Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Sa I so appreciate Janelle saying earlier that you did not come here for tidy theology, because what I have to offer isn't tidy at all. It's quite messy.
[00:00:48] Welcome to Good Friday. Janelle and I were raised evangelical, so we didn't know Good Friday existed until just a few years ago.
[00:00:57] But I want to read to you this passage, because although occasions like Good Friday or Maundy Thursday or other liturgical opportunities like Ash Wednesday or Advent, these are things that we've discovered in a fresh way as we have leaned into a kind of rhythm of faith in our lives. And so this has become very meaningful to us, and perhaps it is for you as well. I want to read to you Matthew, chapter 26, verses 36 to 46. This is the passage I've been reflecting on as I've been thinking about. Good Friday says this. Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, sit here while I go over there and pray.
[00:01:48] And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee. And he began to be grieved and agitated. And then he said to them, I am deeply grieved, even to death.
[00:02:00] Remain here and stay awake with me.
[00:02:04] And going a little further, he threw himself on the ground and he prayed, my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not what I want, but you want.
[00:02:18] Would you just say a prayer with me?
[00:02:21] God, we thank you for this occasion, for Good Friday, for this opportunity for us to gather again as we enter into the Easter weekend, as we reflect on Holy Week and all that means for us as followers of Christ. We pray that tonight you would speak to us in a fresh way, that you would maybe break our hearts a bit for those who are broken, that you would, by your grace, equip us to have a bigger heart for the pain and the suffering maybe we don't see. And for the pain and the suffering that is perhaps to come.
[00:03:09] We pray that you would give us that grace in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:03:14] Part of becoming freshly acquainted with Good Friday is wrestling with why it's so good. I think that Good Fridays may be the most disorienting occasion in the Christian calendar because you learn early on that Jesus was crucified, that this is an occasion to mark the gruesome crucifixion and death of Jesus, who is supposed to be somebody that we deeply love. And so why is that good? Why is it good to say that Jesus was crucified? We gathered with a few people for pub theology. The Other night, which was a lot of fun. And partly it was fun because the question that Ron and Sue Dwyer Voss brought to pub theology was, what do you believe about the resurrection? You're a part of a kind of new progressive church in your life. For many people, this is a new expression of Christianity for them. Do you still believe that Jesus was actually resurrected or not? One of the things I loved about the conversation is nobody answered that question.
[00:04:12] And I got to be there without having to answer that question.
[00:04:17] But what came out of that question was so helpful, so profound for me, even, it was wrestling with what the crucifixion of Jesus meant to you when you were growing up. Like, how was it taught to you in church? How did your parents teach that to you? And more than a few of us said, oh, man. Growing up, I was told that Jesus was crucified, nailed to the cross, beaten, whipped, tortured, and bloodied because I didn't clean my room.
[00:04:48] Like, every little mistake that I made was held over my head by my parents or my youth pastor or somebody else to say, see, this is why Jesus was killed. Because you are so sinful, you are so messed up. Every lie you tell, every temptation you give into is another pounding of the nail into Jesus body.
[00:05:10] And so for a lot of people, like, separating themselves from this message, that they are so inherently bad, so dirty, so completely broken, has been difficult for their lives. Like, they carry a trauma with them because they were told that they are so profoundly terrible.
[00:05:29] And that's partly my story too, of course, but it still leaves me with the question, what is it about this dark, gruesome occasion that we can say is good?
[00:05:46] Well, I really noticed as I was reading and reflecting on this passage, what Jesus says here.
[00:05:53] And he gathers with his disciples in Gethsemane, which is, of course, the garden, where he goes to pray the night that he is arrested, the night that he is betrayed, the night that he is carried off towards his trial and eventually his death.
[00:06:08] It says, I'm deeply grieved back in verse 20, or, excuse me, verse 38. I'm deeply grieved even to death. Remain here and stay awake with me, says to his father, followers. And then he goes a little farther and he throws himself on the ground. And he says, my Father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me.
[00:06:31] Like, I don't know about you, but this is one of those occasions where I noticed something I'd never noticed before. That was the cup.
[00:06:39] Why, when Jesus is in the garden and wrestling with what is to come, Wrestling with his calling, his vocation to be sacrificed. Why does he say, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me?
[00:06:55] I realized, of course, this is a theme that comes up more than once in Matthew, chapter 20, verses 20 through 23. Maybe you remember this story. This is back before Holy Week. This is before Jesus passion, his death, his crucifixion. The mother and the sons of ZEDEE, these same two disciples that are with him in Gethsemane, the mother of the sons of Zebedee come to him, and kneeling before him, she asks him a favor. And she says. And Jesus says to her, what do you want? She says to him, declare that my two sons, these two sons of mine sit, one at your right hand and one at your left in your kingdom.
