March 30, 2018 (Good Friday) – John 18:1-19:42
John 18:1-19:42
The Triumphs of Love
Good Friday – March 30, 2018
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
“Jesus died of being human,” writes the theologian Herbert McCabe.
He goes on to explain,
“In the world we have made it is fatal to be human, to be open and vulnerable to others,
to be loving.” (https://www.christiancentury.org/blog-post/guest-post/marielle-franco-and-crucifixion-love)
It is fatal to be loving.
In Jesus, we discover what God, the source of all being – the source of our being –
is like: completely loving, and completely vulnerable.
Jesus loves the world – and Jesus loves every person in it.
And he comes announcing a better way: the way of love.
What if, he says with his life – what if every decision had behind it the welfare of every person
on the planet?
What if every decision ever made – by you, by communities, by governments –
Had for its rationale the welfare of everyone: every person, every vulnerable person,
every animal, every plant?
It is out of great love that Jesus’ vision includes a very biblical principle:
the equitable sharing of the earth’s resources.
Jesus is killed by the powers that be, the vested interests, because of that vision.
Because of that love.
Jesus died of being human. Because in this world it can be fatal to be loving.
Most of us know the cost of loving, and that cost can be calculated in many and various ways.
Most of us know that loving entails suffering –
for there can be no love without suffering.
Anyone who has grieved knows that.
But here’s the thing: we call this day, “good.”
And as I have said before, “Good Friday” is a corruption of “God’s Friday.”
In Jesus, God has – at great cost and with tremendous suffering – entered into
those places where the vulnerable are killed by political machinations and by
self-interested people:
this is what God does on God’s Friday.
And by going where we think God should not go on God’s Friday,
God transforms death and loss and hopelessness into their opposites.
In John’s account Jesus is the one who reigns, and who by love triumphs and
wrests death from life.
Jesus is made to be completely alone – and yet he creates community for us when he
makes a new family at the foot of the cross out of Mary and the beloved disciple.
His breath is taken from him, yet he breathes the Spirit, the life of God, into
the disciples and into us.
He is denied and abandoned by Peter and his friends,
yet he forgives them and forgives even Peter and out of that experience of forgiveness
instills in Peter a love even greater than death.
The triumphs of the cross are many.
The victories of love are many.
And because God in Jesus has entered into those places of suffering and death,
they can now be sources of life and hope.
The tomb, the site of death, will become a site of life on Easter Sunday morning.
God’s Friday is calling us to trust that God can bring life into
every place we thought God could not.
Death, shame, fear, loss, loneliness and injustice can be turned into their opposites through love:
through the divine love in which we have a share.
Life, self-respect, confidence, community, justice and peace are the promise God holds out
on this Good Friday.
Yes: it requires divine vulnerability and openness and love.
And yes: it requires our vulnerability and openness and love as God’s people who share the
vision and mission of Jesus.
It is fatal to be human – but it is also divine: to be open, to be vulnerable, to be loving.
All for the sake of this world that God so loves.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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