Good Friday

April 9, 2004

In the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, amid the splendor of the hymn that reveals the mystery of the Incarnation, the Evangelist sounds an ominous note: “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him” (Jn. 1:10-11).

The world that was created through him, the world that was sustained by him, is the same world that, in the end, wanted nothing from him—except his death. As if that were not rejection enough the people to whom he came, especially the traditionally devout, spumed him as well. Perhaps most tragic of all, is not that “the world” or “the Jews” rejected Jesus, but that the ones closest to him—the ones who had given their lives to him, who had promised to follow him regardless of the cost—were the ones, in the end, who fled the farthest from him.

It causes all of us who claim to follow Jesus to “tremble, tremble, tremble,” because, as Paul Tillich says, the terror of the Cross shows that there is a non-Christian In every Christian. It reveals to our mostly self-satisfied piety that there is a weak being in every strong one, that there is cowardice in every courage, that there is unbelief in every faith, and that without the power of God made perfect in our weakness, we, like the disciples, will succumb to apostasy with the onslaught of evil.

That is certainly one of the reasons that the Passion story has had such prominence in all of the Gospels. Think how unbearable or incomprehensible it must have been for those early congregations In the faith to understand that all the Twelve had fled from Jesus when he needed them the most, and that none witnessed the crucifixion, and death of their beloved Master. Think, as an Apostle speaking to one of these communities, how difficult it would have been to talk about it to them. To their everlasting credit, however, they did, and they did so, less to get it off their chests, than to protect these believers from the temptation of having a faith as distinct from living a faith, in the Crucified One.

Being a Christian, therefore, meant much more than resting on religion. If their listeners were led to believe that they could follow Jesus without a cost, without a commitment, without a Cross, they would flee Jesus, as they did, the moment Nero’s torch first set fire to one of the faithful for light at his parties. They could not have withstood their children being sold Into slavery or sewn In sacks to be attacked and eaten by wild dogs. They could not, as Paul writes, have endured “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger (2 Cor. 6:4-5). They could not have walked by faith, but only in the despair of living by sight

And yet, the Evangelists, in readily attesting to the disciples’ abandonment of Jesus—a fact that judges them for all time— also show the unbounded power of Gospel love. That is, the helpless, dishonorable, ungodly death of Jesus became the ultimate means of demonstrating the perfected power of God. As Frederick Buechner has powerfully written:

“To participate In the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ is to live already In his kingdom. This is the essence of the Christian message, the heart of the Good News, and it is why the cross has become the chief Christian symbol. A cross of all things, as the place where such a mighty heart was broken that the healing power of God himself could flow through it into a sick and broken world. It was for this reason that of all the possible words they could have used to describe the day of his death, the word that they settled on was ‘good.’ Good Friday.”

Clarence Jordan was a brilliant New Testament scholar and farmer, who wrote the Cotton Patch version of the New Testament In the early 1940’s, he founded “Koinonia,” a multi-racial, Christian community In Americus, Georgia. Out of this community would come the principles leading to the formation of Habitat for Humanity, which Jordan co-founded with Milard Fuller. In his book No More Shacks, Fuller described an episode that happened to Jordan during the mid-forties, which has everything to do with showing how Jesus’ sacrificial way of love on the Cross is an absurdity to the world but, In effect, the wisdom and power of God to save the world.

In Americus, hostility was already high among locals because of the formation of this new “farm,” out of which nobody would serve as a combat soldier during WW II. They had sought “C.O.” status, since they literally followed Jesus’ teaching to love your enemies and to do good to those who persecuted you.

One day a local farmer stopped by and angrily accused a handful of residents of not being patriotic. Clarence replied to the man, “That’s not true at all; you’ve been given some wrong Information.” “But, you people won’t fight!” the man exclaimed. “On the contrary,” Clarence said. “We’re big fighters.” “You are?” The farmer looked puzzled. “Yes,” Clarence said, and he started to tell the man about the armor and weapons of God, but quickly realized that he was talking right over the man’s head.

He tried another tack. “Don’t you have a mule over at your farm?” Clarence asked. “Yeah,” the man replied, “I got several” “Well, then,” Clarence went on, “let me ask you a question. What would you do if you were walking by your barn, and your mule suddenly stuck his head over the gate and bit you in the fanny?” “I’d pick up a two-by-four and clobber him!” the man said. “Now, why would you do that?” Clarence asked. “Cause I wouldn’t let no mule get away with bitin’ me!” “But why wouldn’t you bite him back? That’s what he did to you?”

“Bite him! You crazy? I ain’t gonna bite no mule. What on earth are you tallkn’ about?” Clarence smiled at the man’s incredulity, and then he said, “Fighting. And what to fight with! That’s what I’m talking about. You don’t let the mule choose the weapon for you. You choose your own weapon. Christians can’t let the forces of evil choose the weapons that we fight with, either. The world chooses bombs and guns; we choose love and kindness and forgiveness.” So did God in Christ Jesus.

(The Rev.) William O. Breedlove, II