Good Friday 2009                                                        Christ Church , York

These are strange days that we come to celebrate. We call it “Holy Week” yet it is a week filled with shallow commitments, treachery, betrayal, lying, selling out, broken promises, politics as usual, jealousy, despair, dashed hopes, insecurity, hate, anger, getting even, pain, fear – and all of it culminating in the murder of an innocent man! And this Friday that we call “Good” is not much better for this is a day filled with scorn, grief, thorns, sorrow, tears and darkness. Holy and Good – strange words for a world that seems to have gone mad, where evil seems to triumph over good and where congregations such as ours gather in buildings that have been stripped of all their beauty and charm, leaving them black and empty. A strange day to call Good!

Yet this is a good day – good because of what it means to us and for us; good because it expresses the heart of God Himself in His love for us; and good because it brings about the fruit of our redemption. But above all this is a good day because it is the day which speaks to us of relationships, a relationship summed up in those classic words from Scripture, “For God so loved the world that He sent His only Son to die for us.” It was in relationship that God created Adam and Eve, making them in His own image and likeness. Yet this relationship was broken by that same Adam and Eve in their disobedience, thereby robbing humankind of that intimate relationship with God. Now there was brokenness and a sinfulness which was not confined just to Adam and Eve but rather has continued down through the centuries through our own sin. It is Saint Augustine , that wonderful 4^th century saint, who tells a story from his own life about how such sinfulness continues. Augustine had a pretty good life in his family with everything he needed in the way of material comforts. One day, Augustine tells us, he was hungry for a pear. Not content to take one from his own father’s orchard, Augustine went over to his neighbor’s orchard and stole a pear from there, a theft which, he said, was solely for the joy of stealing it. Now on hearing this story we might ask what’s the big deal? After all, it’s only a pear and stealing something of such little consequence is not exactly in the same rank as one of those big sins like murder or adultery. So let’s not worry about such minor faults and failings.

But sin is sin and there is no distinction in the sight of God between large sins and small sins. James wrote in his epistle that, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point of it, has become guilty of all of it.” You cannot say you have only sinned a little bit anymore than you can say that you are only a little bit pregnant. You are either pregnant or not. So it is with sin. We either keep God’s law in its entirety or we do not. Which means that there is not one of us gathered here who does not sin in some way large or small. Paul sums it up when he says, “We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And in such sin the relationship with God is broken and it does not matter whether you have stolen a pear or killed your neighbor, it all comes from the same disobedient heart and the result is a broken relationship with God. And what is broken must be mended and since we cannot mend it from our side of the relationship, God comes to do it from His side which brings us back to why this is called “Good Friday.”

Our faith is sometimes criticized for being too morbid, too caught up in its emphasis on sin. Such criticism says that all we care about is sin and judging others because of their sins. Well indeed we are concerned about sin but only because the truth is important and the truth is that we are sinners and we cannot deny it! But accepting this truth immediately opens up a new understanding of this relationship we have with God. For in our sinfulness we begin to understand that Good Friday is not about our being good, because frankly we cannot be good no matter how hard we try! Rather Good Friday is about God being good – good to us even when we are not good to Him and His Son Jesus whom we crucified on a cross. But Paul speaks of this goodness of God when he says, “God shows His love for us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Good Friday is about God reaching out to us and offering to mend the relationship that was broken through our own sinfulness.

This Good Friday is the lens through which we see most clearly just how much it is that God loves us – not because we deserve it but because we stand in need of it. Indeed what we deserve is death, for as Scripture tells us “the wages of sin is death.” But what we get instead is this Good Friday, a day in which we do not die but rather another dies for us. What we get on this Good Friday is the mending of a relationship that had been broken so that we can come with confidence to the sanctuary of the Lord and stand with assurance before the throne of God. What we get on this Good Friday is the knowledge that we are forgiven sinners who, because of the love and redemption which God has shown toward us, can now face the darkest Fridays of our lives with hope and confidence.

It was the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who understood the goodness of God on this Good Friday, who understood that this day is not about what we do for God but rather what God does for us. So it was that Kierkegaard prayed, “Lord hold not our sins up against us but rather hold us up against our sins, so that we may be reminded, not of how much we have sinned, but of how much we have been forgiven; not how much we went astray, but how you saved us.” This is a Good Friday because this was a day of mending that which was broken. This is Good Friday because it is a day of love and not of vengeance and a day of redemption and not condemnation. And this is Good Friday because it is a day in which death shall come but also a day in which life shall be restored. Thanks be to God then for the goodness of His love for us on this good, this very good, Good Friday. Amen