Good Friday

“They cried out, ‘If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar.‘” (John 19:12)

Who wouldn’t want to be a friend of Caesar? Who doesn’t want to be one?

Don’t we want to be friends of Caesar? Don’t we want to impress our bosses and our coworkers, our children, our enemies, people we admire and people we fear? Don’t we want important people to think well and speak well of us? If people we care about one way or another don’t speak well of us, how will we think well of ourselves?

And don’t we want to be friends of Caesar? Wouldn’t it be cool to be an essential adviser to powerful people?

Wouldn’t it be great if the Presiding Bishiop of the Episcopal church called me one day to say, “you have to drop whatever you’re doing, come to New York, and help me figure out how to save the church. You’re the only one I trust to help me.” I’d tell my secretary to hold my calls, and tell everyone I was off to New York because the PB thought I was the only one who could handle the job. Who wouldn’t want to be a friend of powerful people?

Jesus had charisma, he ate with sinners and also with Pharisees and religious authorities, he could have charmed Pilate and Herod if he’d wanted to play their game. He could have been spiritual advisor to the stars. But he refused – as he always did – to have idle philosophical discussions with Pilate, and he refused – as he always did – to work miracles to show off for Herod. We’ll never know what might have happened if either of them had been open with Jesus, talked about “what must I do to inherit life” as the rich young man did, but Pilate and Herod wanted to play the game. And Jesus refused.

Last night, Maundy Thursday, I asked people to think about what they’d do if they knew they had 24 hours to live. Well, when Jesus had that decision to make he did pretty much what he always did: he broke bread with this friends, talked about the love of God, went out “as was his custom” to pray on the mount of olives. That’s a life lived with integrity – a life in which every moment is lived as if it were among the last moments – Jesus didn’t have to change much of anything when he knew he was coming to the end. He was already living the life he chose. A life of integrity, a life that had no use for social hierarchies.

A couple of days ago I was getting ready for all the services we have here in Holy Week. Putting together bulletins, thinking about what worked last year and what we might want to change, thinking about what I might want to preach on, when there came a tap on my window. I was all alone in the building. I looked up to see Michael, one of the people we give money to from time to time. So I let him in and wrote out a check, and it became clear that he wanted to talk. I kept glancing at my computer screen and, finally, I ushered him gently but firmly on his way.

Now, sitting at the foot of the cross, I remember Jesus, just a couple of days before the events we’ve just heard described, just outside Jerusalem. He’s being followed by a huge crowd of people, everyone’s abuzz about what’s going to happen when they arrive. Jesus has been talking about being put to death. They’re almost there. Imagine the focus on arriving in Jerusalem. And then, by the side of the road, a blind beggar calls out “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” Jesus stops the whole parade, calls the man over, focuses on him, says “what do you want me to do for you?”, heals him.

Now, I couldn’t heal Michael of whatever it is that ails him, but it occurs to me I could have stopped the parade for him a while longer.

But Good Friday isn’t about feeling guilty, it’s about learning to see.

You know I believe that evolution is the infinitely beautiful mechanism that God chose to use to create us. The mechanism behind evolution is just this: if I have some slight advantage over you – I hear better or see better or think better – so you get eaten by the tiger instead of me, then I survive to mate and pass along my slight advantage to the next generation. Over millions of years, we adapt.

From the point of view of evolution, the sight of Jesus on the cross is nothing but failure. He didn’t have children, he died unnecessarily. The only reason to give Jesus on the cross a second glance is as an object lesson in what to avoid – don’t live your life like him!

If you want to know why I believe there’s something of God in us, the Kingdom of heaven within us, one good reason is that so many of us sit at the foot of the cross on Good Friday and think just the opposite. We think, “We need to live our lives more like him.”

That’s why the climax of the crucifixion in some of the Gospels is a Roman centurion, a brutal agent of the outfit that’s just killed Jesus, looking up at the bloody mess on the cross and saying, “Surely this is God’s son.”

The way he lived and the way he died call us to recognize the voice of God that’s already speaking within us.

We’re already friends of the king, that’s what Jesus said, we're his brothers and sisters. We don’t need to jockey in the pecking order to figure out our worth.

It isn't about feeling guilty; it's about learning to see. The way he lived and the way he died call us to recognize the voice of God that’s already speaking within us. The Truth on the cross is a truth we recognize.
Surely, this is God's son.