March 29, 2013 (Good Friday) – John 18:1-19:42
John 18:1-19:42
God Oned with Us
Good Friday – March 29, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
In John’s telling, when Jesus is crucified, the crowds of disciples are not anywhere to be seen.
They are not, as in other Gospels, standing far off at a distance.
Indeed, the only ones we read about in John’s Gospel are his mother,
his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, Mary Magdalene,
and the disciple whom Jesus loved.
And rather than standing far off at a distance, these, says John,
these are standing near the cross.
These few disciples are standing near the cross, gazing at Jesus, gazing at the cross.
Today we are near the cross, too, and in a few minutes we, too, will take our place with
these few disciples and gaze at the cross and contemplate its meaning.
We will take our place with them – and with generation upon generation of Christians who,
on Good Friday, have gazed at Jesus, gazed at the cross, and contemplated its meaning.
And with them we ask, “Why the cross?” and “What does it mean?”
Around Good Friday in 1373, one of those who contemplated the cross with us on Good Friday
lay in bed, sick from the plague that took 75% of the people in her town,
the town of Norwich in England.
We have come to know her by the name of Julian.
She thought she was going to die – but she didn’t.
She recovered by early May and she is remembered today as
one of the greatest of English religious writers.
As she lay ill in bed, though, on that Good Friday long ago,
it was thought that she was close to death.
She ran a fever and it seemed as if the life was draining from her.
Her eyes were cast up as if, she thought, she should keep her eyes on heaven.
A priest was sent for, and when he came, he held a crucifix – a cross with Jesus on it –
before her eyes and told her to look at it.
She slowly lowered her eyes to the cross and did so.
She didn’t want to, but she did as she was asked.
She fixed her eyes on the cross.
And it seemed to her that as she gazed at Jesus, she saw him begin to bleed.
And she realized that as she gazed, she was watching Jesus die.
And it was painful to watch.
However, iHof she could have spoken to her mother who was by her bed, she would have said
that she herself was not in pain; it was only Christ’s pain in her. (Frykholm, 36).
For many hours she remained in the realm of her vision and then, at one startling moment,
Jesus looked at her from the cross, and said, “Lo, how I love thee.” (Frykholm, 34).
Because her sight all this time was fixed firmly on the cross, the priest, when he left,
left the cross propped up by the foot of her bed, and she continued to gaze at it.
Julian didn’t die, and after she recovered spent most of the rest of her life meditating upon
this vision that was given her as she gazed on the cross.
She lived at a time of great suffering;
the 14th century was a time of great religious and political upheaval.
She herself witnessed tremendous suffering and tremendous upheaval.
She tended many of the sick and the dying and many close to her died.
But as she continued to meditate on the experience she had while sick, as she continued,
as it were, to gaze at Jesus on the cross and continued to be in conversation with him,
she came to realize some deep truths about God.
She lived at a time when it was almost universally accepted that suffering was the result of sin.
That God punished sinfulness and that that is why we suffer.
But her vision seemed to contradict this.
Jesus wasn’t suffering because of God’s anger or wrath.
Indeed, she came to a startling conclusion and stated is baldly:
There is no anger in God. (Rev. 84)
Rather, Jesus suffered in order to suffer with us, because that is where we so often find ourselves.
Jesus’s suffering was a way in which he could join himself to us.
She had a wonderful word for this: in Jesus on the cross, she wrote, God oned himself with us.
Here, she says, as she gazed at Jesus on the cross,
Here I saw a great oneing between Christ and us,
for when he was in pain, we were in pain.
And the reason God ones himself with us in our suffering, she wrote, is because God is love.
When she questioned Jesus about what this vision of him on the cross meant,
she received an almost exasperated reply: Would you know the Lord’s meaning? he asked. Love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it to you? For Love. (Julian 86, 211-212)
When you read Julian’ s description of Jesus’ suffering, you begin to realize that
perhaps what he is suffering she, in fact, was suffering in her illness.
She describes him as dried out, even leathery, in terrible pain, and incredibly thirsty,
symptoms not unlike those that appeared in those who had the plague.
In Jesus, she came to see, God had “reached out to us in the lowest part of our need.”
In Jesus, on the cross, we and God had been “oned together in love.”
And nothing was greater than this love. God is love.
And because God is love, and because we have been oned with God in love,
because of all this, despite everything, all would be well.
As she wrote, because of this love, all shall be well, and all shall be well,
and all manner of all things shall be well.
In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, John writes that Christ came and abided with us,
or pitched his tent us with us, full of grace and truth.
And the truth is that God loves us, loves us through thick and thin.
Loves us in delightfulness, and loves us in our rebellion and sinfulness,
and our sinfulness is as nothing when compared to the love he has for us.
Indeed, in God’s eyes, our sinfulness – our betrayal, our apathy, our despair –
are nothing to him but occasions for his love: opportunities for him to love us.
Not occasions for his wrath.
For as Julian says, the cross shows us that there is no wrath in God.
There is no anger in God.
There is nothing but love in God.
And that love has come to dwell with us where we need it most.
That love has come to pitch its tent among us,
in a dreary landscape of human making, and that full of grace and truth.
Pilate asks Jesus this morning, “What is truth?”
And the great irony is that the truth is right in front of him: Jesus is the truth.
The truth is that God loves us, that God has always loved us,
and that God will always love us.
And that there is nothing outside of that love.
And that is why ultimately all will be well and all manner of all things shall be well.
In John’s Gospel, the cross is a triumph and not a failure.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus, full of love, goes to the cross strong and completely in charge.
It is his the measure of his love for us that he joins himself to every cross we also bear.
Gaze on the cross in a few minutes and see him there.
There he is, oned with us in our suffering.
Oned with us in our pain.
Oned with us in our undeserved suffering.
Oned with us in our thirst.
Oned with us in our sinfulness,
Oned with us so he can forgive it and call us brothers and sisters.
On the cross, God has oned God’s self with us.
And that is the good and great and wondrous news on this Good Friday.
Good because of God’s love for us.
As Julian contemplated all that she suffered,
And all that the world around her suffered,
And all that Jesus suffered,
She came to realize that all this is still true even now that Jesus has risen from the dead and
Presumably can no longer suffer.
All the time he could suffer, she wrote, he did suffer for us, and sorrow too.
Now that he is risen and seemingly cannot suffer, he still suffers with us.
He is oned with us in our suffering, and he is oned with us in love.
The love will redeem the suffering, for God is love,
and all will be well and all manner of things shall be well.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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