April 10-12, 2020 – The Three Days in Three Acts From Death to Life (Good Friday, Holy Saturday & Easter Sunday)
John 18:1-20:18
The Three Days in Three Acts – From Death to Life
Good Friday, Holy Saturday & Easter Sunday
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Act I – Good Friday
In John’s account of Jesus’ Passion and death is not a defeat but a victory.
When Jesus announces from the cross “It is finished” it is not a statement of despair.
He is not throwing in the towel.
He is not caving in.
He is not saying, “I am so done with all this.”
What he says is much more accurately translated, “It is fulfilled” or “It is accomplished” or
“It is completed.”
The goal of his life has been reached –
he has used his life for loving in as many ways as he possibly could.
Throughout his arrest and trial in John’s Gospel he has been majesterially in charge.
Pilate shuffles back and forth uncertainly between the crowd outside and Jesus inside,
unsure of what to do, all while Jesus moves things towards his goal.
Even on the cross, Jesus remains in charge,
the most unlikely place from which anyone could possible hope to do anything.
From the cross he creates a new family when he gives his mother a new son
in the person of the beloved disciple, and the beloved disciple a new mother.
And when he breathes his last, he gives his spirit – so that we might now have it.
John’s account of Jesus’ death is so different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s.
It is always read on Good Friday in our churches because of his unique perspective.
John sees Jesus’ death not as a defeat but as a victory.
As a fulfillment of a loving life, as a completion of what he came to do:
to love us to the end.
To assure us that there is nowhere we are without God –
even in suffering and death, God is there, loving us, right beside us and with us.
There is nothing outside God’s experience,
and so there is nothing we experience where God cannot be present with us.
That is good news – that is the Gospel.
We value John’s telling of this story because
John sees so much more going on than the simple circumstances of Jesus’s death.
John sees that the quality of Jesus’ life is so much more than the circumstances of his life.
The circumstances he finds himself in – unjustly tried and executed, humiliated, scorned, and
isolated – do not define him or who he is or his response to his situation.
He remains who he is: God with us, God loving us – to the end.
His life remains complete, and he remains in charge of it.
He continues to love – despite everything that would sway him not to.
That is why on Good Friday, John perceives that Jesus wins.
Our circumstances in these days of isolation are very difficult for us.
But the good news on Good Friday is that our circumstances need not define us.
When Jesus gave up his Spirit on Good Friday, he gave it up so that he could give it to us.
He will breathe it onto his disciples on Easter Sunday evening in John’s account.
He gave it to each of us in our baptisms.
And that gift means that our circumstances need never define us.
That gift means that we are always so much more than our circumstances indicate.
We are beloved – and we are capable of a great love for our neighbours in need no matter what.
Let us continue to be the loving, generous connected people we were created to be.
Act II – Holy Saturday
Holy Saturday is that inbetween time of the Great Three Days.
Not much appears to happen.
The world waits. We wait. Everything seems still and quiet.
There is not much going on on Holy Saturday.
Or so it seems.
Just as on Good Friday John sees so much more than the circumstances would indicate,
so on Holy Saturday
the church has divined that there is more going on than we would think.
What is going on might hover there at the edge of our consciousness.
But it’s there because every time we say the Apostles Creed together we are reminded that
Jesus “descended to the dead.”
And every time we say that we affirm the good news that the Gospel announces:
there is nowhere and no one beyond the reach of God’s love.
Jesus loved the dead in his earthly ministry,
touching them when it was culturally wrong to do so as with the widow of Nain’s son,
weeping deeply over them as for his friend Lazarus,
and raising them back to life in both instances.
Now, in death, Jesus goes to the place of the dead, in order to bring them the love of God.
Even though in the Gospel accounts this is not a feature of the story we are told,
the church has long affirmed that this is just exactly what Jesus did on the day between
Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
Having loved and fed and healed and blessed the living,
surely Jesus must have gone to minister to and love the dead
when he had the opportunity.
This affirmation was the church’s way of extending the Good Friday good news:
there is no human experience that is unreached by God.
And so the church made sure to affirm in the creed a few hundred years
after the first Holy Saturday:
he descended to the dead, or, in older translations, he descended to hell.
Hell or death is the place we imagine to be the place of absolute disconnection.
Disconnection from those we love, and disconnection from God.
It is the place where all ties are severed.
We know this place of disconnection.
When a loved one dies, we experience the pain and loss and – yes, let’s say it –
the hell of disconnection.
But we are getting to know this place in new ways in our present moment:
the difficulty of being separated and isolated and disconnected from
friends, from family, from work, from so much that is familiar.
The Holy Saturday witness is that this place of disconnection is intimately familiar to Jesus.
Even to this place Jesus brings the love of God.
Even in this place, love survives.
Even in this place, love is possible and love means something.
Even in this place, love connects.
Jesus comes to the place of disconnection and death – and loves us there.
And it is just there that Jesus will bring us to life.
Act III – Easter Sunday
Mary comes to the tomb while it is still dark.
But when she arrives, while it is still dark, she discovers that Jesus is already raised.
God does not wait for day to break before raising Jesus.
Perhaps we are frustrated that we do not witness it.
Perhaps we long to see life taking form again, breath filling the lungs,
animation stirring the lifeless body.
But John shows us none of that – as do none of the Gospel writers.
Isn’t that curious?
We do not get to witness the resurrection – only the Resurrected.
Easter begins while it is still dark – and there is wondrous good news in that.
It is hard to see, it is hard to know what is going on.
The darkness is disorienting – just as these days we are experiencing now.
When will the isolating orders end?
How will I manage the expenses since I’ve been laid off?
How can I work from home with the kids at home who need to be helped with school work?
How can I survive the loneliness?
How can we continue to be the church when we cannot gather?
What does it even mean to be the church in this time?
Will our congregation survive?
The darkness makes it hard to know.
And it is okay to answer, “I don’t know.”
Nicodemus responded that way when asked by the authorities where Jesus was.
And now, on Easter Sunday,
Mary confesses that in the darkness she does not know where the body of Jesus is.
“They have taken away my Lord,” she says, “and I do not know where they have laid him.”
It is dark.
And it is hard for her to see.
And yet, on Easter Sunday morning, before the sun even comes up – there he is.
Right beside her.
Perhaps hard to recognize by sight and by voice.
But nevertheless, there.
Yes: there is much about the resurrection we do not know.
Okay: there is a lot we do not know.
And yet, there is everything we need to know.
Somehow, in the dark, God works to bring life out of death.
Somehow, out of the darkness, God saves the world.
Jesus lives – that is the witness of Easter.
Death cannot extinguish love.
Circumstances cannot define our loving reality.
We are more than our circumstances suggest.
Mary may not have witnessed the resurrection itself – but she has seen the Resurrected.
And so she runs to tell the others, “I have seen the Lord!”
Those she tells are exhausted and scared and uncertain.
They need to hear it.
The context in which she tells the good news is one of anxiety, oppression and injustice.
It is just there the good news needs to be told.
Today, on this Easter Sunday, we need to hear it.
And it is a word our context needs.
As death and difficulty and isolation rear their heads,
as fears increase and the future appears uncertain, the witness from Mary is just this:
The grave is empty and our sorrow will not last forever.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
And so with the saints of every time and every place,
with Mary Magdalene and Peter and Mary and the Beloved Disciple,
with all those who have sat in the shadow of death and affirmed that
Jesus is God-with-us and that love is as strong as death,
let us have faith, let us have hope, let us have love – and together let us say, “Amen”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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