The Good Friday sermon I didn't preach in 2024 that I wished I had preached.
The passion reading today from Mark: This isn’t the crucifixion account people remember. Mark’s gospel portrays the starkest version of this day’s events in the Bible. There are no descriptions of anyone who cared for Jesus lingering at the foot of the cross, as in John, or watching from a distance, as in Matthew and Luke.
The emphasis is on his crucifixion as public humiliation. He is beaten. He is stripped and a hundred or so Romans mock and spit on this “King of the Jews” in a purple cape and crown made out of thorns. A stranger carries his cross. They gamble for his clothes. They pound nails into his hands and feet and hang him naked between two bandits, and taunt him as they wait for him to die.
Jesus is mostly silent in Mark’s gospel as he takes in humanity’s ugliest behavior. The four-word question he does ask, “Eloi, Eloi lama sabachthani?” is misheard by those around him. People think he is calling for Elijah.
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” I’ve always thought it a heartbreaking final utterance from Jesus. When his friends have deserted him, when the community has turned its back on him. When not even one person attempts to stop the insanity of an innocent human dying the most inhumane death, Jesus cries out “My God, my God, why have YOU abandoned me?”
Jesus’ words are Aramaic, and not his own. Jesus is quoting the opening words of Psalm 22. Perhaps it was on his lips as he prayed the previous evening in the garden. Perhaps it was the mantra that he spoke in his heart to carry him through the longest night.
These are the words of Psalm 22 that follow his pained cry:
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night but find no rest.
3 Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4 In you our ancestors trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
6 But I am a worm and not human,
scorned by others and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;
they sneer at me; they shake their heads;
8 “Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver—
let him rescue the one in whom he delights!”
Out of context, it would be easy to imagine Jesus thought God, too, had left him in his final hour. But the rest of the Psalm is a reassurance that no matter what, God is faithful. God will deliver. God is Good, no matter what.
It had only been a few weeks earlier that Jesus was transfigured, when God proclaimed Jesus as the Beloved, the one in whom God delighted. Nothing had changed. The soldiers’ mocking him as King of the Jews (oh, the irony) their humiliation did not change that. Crucifixion did not change that. Death did not change that.
But when the world is tumbling down, it can be hard to remember our belovedness. When the boss wants to see you in the office at the end of the day. When the doctor calls and wants you to come into the office right away to talk about some tests. When your child texts and says I need to talk with you and Dad – can I come over tonight? We know immediately: “This can’t be good. Nothing good can come of this.”
But this is the day we call Good Friday. Out of this pain, this passion, this crucifixion, the worst moment ever, we know that God did not abandon Jesus and will never leave us, no matter what we face. Jesus, crucified, loving us beyond what we can imagine, turning the tables on death itself.
When our lives are shaken up and we are shattered, we have that assurance. No matter what life throws at us, God is with us, whispering “beloved” to us. God walks with us through the deepest valleys and is with us in death. And because of the Cross, death doesn’t have the final word.
That is Good News on this Good Friday.
Amen.
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