Good Friday Homily

“Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.”

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. Make these words more than words and give us all the spirit of Jesus. Amen.

I have no doubt in the saving grace of Christ Jesus. None.

I am often left to wonder, however, how it is we should make that grace known.

I am often left to wonder to whom that grace is extended.

I am often left to wonder what difference that grace makes.

Tonight, friends of God, we face the desolation of the cross. This is the finality of power, of the might of principalities. Of death dealing. Death can feel like the final word. In so many ways, it is. And yet, I am left to wonder, what difference does grace make?

What is grace? Grace is the in-breaking of healing and reconciliation between each of us, God, and all creation. Grace makes a way out of no way.

Grace

She carries a world on her hips

No champagne flute for her lips

No twirls or skips between her fingertips

She carries a pearl

In perfect condition

What once was hurt

What once was friction

What left a mark

No longer stings

Because Grace makes beauty

Out of ugly things

At least, that is what U2’s Bono says.

What is grace? Grace is the divine force that delivers us out of desolation toward resurrection.

On Good Friday, we remember that Desolation comes before Resurrection. Jesus must descend before he ascends. Grace is the power of this moment.

This is how I know Hell is real. Jesus went there.

But the damnable place is empty. Jesus empties Hell. Then he locks the door. The outer darkness is vacant.

That said, the hellscapes on earth are full up and that is entirely on us. If anyone is in hell here and now, it is because somebody decided to put them there. Every war-torn land from the Sudan to Gaza, every blighted city neighborhood from Baltimore to New Delhi, every rapacious corporate act, or each oppressive government is the fruit of human will. Not God’s.

Hellscapes. We make them. We insist upon them. We call them the “natural order.” But the call to us on Good Friday is to unmake them. And the Cross is the means by which Hell and Death are unmade. No mere mythology, the Crucifixion of God in Christ Jesus by the powers and principalities of his day offer a cruciform ethos to our own day.

The cross is the end of the dominion of death and destruction. To reverence the cross is to encounter the eradication of death itself.

The systems of death…

The systems of destruction…

The systems of domination…

…all find their end in the cross.

This is what Grace does. This is the difference Grace makes.

God can and does die.

That’s what we confess this evening. And tomorrow we’ll linger in that desolation.

We know what is to come, but first we must stop and be in the throes of grief and know Grace.

God is dead.

Thanks be to God.