Good Friday Sermon

More or less as preached at Our Savior's Lutheran Church, Albany, MN

+INI+

I can remember a time when everything stopped on Good Friday. Some of you may remember it that way, too.

Maybe it was really wasn’t quite so much this way as we remember it. Maybe not EVERYONE was in church from noon to 3. But it seems that way. That is how I remember it.

Shops were closed. Dad had the day off.  Three hours of thinking about death and Jesus. It made in impression on a child.

It is not that way now, and I am not sure how I feel about it. For one thing I wonder how many people were in church more out of social conformity than deep devotion. But – really – I think it gave us a false impression about the nature of Good Friday – the nature of the Cross-and about the nature of the God who died on that cross.

You see, somehow we imagine that – 2,000 years ago – the whole great city of Jerusalem fell silent. But surely that was not the case. Crucifixions were common. They were a key act of state terror by which the Romans reminded their subjects that the Peace of Roman would be enforced with ruthless efficiency. People avoid the site of executions if they could.

Of course, there are reports of earthquakes on that day, of strange darkness. But there was nothing to drew a connection between these signs and one more dead Jew on a cross.

Jesus wasn’t the first victim of state terror. And he wouldn’t be the last.

+++

The simple fact is that nobody much noticed what was happening on that Friday.

This tells us about the God who died on that Cross.

It gives us a clue – if we have eyes to see it! – about where we will meet God.

I have no doubt that God is sometimes found in moments of the great glory. I have met God in such moments.

But – if you want to find the God who died for you on the Cross – don’t look big. Look small. Look where no one would think to look.

In the Cross we see that God will always be found in the dark places, on the moments of emptiness, when no one else much notices.

Most of all we find him where none of us would like to look. In the silence of nothingness; in the grave. Our grave.

When teaching out the Creed in Confirmation class We got to the phrase about how Jesus “descended to the place of the Dead.” What could THAT mean?

We looked at 1 Peter 3, about how Jesus “proclaimed the Gospel to the spirits in place of the dead.”

Then – slowly – little lights went on in our darkness. We are all going to be in the grave –sooner or later.

Then it hit 'em – In the grave, when we have nothing left – THAT is where we meet God! That is where we will hear Jesus – the God who hung from the cross.

“Come on!” we will hear him say. “Follow me! I know the way out.”