Good Friday Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, April 7th, 2023

On a certain level, this day is about failure, and it is about shame. Jesus, the Son of God, has failed to convince the world of the power of love. Most of his friends, the people he chose to walk with him, take off when Jesus is arrested. One of his closest friends, Peter, has failed in a particularly shameful way, refusing to acknowledge Jesus publicly when Jesus needs him the most. 

To the world, Jesus is no better than the criminals who are executed on either side of him. Or, even if they know that they has committed no crime, Jesus is still a fool, reckless enough to let himself get caught by the Romans without even putting up a fight when they come to arrest him. What has he done but put his friends in danger and jeopardize the very message he came to proclaim?

The shame of the cross might be the most painful thing about it – those who followed Jesus could not escape it, even decades later. In his book, The Sign and the Sacrifice, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams describes the so-called “blasphemous graffiti” carved on a wall in Rome probably in the second century. Williams writes, “It is a rather shocking image: a man with a donkey’s head strapped and nailed to a cross, and next to the cross a very badly drawn little figure wearing the short tunic of a slave, and scribbled above it, ‘Alexamenos worshipping his god.’ Presumably one of Alexamenos’s fellow slaves had scrawled this little cartoon on the wall to make fun of him. But he knew, as Alexamenos knew, that Alexamenos’ god was a crucified God.” 

Williams’ description, and the image itself, should make us cringe. It is as if someone today posted a meme on someone’s social media account, with a person strapped to an electric chair, and an accusation that this is an image of the One whom someone worships. The image is meant to embarrass, to scorn, to wound. 

It is not just the suffering that Jesus undergoes that makes this day so hard; it is the humiliation of Jesus and all who look to him as their Redeemer. Isaiah’s description of the Suffering Servant gets at this humiliation: the servant is “despised and rejected…one from whom others hide their faces.” For Isaiah, the Suffering Servant is usually a symbol of the whole people of Israel, whose relationship with God has not protected them from exile and destruction. But the theme is the same, whether we are imagining Israel in exile or Jesus on the cross: by most standards of human accomplishment and success, this is the most abject and degrading failure. 

It is very hard to watch, let alone give ourselves to an entire day of pondering. It is enough to make me wonder whether the world is right, and we are fools for worshiping our crucified god.

The various ways in which the Church has explained the meaning of this humiliation have not always helped. Over the centuries, this is perhaps where we have got it wrong the most, because we have tried to make it logical, reasonable, neat and tidy. But it is not. This is the messiest day of all.

It will not surprise you to know that one of the people whose understanding of the crucifixion I find most meaningful is Julian of Norwich, the 14th century anchoress. She is best known for her capacity for hope in a wounded world: All shall be well. But fewer people are aware that her hope is born in a vision of Christ crucified. In the course of a debilitating illness, when she believes herself close to death, she sees in a vision Jesus on the cross, bleeding so profusely that, Julian tells us, “everything seemed to be blood.” 

Like other medieval Christians, Julian does not shy away from the suffering; but unlike many of her contemporaries, she does not see the suffering as a sign of God’s wrath, or a punishment that Jesus has taken on himself to spare us eternal condemnation. Twenty years of meditating on this vision of Christ crucified resulted in another vision which made everything clear to her.

In her second vision she sees something completely different: a gracious and dignified lord, sitting at ease and in state. By his side is a servant, ready and waiting to do the lord’s will. In response to the lord’s request, the servant dashes off with all haste, but he falls into a small valley and hurts himself so badly he cannot get up. He is in great pain and distress, and cannot see or sense his lord’s presence. 

For Julian, this parable has multiple meanings. On one level, the lord is God, the creator of all things, and the servant is humanity – Adam, as Julian says. On another level, the lord and the servant are two persons of the Trinity – God the Father, and God the eternal Son. There are two insights here that have profoundly shaped my experience of Good Friday. 

The first is that in this parable, the “sin” of humanity – our sin – happens not because of our malice and willful disobedience, but because of the limitations of our sight and our ignorance. In Julian’s vision, the lord does not look upon the fallen servant with scorn or blame; rather, the lord is steadfast in love and compassion, without wrath or anger. 

On the second level, the servant is Christ, the divine Word, rushing off with eagerness to take on our human nature, in all its vulnerability and pain. And this is the essence of the cross – to be human is to feel everything, to share every wound, and that is what God has done. God has joined us in the ditch. God knows what it is to fail; God bears the shame with which the world views suffering and death. And in bearing that humiliation, God has rendered shame powerless.

This is not a day for blame, not then, not now, not ever. It is not a day to celebrate suffering, even God’s suffering. It is a day to let our hearts hear the tender voice of love – I do not blame you, and I will not abandon you. There is no shame, no despair, that I will not share, that I will not take into myself for it to be transformed. I can bear all your infirmities and carry every disease of the body and the soul. Nothing you feel, nothing you do, nothing you fail to do, is too much for me to bear, or too much for me to love. 

This is the message of the cross – if that is failure, so be it. With Jesus by our side, it cannot fail to save us.