Good Friday

By The Rev’d Dawn M. Frankfurt

Glory to the Holy and Undivided Trinity; God who is Three in One and One in Three; Who is beyond us, among us, within us; Who was, and is, and is to come, world without end. Amen.

Inside, we have a moral compass. Every one of us has a little voice which whispers (and maybe even sometimes screams) when we do something we shouldn’t do. We also have invisible antennae (some people call it intuition) which sends us signals when we’re in a situation that isn’t right. On a simple scale, you may find yourself in a situation with others who are gossiping. If you join in, that little voice inside of you will probably start talking to your conscience. If you don’t start gossiping with the rest, you may sit there with a heavy heart about what you’re hearing. It just isn’t right – on many levels.

C. S. Lewis used our innate sense of right and wrong – good and bad – in his argument which articulated his case for the existence of God. How is it possible, he speculated, if we are simply a mass of cells, elements and organs, that we should be born with a sense of right and wrong? He gives some examples to prove, in the first place, that we are born with a sense of morality. The science of cells operating in our bodies and the elements (dust, water, ashes) of which we are a part and they are a part of the cycle of the universe, cannot give scientists an explanation for where the unseen (but clear) and unknowable (but simple) guides of conscience we have came from. There are familiar and very similar values of right and wrong found around the world consistently from one culture or nation to another.

One example of our instinct which knows right from wrong, is illustrated in this story one of the members of the choir told me just the other day. She described a yard and a garden outside her home where she and her husband had a bird house. Eventually, they discovered that blue birds had taken up residence in the house, and then later, it became obvious that there were baby birds inside. The mother and father birds were often out looking for something to feed their babies. In moments of their absence, my friends would sometimes go into the yard and carefully lift the roof of the house so they could peer in and look at the chicks all nestled together.

At one point, while the babies were still in the nest, the story-teller’s sister and mother came to stay for a visit. The delight of going into the yard and looking in on the baby birds (when their parents were gone) was shared with the guests. Apparently their guests enjoyed seeing the chicks, because a few days later, as they were spending the last of their visit with their hosts (who was one of your choir members), they asked if they could go see the little birds one more time before they went home.

The group trekked, once again, into the backyard. What was different this time was that the bird parents were perched on tree branches directly over the birdhouse and over the approaching people. They began screeching (as best as blue birds can screech) as these curious people got closer and closer to the nest. As the host reached out to lift the roof off of the bird house for her guests, the daddy bird came dive-bombing out of the sky. He muscled in to sit on the top of the roof of the bird-house. He was frantically screaming and hollering, flapping his wings and jumping around, at the people who were trying to approach his children. It was very obvious that he was going to do everything in his power to protect the chicks.

There was something about his impassioned insistence (as he tried to keep his babies safe), that spoke to the visitors. Something in them recognized the panic and the desperation in the father’s brave protection. Though they were far stronger and far bigger than the blue bird, they were halted in their path. They could not approach any nearer to the bird house. A voice inside seized them and would not let them go further. They knew, without any discussion or contemplation, that over-powering that little bird and violating the sanctuary which held his children would be wrong. They felt quite sorry as they slowly backed away.

You know, if something like this evokes a response in us to do the right thing – something so seemingly small and unimportant – how much more then should we respond to human desperation and suffering?

Having just been to the museum called “Yad Vashem” in Jerusalem, which is a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, I can attest to a physical, visceral response to seeing such violence and horror. You enter the memorial where a black and white film is being shown on a huge wall in front of you. You see children at school and families having picnics – people enjoying life. This is footage of Jews in Europe before World War II. As you go into the museum, you walk into a record of how history, for Jews, proceeded from that point. With every step you take through the history of Hitler’s deplorable, ruthless destruction of people, you go a little further down. The floor of the museum slopes downward, downward as if with each step you are descending into hell.

While you take this downhill walk through a violent and sickening history, everyone is silent. No one speaks. I felt sick at my stomach. Many people cried. At the very top of the room there are windows which look out onto a sidewalk outside. It is a level above where I was standing by then. I could see the feet of all sorts of people walking back and forth in the open area outside. Not one of them paid attention to what was going on inside. No one took note or did anything. The history continued.

We cannot understand the cruelty of the Nazis. We wonder how people were able to carry out such gruesome orders, to do such terrible things to other human beings. We ask: What were they doing with that innate sense of right and wrong? Where was it?

Confusion about knowing right from wrong and good from bad is illustrated by the stories which tell us about the last few days of Jesus’ life. Some people do things which we can identify with as very human things to do. Something in us understands the fear which led Peter to deny Christ. We get it that in the Garden of Gethsemane Peter wants to protect Jesus from those who have come to arrest him and carry him away. He strikes out and cuts off the ear of the slave of the high priest. Wasn’t it natural for him to want to keep his best friend, the one he believed to be the Messiah, safe from harm? Didn’t Jesus need to be safe until he had accomplished his mission?

I can’t think of anything more normal or ordinary than the picture of the slaves, soldiers and visitors (including Peter) standing by the fire in the courtyard of the high priest trying to get warm on a cold night. It does get cold in Jerusalem. It snowed there only days before we arrived last month. Further along in the story, we can use the cold to help us understand why the soldiers would cast lots for Jesus’ clothes. They were cold.

That’s the thing about the Bible – especially the Gospels – we can identify with what we are told people are doing. We understand. We know just what they’re talking about. Who wouldn’t understand – on some level – Pilate’s fear of a riot – a fear which led him to allow a man he couldn’t find a charge against – to be crucified to quell an angry crowd?

What is so much harder to understand is all of the things we hear about which seem to go against what is naturally human. Pilate hands Jesus, the man he believes may be innocent, over to be flogged. Jesus is whipped and beaten. A crown of thorns cuts into his forehead. Dressed in a mocking robe of purple, Jesus, in this bloody condition is presented to the crowd. And upon seeing him, instead of responding to his suffering, or having any pangs of conscience, the crowd begins to shout “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him! Crucify him!” There is no pity or compassion.

Instead of responding in ways which would have kept him free from suffering, Jesus astonishes us by doing things which go against our human nature. When he was with the disciples after the Last Supper, he saw the soldiers, police and slaves of the high priest coming up the hillside toward them. Knowing what they were coming to do, Jesus stepped up and went toward them. Instead of doing the thing which might have been instinctual to us – to hide ourselves or to deny our identity – Jesus walked forward and boldly said who he was. He told them he was the one they were looking for.

Imagine the struggle which must have been going on inside of him. He had just said. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Yet he’d also prayed to his Father saying: “Yet not my will, but your will be done.” The spirit in Jesus overcame urges for self-defense, anger, revenge, fear, sadness – he overcame every human emotion related to terror we can imagine. At every opportunity to defend himself, to save himself from what was ahead, he submitted. He gave himself to them. He sacrificed himself for us. Love – not fear, not cruelty, not sadism – drove him to do what he did. Jesus loved us. God loved us – enough to send his Son to be crucified, to let him endure anguish so that we might be saved from our sins.

Humans have done many things in history prompted by our innate sense of right and wrong/good and bad. Humans have clung to these principles and alternately they have buried them so deeply that they had no moral compass. There is confusion in us. We know what we should do and we don’t always do it. That is the difference between Christ and the rest of us. His spirit was indeed willing, he overcame the flesh with it. By suffering in that flesh, he has made the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. God is merciful and full of compassion. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, did with his own Son the very thing he saved Abraham from doing to Isaac. God gave Jesus to the world – and we crucified him.

AMEN!