[00:07:35] And Jesus answers her, you do not know what you're asking.
[00:07:40] Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?
[00:07:45] And this is the scene where the mother of two of Jesus disciples come to him, and they say, would you please give my sons positions of power and honor in what's to come? Because, of course, we have to remember that Jesus disciples didn't know how this was going to turn out. They thought that they were signing up for a revolution.
[00:08:09] In fact, Jesus wasn't the first messiah to come along. This was a kind of recurring pattern in the history of ancient Israel, living under the yoke of the Roman Empire. And messiahs come and messiahs go. And what they all have in common is that they gather a massive following and they rally that following to overthrow the Roman Empire. And of course, prior to Jesus, this has happened over and over and over again, and they're all slaughtered. They're all squashed by the Roman Empire. And they think, this is what's going to happen again. They think maybe this is the revolution that actually works. Maybe this is the revolution that actually throws off the yoke of the empire of Rome and we finally get to rule ourselves again. And so, of course, the mother of two of his closest disciples says, hey, if this works out, if you guys, like, you know, are able to actually overthrow Rome, could you make my sons the people at your right and left hand, in other words, like positions of high power and authority?
[00:09:17] And Jesus says, can you drink the cup that I'm about to drink? And they say, absolutely, because they think the cup he's talking about is a cup of celebration, a cup of privilege, a cup of honor. They think it's a giant cup of wine that they get to drink now that they're finally sitting pretty at the top of. Of the pecking order.
[00:09:41] But Jesus has a totally different cup in mind.
[00:09:45] He has a cup that's not filled with a wine of celebration. He has in mind a cup that is filled with his own death, his own blood. It's the same cup that we partake when we receive communion.
[00:10:00] In other words, when Jesus says to God, praying earnestly in the garden at Gethsemane, if it's possible, take this cup from me, he is talking about his own death.
[00:10:13] And this should not be a surprise to us, because this is what Jesus has been preaching all along. In Matthew chapter four, he goes into the wilderness to be tempted. And what are the temptations that come to him? They're temptations of power.
[00:10:29] The enemy comes to him, the devil comes to him. It's depicted in this story and offers him the opportunity to gain power. And each time, Jesus says no to power and chooses something else instead.
[00:10:41] In all of Jesus's parables of the kingdom, he says, I tell you the truth, the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God is like this. And then he goes to tell them an utterly confusing analogy, right? In other words, the kingdom of God, the power of God, the might of God is like a tiny little seed.
[00:11:06] If you plant it, over time, it grows into something that provides shelter to birds, or the kingdom of God. The power of God, the might of God is like a farmer who throws seeds into a field. And some of it takes root, some of it doesn't.
[00:11:27] Some of it grows up and is choked out by weeds, and some of it produces good fruit.
[00:11:34] These are the kinds of stories Jesus tells in order to say, listen, yes, God has power, but it's not the kind of power you think.
[00:11:44] It's not the power of armies and empires and swords.
[00:11:49] It's the power of seeds, the power of agriculture, the power of families who come together over time and provide for each other. It's a whole different kind of thing.
[00:12:06] And so this should come as no surprise to us that when Jesus is in the garden, that he's faced with his first, I think, real profound test.
[00:12:24] We tend to think of Matthew chapter four, when he goes off into the desert as Jesus temptation, his testing. It's even titled that in your Bible, very helpfully. But I actually think this is his real test.
[00:12:36] Up to this point, he's just been preaching. He's just been saying, here's what you should think, here's what you should believe. But this is the hour of testing, the real moment of truth here in the garden, not in the desert. By himself, utterly isolated, but in the garden, surrounded by a massive following of people that he has built up over time, people who are ready to fight for him.
[00:13:05] This is the moment where Jesus can say, you know what?
[00:13:09] Never mind that cup.
[00:13:12] Let's rise up and overthrow these Romans.
[00:13:18] This is when he has real power, when he has the opportunity to do what so many people do. When given the choice, he chooses something else.
[00:13:34] He chooses not the cup of power, not the cup of armies, not the cup of swords, not the cup of the empire. Instead, he chooses the cup of love.
[00:13:48] And he could have chosen otherwise.
[00:13:52] And in doing that, he's sacrificed, he's crucified, he's betrayed, he's arrested, he's carried off, he's subjected to a sham trial.
