Sermon for Good Friday, March 29, 2024
Isaiah 52:13-53:12+Psalm 22+Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9+John 18:1-19:42
I love cemeteries. I especially love old cemeteries where the inscriptions on gravestones are worn away by time and weather. Many of these tell a tragic tale, where a woman might be buried with several small graves next to hers, evidence of a cycle of birth and death and sorrow and trying again. There are humorous inscriptions like, "I told you I was sick," or the voice of Bugs Bunny, Mel Blanc, whose stone reads, "That's all folks."
In the early days of the Church, traditions developed around commemorating death days as birthdays with friends and family visiting the burial place of their loved one. Even the word "cemetery," derived from the Greek word for "sleeping place," promises the impermanence of death. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, cemetery picnics were all the rage because they served as a sort of public park before those were common and because so many people died young that visiting them and enjoying a meal and storytelling kept them close.
There is an old cemetery in Wilmington, North Carolina, where the Spanish moss hung thickly from the live oak trees and the sound of mosquitos buzzing was all I could hear on a lazy summer afternoon when I might stop by as a teenager. It was peaceful and beautiful in its own way, and as I strolled through the rows of mausoleums and headstones, I tried to imagine something about the people whose bodies rested there, everything that might have happened in that tiny little hyphen between their date of birth and date of death. Depending on who was buried around them, it might be easy to figure out family connections, but sometimes, there was just one, lonely person. Surely that was a story in itself.
In some ways, our understanding of the life of Jesus rests on similarly ambiguous speculations. In the Apostles Creed - maybe the earliest one we still say although it's possibly a later iteration of the Nicene Creed - we say
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried. (BCP p. 96)
His entire life is contained in that period between "Virgin Mary" and "He suffered." Similarly, in the Nicene Creed, we proclaim
...he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried. (BCP 358)
I can remember my professor in prayer book class telling us that the Creeds don't contain everything that we believe, just those parts the early Church Fathers could agree on. And clearly, there is no agreement on all the events of Jesus's life because we have differing accounts in the four gospels, including differing genealogies of who Jesus was in the first place. If you throw in some of the stories about Jesus that did not make it into our scriptures but at least in the early church were considered instructive, then there are all kinds of fanciful stories about Jesus that clearly not everyone was going to agree on.
But for those who knew him in the flesh, he was a son, brother, friend, confidant, and leader. For those gathered at the foot of the cross, the life he lived - whatever the details - was precious to them, and this brutal execution pierced their hearts. For them, you could not sum up a life in a hyphen between birth and death dates, or with a period between the nativity and the crucifixion, any more than we can with those we love who have died. Where do you even begin to tell their story?
This was the dilemma that faced the early church and explains a lot about how different the accounts are.
But if we stay here in the moment where the life is draining from his body as they bear witness to the cross, everything he was to them, all the laughter and adventures and mind-boggling miracles, were, for now at least, swallowed up. There was, in fact, a period at the end of this promising young life.
Now, you and I know that it was not a period, it was a semicolon. But they did not know that, and if we are going to understand the fear and amazement that gripped them on the third morning, we need to sit here in the finality of death, right where they sat. It is not a comfortable place for us, bearing witness alongside the Mater Dolorosa, the Sorrowful Mother, but if we believe that it was human sin, human complicity - our sin, our complicity - in the structures of evil and empire that nailed Jesus to the cross, it is good for us to remain here with her for a while.
At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last. Through her soul, of joy bereaved, bowed with anguish, deeply grieved, now at length the sword hath passed.
Oh, how sad and sore distressed was that mother highly blessed, of the sole-begotten One! Christ above in torment hangs; she beneath beholds the pangs of her dying glorious Son.
Is there one who would not weep, whelm'd in miseries so deep Christ's dear mother to behold? Can the human heart refrain from partaking in her pain, in that mother's pain untold?
Bruis'd, derided, curs'd, defil'd, she beheld her tender child all with bloody scourges rent. For the sins of His own nation, saw Him hang in desolation, till His spirit forth He sent.
O thou Mother! fount of love! Touch my spirit from above; make my heart with thine accord. Make me feel as thou hast felt; make my soul to glow and melt with the love of Christ our Lord.
Holy Mother! pierce me through; In my heart each wound renew of my Saviour crucified. Let me share with thee His pain, who for all my sins was slain, who for me in torments died.
Let me mingle tears with thee, mourning Him who mourn'd for me, all the days that I may live. By the cross with thee to stay, there with thee to weep and pray, is all I ask of thee to give.
Virgin of all virgins best, listen to my fond request, let me share thy grief divine. Let me, to my latest breath, in my body bear the death of that dying Son of thine.
Wounded with his every wound, steep my soul till it hath swoon'd in His very blood away. Be to me, O Virgin, nigh, lest in flames I burn and die, in his awful judgment day.
Christ, when thou shalt call me hence, be thy mother my defence, be Thy cross my victory. While my body here decays, may my soul thy goodness praise, safe in paradise with thee. [1]
(Stabat mater dolorósa, 13c.)
[1] https://whitstablechoral.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/stabat-mater.pdf