March 29, 2024 (Good Friday Service)

Sermon title:  “The Crucifixion”

Scripture:  John 19:13-42

John 19:13-42

13When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge's bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. 14Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, "Here is your King!" 15They cried out, "Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!" Pilate asked them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but the emperor." 16Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

The Crucifixion of Jesus

So they took Jesus; 17and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. 18There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. 19Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." 20Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. 21Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, "Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,' but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.' " 22Pilate answered, "What I have written I have written." 23When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. 24So they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it." This was to fulfill what the scripture says, "They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots." 25And that is what the soldiers did. Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." 27Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. 28After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), "I am thirsty." 29A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. 30When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is finished." Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Jesus’ Side Is Pierced

31Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. 32Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. 35(He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.) 36These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, "None of his bones shall be broken." 37And again another passage of scripture says, "They will look on the one whom they have pierced."

The Burial of Jesus

38After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. 39Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. 40They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. 41Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. 42And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

          Earlier this month I had the opportunity to hear Diana Butler Bass at Founder's Day at Chapman University in Orange.  By going there and being in the same room with her, I was able to sign up for her publication “The Cottage,” and this sermon is from that publication.  In her remarks that day, she had mentioned something that she fleshes out here:  the possibility that the most important part of Holy Week, other than the Resurrection, is Maundy Thursday and the experience of everyone there at the Last Supper being around a TABLE. She calls this “The Holy Thursday Revolution:  Pull Up a Chair.”

          I’m often asked to preach on the Sunday after Easter.  The traditional verses for that day are always the same in liturgical churches—John 20:19-21—the story of Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance, including the popular account known as “Doubting Thomas.”

          One year, as I struggled to come up with a sermon on that perennial text, my attention drifted away from Thomas and back toward the first sentence of the story:

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

          “The house where the disciples had met” leaped from the page.  What house?  Of course!  The house where, just a few days before they’d had the Passover meal.  The house where Jesus had washed their feet and called them his friends.  Where they had shared bread and wine—the house of the “upper room.”  In the wake of Jesus’ execution and the strange reports from Mary Magdalene of Jesus in the garden, the frightened disciples had gone back to the upper room.  Perhaps to grieve, perhaps to remember, perhaps to await what they thought would be their own arrest.  But they had gone back to the room with the table, their last gathering place.

          Thus, on the night of the resurrection, Jesus showed up there.  With his friends.  At the scene of the Last Supper.  On Easter, Jesus goes from the tomb back to the table.

          If you are writing a play about this, the scenes would be table, trial (with its various locations), cross, tomb (burial), tomb (resurrection), and table.  The table is the first setting, and it is the final setting of the story.  Indeed, when the disciples want to meet Jesus again the next week, they return again to the upper room to meet him at the table.

          They never return to the cross.  Jesus never takes them back to the site of the execution.  He never gathers his followers at Calvary, never points to the blood-stained hill, and never instructs them to meet him there.  He never valorizes the events of Friday.  He never mentions them.  Yes, wounds remain, but how he got them isn’t mentioned.  Instead, almost all the post-resurrection appearances—which are joyful and celebratory and conversational—take place at the upper room table or at other tables and meals.

          Table – trial – cross – tomb – tomb – table.

          What if the table is the point?

          Every Holy Week, Christians move toward Good Friday as the most somber—and most significant—day of the year.  Depending on your tradition, you may sit in silence, reverence a cross, listen to a sermon, recite the Seven Last Words, fast in quiet prayer.  You may weep, sing mournful hymns, feel the weight of injustice.  It is sobering business, keeping watch with the execution of an innocent man.  For centuries, Christians have been told that everything changed that day, the cross was the bridge between the sinful world and the world of salvation.  The cross is all that matters.

          Somber, yes.  The most somber day.  Of course.  But what if it isn’t the most significant?  What if the most significant day was the day before—the day of foot washing and the supper, the day of conviviality and friendship, the day of Passover and God’s liberation?  What if we’ve gotten the week’s emphasis wrong?

          Christians mostly think of Maundy Thursday as the run-up to the real show on Friday.  And, because the church has placed such emphasis on Friday, we interpret Thursday through the events of the cross.  Thus, when Jesus shares bread and wine with his friends, it becomes a prefiguring of his broken body and the shedding of his blood for the forgiveness of sins.  We return to the cross all the time.  We see Thursday through Friday.  From that angle, it becomes morbid.  A doomed man’s final meal while the execution clock ticks.  But his friends didn’t experience it that way.  They weren’t thinking about a cross or a blood sacrifice.  They saw Friday through Thursday.  They were celebrating Passover.  They were in Jerusalem with friends and family (not just twelve guys at a long table—sorry Leonardo) at a big, busy, bustling holiday meal to commemorate God freeing their ancestors from slavery.  Passover is a joyful meal, not a somber one.  And, because Passover was about liberation from a hostile oppressor, it was fraught with political expectations and possibilities.  Would God free them likewise from Rome?  Was the promised kingdom at hand?  They were thinking about their history and their future, and they were enjoying the supper together.

          Jesus loved meals.  They knew that.  They’d shared so many.  Go back through the gospels and see how many of the stories take place at tables, distributing food, or inviting people to supper.  Indeed, some have suggested that Jesus’ primary work was organizing suppers as a way to embody the coming kingdom of God.  Throughout his ministry, Jesus welcomed everyone—to the point of contention with his critics—to the table.  Tax collectors, sinners, women, Gentiles, the poor, faithful Jews, and ones less so.  Jesus was sloppy with supper invitations.  He never thought about who would be seated next to whom.  He made the disciples crazy with his lax ideas about dinner parties.  All he wanted was for everybody to come, to be at the table, and share food and conversation.

          “I think of Jesus,” wrote theologian Beatrice Bruteau, “setting up these Suppers somewhat on the order of the ‘base communities’ of liberation theology.”  Gatherings of the Kingdom of God.

          Bruteau continues by quoting Rabbi Kushner on Sabbath meals:

And the laughing.  The sharing.  And the singing.  One melody is scarcely spent when another comes forward.  We don’t even notice the racket of the children.  There is a great holiness in this room.  It grows with the sharing. [I take a large ceramic Kiddish cup, fill it with wine, offer it to my wife and then to the man next to me, who] hands it to his wife with the solemn instruction, “Here, keep it going.”  And we do.  From hand to hand.  Drunk from and refilled.  Time and time again.

          Sabbath.  A version of the kingdom of God.  The meal reminds us and continues the promise.

          What if Maundy Thursday was that?  The Last Supper of the Old World.  The last meal under Rome, the last meal under any empire.  And it is the First Feast of the Kingdom That Has Come.  The first meal of the new age, the world of mutual service, reciprocity, equality, abundance, generosity, and unending thanksgiving.  Pass the cup, keep it going, hand to hand, filled and refilled, time after time.  This night is the final night of dominion, the end of slavery; and this night is the first night of communion, the beginning of true freedom:  “I will  no longer call you servants but friends.”

          This table is the hinge of history.  The table is the point.  Thursday is the Last Supper and the First Feast.  The Holy Thursday Revolution.

          Pull up a chair.  Bring a friend.

Pastor Skip