Year B: April 2, 2021 | Good Friday
Good Friday, Year B
Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross
April 2, 2021
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch a video of the sermon, please visit this page (about 32:40 in).
The sun is beginning to dip past the palm trees, hiding its blushing face beyond the distant desert hills. Despite the slight, sickly breeze blowing from the east, the sky feels heavy, as if the earth itself anticipates a night of calamity. Your father, a towering figure in his own right—and the strongest person in the world, you’re sure—shakes as he stretches his arm above his head and with a dripping, shuddering branch, smears blood across the wooden doorway to your house. He dips the leaves back into the bowl of slowly dying paint three times—once up, once across, and down again for good measure. Then he turns and, with a voice that shatters your young ears in its volume and urgency, calls for everyone—your brothers and sisters, your mother, your grandparents, even your mean neighbors—the ones who treat everyone like dirt—to hurry into the house for freshly roasted lamb. Once all have gathered, once the streets are empty, you settle into the communal table like vultures, feasting as if you’ve never eaten before, devouring everything down to the very bones. Slowly, you forget the alien darkness stalking outside your front steps and drift into sleep with the first full belly you’ve ever known. Staring into the fire, you close your eyes, and the world bleeds red around you. The light shining through the back of your eyelids blends in your dream with the blood so strangely splattered on your front door.
“…through [Christ] God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”[1]
Oh, the blood. Oh, the blood. Oh, the blood, blood, blood, blood, blood!
What is it with God and blood? What is it with Jesus and suffering? Blood speaks of violence. Blood speaks of pain. Blood speaks of death. Likewise, the cross speaks of the same violence, the same pain, and the same death. If God is supposed to be a God of life and love, what is this obsession with blood? How can the Apostle Paul claim that God is “pleased to reconcile” all things in heaven and on earth, “making peace through the blood of [Jesus’] cross”?
Our answer lies in a juxtaposition of images: blood and cross, blood and Passover. At Passover, the head of each Hebrew household slaughtered a lamb and painted the doorposts of their home with its blood. Blood that would be a sign, as the angel of death hunted the firstborn of the land of Egypt that ancient night, that this...this family was under protection. Death cannot pass the doorway because “the life…is the blood.”[2]
What then of that cross two thousand years ago? At the cross, the Passover comes to fruition, revealing itself as a shadowy enactment of the true work of God. God, head of the universal household, steps out of eternity into time. He takes a bowl full of the blood of the Lamb, the Lamb slaughtered since the foundation of the world, the Lamb sacrificed yet somehow standing, still alive, and dips his own robe into the bowl full of this mysterious life—the life of the martyrs, the life of the saints, the life of Christ himself. “The life…is the blood.” Three times he dips it, smearing the wood in front of him—first up, then across, and then down again, just for good measure. With the final swipe, he lifts his head and cries out with a loud voice—a voice to mark the end of the world, a voice to make the stars fall and the sea give up its dead. With the words, “IT IS FINISHED!”[3] even the earth begins to tremble, and you watch as the center beam rips in two. The shuddering and shaking continues, casting everyone from their feet. When you look back, the scene has changed. God is still there. The wood is still there. And the blood is still there. But the cross has split, twisted, and somehow re-formed. Instead of an instrument of torture coated with death, there now stands a doorway glowing with life.
God speaks again, a voice as deep as hell and as high as heaven: “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.[4] Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.[5] Enter into the joy of your Lord![6]”
The blood. The wood. The cross and the doorway. In mystery beyond human thought, God has taken the path of death, the path each will someday walk, and transformed it into a gate of life, the birthway to a New Creation. All must walk the path. All must ultimately take the strait and narrow way. All must walk the road to the cross. But when we arrive, through faithfulness, we find it to be the gateway to life.
“Come to the feast,” God cries. Beyond the shining doorway you hear a multitude of voices calling for you:
“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life freely.”[7]
*****
Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
Therefore, let us keep the feast.
[1] Colossians 1:20 (NRSV)
[2] Leviticus 17:14 (KJV)
[3] John 19:30
[4] Matthew 11:28
[5] Revelation 19:9
[6] Matthew 25:21
[7] Revelation 20:17