We gather together, on this Good Friday morning, to once again ponder the story of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. For almost two thousand years, the followers of Jesus – and much of our wider culture — have continued to journey back to that terrible hill just outside the city gates of Jerusalem, to reflect upon each word and phrase and statement in these texts, to find new insights in them, and to take an opportunity to confront the great mysteries and paradoxes of our faith – that in his death, there is life to be found; that in his brokenness, we are offered the possibility of healing; that in his suffering, the redemption of the world is glimpsed; that in his complete and utter failure and death, the great and wondrous triumph of the God of life has been revealed.
Like our ancestors in the faith, stretching back almost two thousand years, we wrestle with what this strange story means. As we all know, theologians and commentators and preachers and artists and people of faith, throughout the centuries, have constructed elaborate explanations of what happened on that cross. Elaborate doctrinal formulations have been debated; long and complex arguments about the substitutionary role that Jesus was playing on behalf of humanity; complicated ideas about the atonement and reconciliation have been proposed; foreshadowings and literary and spiritual allusions are drawn from ancient stories about the sacrificial rituals of the ancient Hebrew people; parallels have been drawn between Jesus’ suffering and the songs of the suffering servant in Isaiah, the struggles of Job, the experiences of Jonah, and the trials and tribulations of people who have suffered throughout the centuries .
And though there is something profound and important about trying to understand these various theories about what the cross and the crucifixion meant, we cannot help but realize – at some point – that the best that we can do is approach this great mystery, with humility, rather than construct a full and adequate doctrinal, overly intellectualized explanation, about the meaning of this terrible, horrible, pivotal event.
Even after two thousand years, there are great questions that remain about the meaning of the cross.
As we read this text, once again, this year, it can be good for us to realize that there are a lot of indications, in the text itself, that the people who were present, on that fateful day, were also filled with questions about what it all meant.
Consider, for example, the number of different perspectives that are woven into these verses from Matthew 27. The Gospel writer could have written this text quite differently – for example, they could easily have stated, “here is what happened and what it meant.??? But that is not what we find.
Rather, the flow of the narrative focuses our attention on the host of different characters that populate these verses, and each of them likely had a slightly different perspective, a slightly different view of what was going on.
We meet Simon of Cyrene, who was forced to help Jesus carry the cross; our attention is then directed towards a few unnamed individuals who offered him wine to drink which cannot help but remind us that — only a few hours earlier, Jesus himself had been the one offering his friends wine to drink. We catch a glimpse of a group of people tearing off his cloak, and casting lots for it, even as they mockingly place a sign over the dying man’s head which ironically declares his kingship – quite a way to treat a king. We encounter religious officials – and even the thieves that are being executed alongside of him — making fun of him, daring him to come down from the cross if he is really all that powerful. Still others try to figure out if he is some reincarnation of Elijah, and finally, as the passage ends, we hear the words that are uttered by one of the soldiers who watched all that had taken place, “Truly this man was God’s Son!???
It is a whole cast of different characters that actually create the story line in this text, and each of the characters seems to present a different opinion of who he is. Was he a king? Was he just some upstart who made great claims about himself but had finally been put in his rightful place? Was he a prophet, some new visitation of Elijah of old? Was he the Son of God?
So many characters, so many opinions, so many questions, so many speculations.
As it has been ever since.
And even into this very moment.
After all, we all know that we have not come to this place simply to hear an old story. Rather, we have come to this place because we somehow believe, or wonder, or suspect that this story has something profound and important to tell us, to teach us.
But rather than try to fit this ancient, mysterious, messy story into a clear and concise explanation, perhaps it is better to simply stand alongside the characters in this story, with all of their questions incomprehension and incredulity and misunderstandings and misperceptions; and in fact to stand alongside our ancestors in faith throughout the centuries, and simply accept that we cannot fully understand it all; we cannot fully comprehend everything that happened that day; we cannot fully “fit??? the story of the crucifixion or the identity of Jesus into a sanitized dogmatic formula that answers all of the questions succinctly and sufficiently.
But even as we stand there, and here, and simply try to take it all in – all the mystery, all the questions, all the pain, all of the confusion, all the suffering, all of the anguish, all of the agony, there are two things that are worth remembering.
First, it was all about love.
And second, this is not how the story ends.
See you on Sunday.