[00:14:07] He stood up before the crowds of his own people. And because Pontius Pilate can find nothing wrong with him, he offers them a choice between Jesus and Barabbas. And by this time, the crowds, the mobs, are so angry, they're so upset. Maybe because his revolution turned out to be yet another failed messiahship, they cry out for Jesus's blood instead.
[00:14:32] And so he is killed.
[00:14:36] So why?
[00:14:38] Why is this Good Friday?
[00:14:43] I think it's Good Friday for at least three reasons. I think the first reason is because what we know from this night, what we know from this story that's utterly unusual in the history of religion, is that Jesus actually believed what he taught.
[00:15:05] Jesus said real power, the power of God, is utterly different than the kind of power that you and I crave desperately. The kind that we fight for, the kind that we strive for, the kind that we compete for, the kind that we run for elections in order to obtain real power is love.
[00:15:29] And when given the opportunity to choose differently, he still chose love.
[00:15:37] How do I know that it was love that he chose? Because if Jesus had turned to that mass of followers and said, they're here to arrest me, now is the time for us to seize control and overthrow our oppressors. If he had said that, they would have done it, and they would have all been slaughtered.
[00:16:00] Jesus friends and his family would have been utterly decimated, just like every other follower of every other messiah who came before him.
[00:16:13] And so, in choosing not to resist, Jesus took upon himself his own singular body.
[00:16:25] He took upon himself all the wrath that could be thrown upon him by the Roman Empire, all the wrath that could be thrown upon him by corrupt religious leaders who had bought into the empire, and all the wrath of the violent mob who felt betrayed by him. He took all of that upon himself.
[00:16:52] And there's a way to think about that.
[00:16:57] The violent wrath that Jesus took singularly upon himself was his way of dying for our sins.
[00:17:09] And when I say dying for our sins, I don't mean dying for every lustful thought you have or dying because you don't keep your room clean, or dying because you made the wrong decision in your life. I'm not talking about dying for your individual mistakes. I mean Jesus took the consequences of humanity's sin because this is what we do when we don't get the power we seek. We take our anger and our vengeance out on scapegoats.
[00:17:45] And Jesus willingly chose to be one of those scapegoats, to take all of the violence that the empire could throw his way.
[00:18:00] In that sense, he died not just for my sins, not just for your sins, but for all of our sins.
[00:18:09] For the ugliness that we pour out on people just like him over and over and over again.
[00:18:20] In doing this, in making this decision and choosing not to resist, not to rise up, not to fight back, Jesus chose the power of love over the love of power.
[00:18:39] That's the decision he made and it's the decision that we are often faced with.
[00:18:48] This, by the way, I think, is why it's called Good Friday. Because in doing this, Jesus didn't just spare his friends, his family, his followers. He didn't just spare his people from the wrath of the empire.
[00:19:03] He also declared that this is who and what God is.
[00:19:11] That God is not an all powerful expression of the empire in the sky, that God is instead love.
[00:19:24] That when we talk about God, we are talking about this willingness to believe in the power of love rather than the love of power.
[00:19:36] And for that reason, it's good news for those who have been crushed and broken by power, but it's bad news for those of us who love power.
[00:19:57] And that, I think, is what's tricky about Good Friday.
[00:20:01] When we come here and we align ourselves with a story of the person who by design demonstrates by his sacrificial act that God is love and not power, calls into question what we really believe.
[00:20:25] I don't think I would have made this choice.
[00:20:30] On my very best days, I might believe in love over power, but most days I'd just rather be in charge.
[00:20:44] Most days I'd just rather my wife and kids do what I say.
[00:20:52] I know, that's very funny.
[00:20:56] Most days I'd rather feel like the uncertainty of the future is something that I can conquer and control. Most days I would like to believe that my vote will actually result in the right person winning the election. Most days I want to believe that I can somehow overcome all the evil that's in the world, because if the world would just do what I said, it would be a much better place.
[00:21:23] That's what's in me.
[00:21:26] That's the love of power.
[00:21:32] And so in an odd way, we are right back to S.
[00:21:39] Good Friday, I think, becomes an occasion where we're confronted with the choice that Jesus made and whether or not we would make that same choice.
[00:21:49] And in my case, I'm reminded that most days I don't think I would.
[00:21:58] And so I have work to do.
[00:22:01] My heart needs to be completely remade, transformed into somebody who would actually choose to sacrifice himself for the people that I say I love.
[00:22:17] And so I think Good Friday is very helpful because it invites us to reflect on how we still need to be transformed into those kinds of people.
