2004-04-09 Good Friday Fourth Word - Page 2 of 3
Now, you know and I know that when you do God’s work in the world, you challenge the
system. You can do these nice, seemingly harmless things the church people just do - things like
volunteering in a soup kitchen or working with the Interfaith Hospitality Network.
But you can’t do it for long before the difficult questions start to come up. How is it that we live
in a world with enough to feed everyone but 30,000 - 20,000 of them children in Africa - die from
starvation? And why do people have to work at least 2 minimum wage jobs to support a family? Well,
you get the point: doing God’s work in the world is subversive.
After a while it became pretty clear to Jesus where all of this would lead: Jerusalem and suffering and a
cross and death - and finally resurrection, although no one could hear that when he talked about it. But
Jesus kept on, showing the world that God really is a lot like a mother who wants all her children home
at the table and will not rest until they are all there.
The secular powers were worried - they wondered what might happen if people got really fired
up about the kingdom.
But perhaps saddest of all was that the religious community - the good “church” people of the
day were deeply angered and threatened by Jesus his message about the kingdom in which everyone
was welcome. Almost from the beginning, Jesus is rejected by his own community of faith and
misunderstood - even by his disciples. There are plots and conspiracies to kill him. He must have
suffered deeply from that.
But no matter how much he suffers from all of that, Jesus is never alone. He is God’s child,
chosen and marked by God’s love. He knows God is with him and for him.
And now it is three o’clock on Good Friday. Jesus has been on the cross for six hours.
In a way, it’s the real “last temptation.” Did you hear them? The passersby - “So show us your
stuff, Jesus! Save yourself! Come on down from that cross.” And the high priests and their crowd - “He
saved others - but he can’t save himself! Messiah, is he? King of Israel? Then let him come down off
that cross - we’ll all become believers then.” And even the bandits crucified next to him join in the
mockery.
Save yourself, Jesus. It was the world’s last attempt to get him to abandon God’s way. Come
on down off the cross. Save yourself. You don’t have to die like this. Join the system.
But he didn’t.
The whole earth has been in darkness for three hours. And now there is that awful the cry, the
cry that has been called the cry of dereliction. That was, according to Mark, all he said: “My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?” There is only silence from God. And then Jesus gave a loud cry and
breathed his last.
And we are left with those troubling words. What in the world do we do these nine words that
have come to be called the “Fourth Word?”
Well, a lot words have been written and preached. They say that even Martin Luther sat at his
desk for hours on end trying to figure them out until finally he got up and walked away, muttering
something about, “God forsaking God! No [one] can understand that.”
But they hang there, and - maybe like Jacob wrestling with the angel - we might want to hang in
there to wrestle with them until, like Jacob, we too are blessed.
But is there a blessing? Is there any grace?
Some folks say you have to skip ahead to find the blessing. Those are the first words of Psalm
22 - but skip ahead to the end of the psalm and you learn that in the end the psalmist is delivered and
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