Homily for
Good Friday
[Sacred Triduum: Commemoration of the Crucifixion]
[Sacred Triduum: Commemoration of the Crucifixion]
Friday 14 April 2017
The Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
A Parish of the Diocese of Bethlehem and The Episcopal Church
Readings:
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/HolyWk/GoodFri_RCL.html
“And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
I love this concluding statement to the Epistle reading for Good Friday. And yet I am aware that it might seem odd to hear these words on this day when we commemorate the crucifixion. It might seem even more strange that I have decided to focus on these words in preaching today.
Only, friends, remember that we call this Friday “Good.” And why do we do so? We do so because even at the foot of the cross, we know that death is not victorious. Christ is always the victor. The Epistle reading from Hebrews speaks of this victory as a New Covenant sealed in the blood of Christ that was shed on the cross. Although the resurrection is not explicitly referenced here in this reading, make no mistake about the fact that even here and now the resurrection is proclaimed. In death and in resurrection, Jesus’ shed blood is the very thing that consecrates the Covenant and us who have been sprinkled clean by that blood. By this blood, we are forgiven from our sins and released from our death, and these forces no longer hold any power over us. We have a great high priest who is far more powerful than any of these forces that would seek to keep us from our God. In fact, sin and death are not only forgiven; they are forgotten. When God absolves us of sins, when death is defeated on our behalf, these things are stricken from the memory of God, the very memory of him to whom all hearts are open, all secrets are known, and from whom nothing is hidden. God misses nothing! And yet he voluntarily wipes out sin and death from his own memory, and recalls only that we have been created to live with God not for a time and season but forever.
This forgiveness, this wiping away of sin and death, gives us a boldness to approach the throne of grace from which God reigns. We see this throne most clearly in the kingly throne from which Christ reigns as the King of all Creation. That throne is the cross; the very cross that could not contain him, and yet the cross from which we should never take down the image of Christ the suffering and victorious servant of God. After all, it is not merely any cross that we venerate. We draw near to a very specific cross. Countless crosses have been used in history to crucify persons condemned to death, and yet we do not set our hope on any other crucified one than Jesus. The cross by itself is meaningless. The Christ who died on his cross is the one who defines who we are, whose we are, and the life that we live, glorifying and worshiping Christ our Lord and God, in whom we live and move and have our being.
As we focus on this climax of the Gospel and of human history in which God took on death to defeat death, we find our mission for life. We are called to love one another and serve one another as Christ has first done for us and for our salvation. Christ is the model for us on how one lives faithfully, how one loves perfectly, how to live the Kingdom life. It is in this context of Christ who is victorious, not only in the resurrection but even in the crucifixion, that we hear those words charging us:
“… to provoke one another to love and good deeds …”
This charge is simply telling us to be Christ-like for the world, for our brothers and sisters within the Church, for our friends and even our enemies in the world. We are told here that the Christian ought to look and sound like the Christ, so much so that when others see and hear us, they are struck to the heart with the sense that they have been confronted by none other than Jesus, crucified and risen from the dead. This Jesus loves all persons, not because they have earned it, but rather because he has chosen to love the unlovable and the unloved, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to heal the sick, to give hope to the hopeless, to comfort the afflicted, to bring light that defeats the darkness in which all sorts of sin and unrighteousness find good breeding ground. He completes what is lacking in all persons, that all persons might look to him and find in him life eternal.
Only Jesus does not wish to do this alone! He has given his Church a command to go and do likewise. And though this Epistle does not directly reference that command of Our Lord, make no mistake about the fact that this was in the heart and mind of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews who tells us that we who gaze upon the cross of Christ and who live under the New Covenant of Grace are to
“… provoke one another to love and good deeds …”
for all for whom Christ shed his precious, life-giving, sin-forgiving, death-defeating blood. No one should be left untouched by the love of the Christian, for none one is left untouched by the love of the Christ, the head of the Church.
The author of Hebrews also gives us some instruction on how we can find the strength to fulfill this mission in these words:
“… not neglecting to meet together,
as is the habit of some …”
Remember that I have made refence on a couple of occasions over this Lenten season to the truth that the Church is a hospital for sinners in which we find healing. We come together again and again not because our regular attendance at the liturgy shows us to be champion Christians. We come here regularly knowing that we need to fix the eyes of our souls on Christ and be healed from all that seeks to turn us inward on ourselves and cause us to be blind to the needs of the world around us. The more we neglect to be present for the proclamation of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments of the New Covenant, the more we will fail to look and sound like the Christ.
There is some urgency to this matter. We are called to press on with urgency, remembering those words that we should provoke one another to love all persons and to gather around the Christ as we:
“see the Day approaching.”
And what is that Day? It is the Day of Resurrection! Only note that this is not a reference to the Day of Christ’s Resurrection. We might be tempted to think this as we stand here on this Good Friday and know that tomorrow evening we will greet the Day of Christ’s Resurrection as we begin the Fifty Days of Easter in which the faithful commemorate the Lord’s Passover from Death to Life. But that day has happened already! Even at the foot of the Cross, we who stand on this side of history, who know the Christ rose from the grave, know that Christ has been raised.
So what then are we awaiting as a day which has yet to dawn? It is our own resurrection. And what must happen before there is resurrection? What must happen before we are raised by Christ to eternal life. We must die. The day that this Epistle foresees is both the day of our death and the day of our passing from death to life, the day when we shall stand before Christ the Judge. And make no mistake about the fact that there is an urgency for this day, for we know not when it will come. We will keep glad Easter, but where and how we know not. We have no guarantee of another day, even another moment. By the time that the Church begins the celebration of Easter on earth, any of us could have already begun the Easter experience in paradise with Christ, the Easter that has no end. Tonight, with hearts and minds and souls fixed not on things earthly but things heavenly, let us then hear and embrace again the words of this Epistle for the days and moments until we are called forth to eternal life:
“And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Father
Timothy
Alleman
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