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SERMONS

Good Friday
April 10, 2009

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

One of the ironies of Easter is that Christians around the world do not agree on its actual date. Church’s who derive their tradition from Western Europe are celebrating the Paschal Triduum, or the Three Days of Eastertide, this week . . .

While our brothers and sisters in the Churches of the Christian East - Greece, Russia, Palestine, Egypt, Ethiopia, are celebrating their Holy Pascha. Some of our local Orthodox congregations will be gathering exactly one week from today for their own Good Friday observances.
The Passion of our Lord also brings to light another difference between Christians in the East and West. Few Christians in the West know that their brothers and sisters in the East are inheritors of a tradition that largely absolves this Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate.

Many Christians in the East through the centuries believe that Pilate did all that he could to release Jesus, to find a way to let the caged bird fly. He did what he could, what any one of us might do - try to do our duty - can we really fall for something so easy as calling him “evil.” Introducing our dualities to the Passion.

According to the rules of the field upon which they were playing, Annas, Caiaphas the High Priest, and Pilate, are only playing by the book that was dealt them. They are only seeking to do what is right according to their best lights; in their minds they perhaps believe that they are aiming at preserving the “good.”

The tragedy is that in seeking to preserve the “good” as they know it, they crucify the “Good” as it has been ordained by God. 1 step forward - 2 steps back.

This is the deep, deep tragedy of our shared life as human beings. So often when we would do what is “right” by our best lights, by our best intentions, with our strongest feelings of commitment, we sacrifice the “Good” as God would give it to us. It is a realization about ourselves that is almost to hot to touch.

That is why we need the deep, deep love of a saviour like Jesus; someone who loves us despite the mixed and contrary motives that we bring with our best intentions. A saviour who dies giving us, and his persecutors, the benefit of the doubt; the benefit of forgiveness. Even when human beings are throwing their best at a problem, we trip, we fall, we stumble, thinking we are doing no harm, perhaps feeling mildly triumphant, only to discover that we badly miss the mark.

Do we not, more often than not, give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, count upon Jesus our Lord to give us the benefit of the doubt, while holding others hostage to standards and expectations that we scarce demand of ourselves?

That may be a question to ask ourselves on this holy day. Where do we wash our hands with the blood of the innocent so that “our trains might run on time,” so that our agenda for the “right,” might be met? Jesus dies for us, not only for the harm when we are “bad,” but also for the harm we do in trying to be “good.” Let us thank God we are not left to our own devices in this life.