.
This same story repeats itself again this week, in Holy week, as Jesus moves towards
and through Good Friday. Throughout Holy Week Jesus encounters every dimension
of human power, every idol, every attempt to assert ourselves above and beyond our
creator God. Jesus encounters Caiaphas and the religious powers of the day and came
under the scrutiny of their complex rules and religious rhetoric from which they gained
their power. Jesus comes under their microscopic and partial judgement and yet,
Matthew 26:60 tells us that they could find no charge, not even a false charge against
him. He endured their mocking and beating, their insults and spitting simply for
professing his identity as Emmanuel. Why did they want to kill Jesus? Because his
presence threatened their own power, built through the idol of their religiosity.
Jesus encounters Pilate and then Herod, representatives of the state of Rome; the
most powerful economic, cultural and political force of the time. Rome was a multicultural society that brought together vastly different people groups under one shared
identity. The kingdom of rome represented organised human power at its most vast
and impressive. This clash of kingdoms is one that has been brewing since Jesus’ birth
and the massacre of the Jewish boys that led Mary and Joseph to become refugees in
Egypt. Pilate too can find no charge against Jesus, yet he hands him over to the mob
in the name of keeping the peace, for the prosperity and providence of Rome.
And so Jesus encounters the mob. Collective power that consolidates itself to one
voice. The wisdom of the mob prefers the release of the war-mongering revolutionary
over the King of love. The wisdom of the mob, perhaps, is to think of Barrabas to be
more useful than a man who rides on a donkey and speaks about loving your
neighbour. Maybe they were just following along with the people of power without a
second thought. Either way, the mob in all its power and force is one that yells “crucify,
crucify”.
Finally, Jesus encounters the dehumanizing power of brutal violence at the crucifixion.
The roman soliders mock, spit and strike him again and again, before placing a piercing
crown of thorns upon his head. Jesus was stripped naked, forced to carry his cross until
Simon of Cyrene was press ganged into carrying it for him, nailed to a cross by his
hands and feet between two thieves. This was physical violence at its worst, described
as “a most cruel and disgusting punishment”.
As good evangelicals, we often think of the cross in terms of what theologians call
“substitutionary atonement”; that on the Cross, Christ took our place, took upon
himself our sin and the punishment we deserved, that we might be saved. This is true
and right and praise God. Yet scripture tells us that the cross is an event with many
layers, or perhaps with many dimensions. We should be careful not to boil it down to
one simple meaning, or viewing it through just one biblical lens at the expense of
others. When we do so we limit the scope of our wonder at God’s love and the extent
to which we may call this Friday “good”.
One of these other lenses is the notion of power. In holy week Jesus came face to face
with every kind of power that humanity can assert, every idol that we can dream up,
in our bid to defeat God. Jesus encounters every false projection of power that we can
muster up; religious, state, the power of the mob and horrific physical power that
dominates through force. This story has been recycling itself since eden, on repeat
throughout every generation and in every era.
But this is our story too; that is if we are prepared to look hard enough, to be honest
enough. The human heart is the battleground on which we wrestle with God for the
power, where we resist the created and ordained order in our reluctance to let God
be God. We set our faces in stark resistance to God’s authority and are reluctant to
be obedient to him. We feel too, that we know best; we could do a better job, that
we’d quite like to be the one in charge. Beneath the mass injustices of whole societies
and below the surface of every individual act of selfishness, lies the foundation of our
sin: that at least in some deep and unconscious way, like the prodigal son in the great
parable, we too wish that God was dead.
Can man defeat God? This is the question of the serpent that led Eve to eat the fruit
and the Israelites to carve their idols. This has been man’s quest since the fall, is the
root of his rebellion and the core of his sin. Can man’s sin defeat God? This the
question of Holy week, that comes to a crescendo on Good Friday, that drives
humanity to humiliate, torture and kill the one who is Emmanuel, the word made flesh,
the good shepherd of the sheep, the way, the truth and the life. As we look upon the
one who was slain, and as we enter into the darkness of Easter Saturday, this question
echoes in the blackness of the tomb, in the depths of the human heart and throughout
all of the created order. We await God’s response.
Read Mark 15:31-39.
At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. 34 And at
three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?”
When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”
3
Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to
Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he
said.
With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.
38
The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39 And when the
centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died,[c] he said, “Surely this
man was the Son of God!”