Good Friday

We live in a culture obsessed by self-help.  I searched Amazon.com for self-help books.  I got over 301,000 hits!  Assuming that, on average, each is one inch thick, that’s a stack about five miles high!  We can find books to help us get physically fit, to stretch our minds, to build better relationships, become a more productive member of society, and even to enhance our spirituality. 

Throughout his Gospel, culminating in the Passion story we read today, John makes it clear that all of these efforts at self-improvement must fall short of what we truly need, for we are all in slavery, all in a prison from we which cannot escape by our own means. 

For example, in chapter 8, Jesus says, “Amen, Amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.”  We listen harder when we hear that “Amen, Amen” introduction, for it always introduces a key truth from Jesus.  Of course, when Jesus says “everyone who commits sin,” he means everyone – you, me, the people sitting on either side of you, even Fr. Bob – all of us!  Jesus’ religious opponents understood this truth, for earlier in this chapter, Jesus tells them that “whoever is without sin” could cast the first stone at the woman caught in adultery.  We know how that ends.  Therefore, according to Jesus, we are all in slavery because we all sin.  Our sins imprison us.

Like all prisons, there are walls, limits to how much you or I can do.  I can read and follow all 301,000 of those books – first step, get the speed-reading books – but I cannot get out of the prison.   Oh sure, I can find a more comfortable place in the prison hierarchy, a place which affords me more physical comfort, maybe more friends to help me, perhaps even a bit more freedom to afford or to do whatever I wish.  I may even find a place where I don’t sense the walls around me that much, but that does not mean the walls do not exist.  I am still in prison; I am still in slavery; I am not free.

We can try to fight our way out of prison – it will do no good.  Peter thinks that the sword will win Jesus’ freedom.  It is as futile as Moses’ attempt to win justice for the Hebrew slaves by striking down an Egyptian taskmaster.  Jesus will have none of it.

We can try to use our positions of power to wheedle our way out of prison.  Pilate claims that he has the power to save Jesus.  Jesus points out that whatever power we claim to have, only comes from those above us, from those with more power.  And those above us are in prison, too.  How can they help us escape from the walls that also imprison them?

From the beginning, John tells us that Jesus is our only source of freedom.  He is the “light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it.”  John the Baptist sees the human Jesus for the first time and shouts out, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”  Jesus has come to give us much more than mere tips on living more comfortably in a prison of sin.  He has come to tear down the walls of the prison.  He has come to give us true freedom, not bounded by physical, finite limits, but awash in the infinite love of God.

Unlike the other evangelists, John emphasizes Jesus’ role as the Lamb of God with the timing of the Crucifixion.  The other evangelists show Jesus celebrating the Passover meal, the Seder, with his disciples on the night before he died.  Thus, Jesus dies on the first day of Passover.

If we read John carefully, we notice that the Last Supper occurs on the night before Passover begins.   The Last Supper scene begins with Chapter 13:  “Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knew the hour had come…”  On the morning of Jesus’ death, we heard that the Jewish leaders did not want to enter the praetorium “in order not to be defiled so that they could eat the Passover.”  Thus, John places Jesus’ crucifixion not on the first day of Passover, but on the day when the Jews were getting ready for the Passover to begin, the day of preparation.

And what was the chief order of business on this preparation day?  Killing the ritual lamb, recalling that first Passover when the lamb’s blood anointed the doorposts and lintels of the Hebrews, that the angel of death might pass over their homes.  So, on the same day that devout Jews are killing lambs through Jerusalem, Jesus, the Lamb of God, is dying his death, pouring out his blood, nailed to the cross for all of our sins.  As we will hear tomorrow night in the Exultet, his blood will consecrate the homes of all believers.

Our witness, our standing here together today at the foot of the cross, reminds us that our help in not buried in the millions of pages in those self-improvement books, but our help is in the name of the Lord who died and is buried for us.  It reminds us that true freedom is not rooted in the Declaration of Independence, is not rooted in our Constitution or our laws, is not defended by our armed forces, but is rooted in the cross of Christ and is defended by the power of God’s infinite, eternal, and unconditional love.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life.

Come, let us worship.