We gather this day to contemplate a death on a Friday afternoon. It’s God’s Friday. That’s probably where “Good Friday” comes from, just as “goodbye” comes from “God be with you.” We join countless Christians now and from centuries past in considering what was done on a hill outside of Jerusalem 2000 years ago.

Where to begin? We could spend some of this time thinking about the concept of sacrifice and the sacrificial system of ancient Judaism. After all, at most Eucharists we proclaim, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” “Christ died for me” is said over and over again by all sorts of Christians. But rather than an explanation let us try to contemplate, let us try to enter into and be absorbed by the mystery of the cross.

Good Friday is a stumbling block to many persons. We aren’t given to the consideration of the mystery of this day. Instead we prefer the joyous celebration three days from now. But this day is crucial to our faith as Christians (crucial: crux: cross). This the crux of our faith. This is God’s Friday.

Let’s begin by realizing that we live in a Good Friday kind of world. All women and men everywhere are familiar with their Good Fridays. It has nothing to do with being a Christian. Suffering is universal. This Good Friday is a day we have met many times since the last Holy Week. It is the day when the doctor speaks the dreaded word “malignant” to a young mother and she asks the inevitable, “Why me?” It is the day when a drunken driver, rushing mindlessly past a red light, crushes a child’s life, leaving a family in stricken bewilderment. It is the day when hopelessness triumphs in a man’s heart and he ends his life and scatters guilt and remorse upon all who knew him and loved him. We know this day well. No amount of Pollyanna reassurances change the realities of our lives. Our faith as Christians, especially on this day, says that pain and suffering matter and are real. And that somehow God is with us in it.

This belief, that God is in the suffering with us, because Christianity has proclaimed that God was on the cross suffering, has always been and is today, offensive. As St. Paul said, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Gentiles.” A second-century preacher, Melito of Sardis, put it this way,

God suffering and dying?

Some early Christians known as the Gnostics wanted to avoid this stumbling block by claiming that the real Christ, the spiritual Christ did not die. According to one Gnostic text Christ remained above it all, untouched by what was happening. He was actually in the heavens, laughing at those who thought they were putting him to death. A recently discovered ancient manuscript known as the Gospel of Judas, has Jesus saying, “You will be greater than all the others, Judas, you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” “You will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” That simple statement alone makes it clear why this gospel would not have been accepted by the early church. It is clearly a Gnostic view.

On the other hand, the apostles, the witnesses to Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, insisted that he was there hanging on the tree: battered, bloodied, and dead. This was not some celestial sham. Jesus went to the cross in the faith that God would redeem the suffering. This was reality. He was not play-acting. Paul’s theology reflects this in Phillipians, “He (Jesus) became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross … therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave him the name that is above every name.” Because of his obedience, because of his faithfulness, he is exalted.

In the Collect for this day we prayed that God would “graciously behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross…” This family is the human family. This family is the human race that knows the suffering of famine, war, and disease. This family knows injustice and prejudice. This family sins and falls short of the glory of God. Sin and suffering are the common denominators in this family. And the Gospel, the Good News that we see in the cross, asserts that Jesus died, quite literally, because of his love of sinners. That is the mystery of this day.

As we gather in remembrance of his death we contemplate this family for which Jesus was willing to die. And marvel at the love that is shown on the cross. On this day God claimed us for himself and because of that claim we can dare to rejoice and give thanks in this Good Friday world in which we live. We look at the cross and discover God’s love made clear.

On the cross, through the cross, our God, the All Holy One, entered into all of our Good Fridays and claimed us, and all that we are. This is the goodness of God’s Friday. This love, which knows no end, not even death on a cross, claims us for his own. And would lead us beyond our sin, beyond our suffering, beyond our Good Fridays. Amen.