Good Friday Homily ~ April 6, 2012

The sights and sounds of our worship testify to the tragedy we remember today…

Last night, in remembrance of Jesus’ humiliation, we stripped the altar of all its paraments and adornments.

Gone are the flowers and banners; gone are our joyous songs and alleluias. 

Today is the day that Jesus Christ, our Lord, was crucified.

Even though this day has been called “Good Friday” for centuries because Jesus defeated death and evil on the cross, our celebration is not jubilation.  Today is a day of grieving.  And as we grieve Christ’s suffering, we cannot help but remember our own sorrows as well.

Today is a day for us to be honest with ourselves—and honest with God—at all that is wrong in our own lives and in the world we live in.  We sin against God and against each other.  We suffer sickness and poverty.  Death separates us from those we love.  And we are mortal.

So today, we journey with Jesus Christ to his cross.  And we take with us all of our sin.  We take with us our hurts and our anger, our worries and our fears, our weakness and our shame—so as to lay them at the foot of his cross.

We do this because Jesus died to redeem us from all these things that bind us in the misery of sin and death. 

And though our sorrow may last well beyond our leaving of this place tonight, it will not be forever.  Beyond the cross is the empty tomb, the place where God’s victory begins.  Out of the humiliation and death of the cross, God brought new life for world in the raising of Jesus from the dead.  It is at the crosses of our own lives that God’s new life will spring forth.

So we never suffer and grieve without hope. 

Today may not be a day of jubilation, but it is a day of hope.  It is a day of hope because Christ’s blood has set us free to live in the love of our God.  And having experienced the bitter suffering and humiliation of the cross, there is nothing we can face in this life that Jesus himself did not endure—and overcome, by the life-giving power of God.  As we carry our crosses, he is there to help us bear the burden—and by his grace, no cross in this world will have the last word.

The cross is not the end of Christ’s story—and it shall not be the end of ours. 

So we meet Jesus tonight at his cross.  And though we come weary and stained by sin, we come to receive God’s gift of redemption—and we come to begin the journey (once again) to the empty tomb, towards the fulfillment of God’s promise to us and to the world for resurrection and new life.