Good Friday 2010                                                                    Christ Church , York

Text: John 19:25-27 “Woman, here is your son. Here is your mother.”

Some years ago Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ” came out amidst a lot of controversy. And part of the debate about the movie centered upon the vivid depiction of the crucifixion itself, scenes which turned some people off while showing others, perhaps for the first time, just how physical this form of death could be. From the blood poured out on the ground during the scourging, through the physical agony of carrying the cross to Golgotha , to the very act of having the nails pounded into the hands and feet, this form of passion and death was intensely physical. And surely that’s to be expected, since all death, by its very nature, is physical, the destruction of that body which we inhabit. Not all death is painful, of course, since some people simply drift away in their sleep. But all death is physical and involves some passion. Jesus, the true Son of the living God, yet also a fully human person, died such a physical and passion filled death. There could be no escaping it. There can be no denying it. This is what we believe and this is what we teach.

Yet even as we focus this day upon the physical passion and death of this very human Jesus, we may tend to overlook another essential passion that took place in this man Jesus, a passion of the emotions. For indeed while all death is physical, all death is also emotional. I remember some years ago sitting both in the nursing home and the hospital with a woman named Janet. Cancer was eating her brain and spreading throughout her body. She was tired. She was exhausted with the fight. She was ready to go home to her Lord. But there was an emotional passion still raging within her, a sorrow at the thought of leaving her children and grandchildren, a pain at the thought of leaving her friends. And, even with a firm faith and confidence in her Lord and Savior, there is still that wrenching in the gut which comes just from the thought of leaving this life. Janet was filled with a passion of the emotions.

And if that was true for this very human person named Janet, it is also true for this very human man named Jesus. From the time that this passion began in the Garden of Gethsemane , Jesus experienced this passion of the emotions as He confronted His own death. Last Sunday we heard the Passion Narrative read to us from the Gospel of St. Luke in which he describes how Jesus, “in His anguish, prayed more earnestly, and His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.” The medical experts tell us that indeed a person can sweat blood, but only under the most extreme of emotional situations. And later on, in that same Garden Jesus perhaps filled with the same emotional passion, pleaded with His Father for this cup to be taken from Him. And later still this passion of the emotions will get even stronger as Jesus nailed to the cross, and in great physical anguish, cries out to God with that emotional gut-wrenching wail, “My God! My God! Why have you foresaken me?” But before we get there, there is one more piece of this passion of the emotions that this very human Jesus must experience and that is to leave the ones that He loves. Like Janet, His heart is broken as He gazes down upon His mother and this disciple that He loves so much. He knows that there is almost nothing worse in the world than for a mother to stand by and watch her child die. He knows she feels helpless, alone, lost and filled with a grief which is almost unbearable. And much the same is felt by this disciple called the beloved, the one who had so recently placed his head on the breast of Jesus as they sat at table to eat the Passover meal. To see them standing below Him now, to see them in such pain, must have torn at the very heart of Jesus.

And perhaps there is an even greater emotional passion that Jesus experiences here. Looking out Jesus sees only this small, faithful band of women and this beloved disciple. Where are the others? Where are the adoring crowds from that triumphal entry into the city last Sunday? Where are all those He has healed and made well, those from whom He has cast out demons and restored to sanity? He has come for them and for all who live in sin and death and they have rejected Him? Now He realizes with an emotional jolt that, except for these few gathered below Him, He is alone, abandoned, just as the Psalmist had predicted so long ago. John himself recalls this so clearly in the first chapter of his Gospel when he states with uncompromising bluntness how Jesus had come to what was His own and His own people did not receive Him. What greater emotional pain is there, than to know that your death seems to be meaningless in the eyes of those you have come to die for? Once again it must have broken His heart.

Now, in the midst of this emotional passion, what could Jesus do? Well He could start again. Not physically, of course, for that part would soon be done. But spiritually He could begin the process of building the new community which would live on in His name and by His power. Seeing His mother standing below, Jesus sees the full scope of His ministry from beginning to end. And looking at the beloved disciple, Jesus sees all those for whom He is giving His life. So now, looking down at those gathered below Him, Jesus entrusts a mother to a son and a son to a mother to begin a community of believers in the name of that only Son who speaks with power from the cross. For when Jesus entrusts His mother and the beloved disciple to each other, then He links the past of His ministry, represented by His mother to the movement of the future, represented by the beloved disciple. This is the beginning of a new family of God. His own did not receive Him, but as John is also quick to remind us in that same first chapter, to those who do receive Him, He gives power to become the children of God. In forming this new community, Jesus would make that family available to all who believed in His name, all who would follow Him, all who would receive Him. The passing would still not be easy. The physical and the emotional passions would go on for some time yet. But by entrusting His mother to His disciple and by giving His disciple to His mother, Jesus could at least take some comfort from knowing that His death would bring life and hope to this new community of faithful believers.

My sisters and brothers, our being here today shows that the physical and the emotional passion of Jesus was worth it, for in our own passion of the emotions we have come this day to stand at the foot of the cross beside Mary, our beloved mother and John the beloved disciple. In our own passion of the emotions, we have come to be a part of that new family with the millions of others who will also stand at the foot of this same cross today and in passion we have been entrusted to each other, to care for each other, to guard each other and to love each other with a passion which is overwhelming. Jesus gave His life for us in a gut wrenching physical and emotional passion. We are now called to love Him in return, not in some abstract and emotionless way, but rather with a passion and intensity which will mark us once and for all as His disciples formed in passion that day into a new community at the foot of the cross. Can we, will we, love Him with the same passion as He has loved us? Amen.