Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City,
April 9, 2004, Good Friday, Year C
by The Reverend William A. Greenlaw, Ph.D.

Wisdom 2:1, 12-24
Psalm 22:1-2, 7-8, 14-21
Hebrews 10:1-25
Psalm 69:1-10, 14-23
John 18:1-19:37

            In our Holy Week journey, we have come to the darkest day of the year.  On this day we are confronted with the reality, the starkness, the finality of our Lord’s death upon the cross.  And we are called upon this day, to try to take in the enormity of this event.  And rather than attempting to fix blame on others—as Christians have done for so long—we need to reflect deeply on the human condition, on ourselves, and how we participate in Jesus’ death. 

            The Wisdom tradition in ancient Israel achieved an uncanny level of understanding.  Of understanding the human condition and how we might best adapt to it.  In our lesson for today, there is an especially apt treatment of what is likely to happen to the truly righteous man or woman, and the difficulty that ordinary mortals are likely to have with such a person. However much such a person may seem odd, or even quaint, or, perhaps, even looked up to and admired by some, to many others such a person is likely to be a real burden, even a royal pain, or worse—much of the time. 

            To have someone come along who truly incarnates a universal vision may be tantalizing on one level, but profoundly unsettling and ultimately unacceptable on another, especially to the keepers of order, and to anyone who has a stake in that order.  The more people who come under the influence of such a person, the more true this is.  If such a person cannot be marginalized or at least rendered impotent or ineffective, that person is likely to be considered more and more subversive.  That person must be stopped.  That person may even have to be killed.  For we live in a world of death.  It was true for the writers of the Book of Wisdom; it was true in the First Century.  It is still true, even today.   

            The question for today, the question I would like to pose for each one of us, is Pilate’s question.  “What is truth?”  We can ask it, as Pilate seems to have done, that is to say, to relativize it, to consider the question impossible, to sidestep it rhetorically.  Or, we can, on this day of days, try to ponder the question more deeply, more fully.  What is truth?

            On this beautiful spring day, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be free, to be out celebrating and taking in all the world has to offer?   

            Would each of us want to own, and be comfortable in owning to our closest friends, much less more distant acquaintances, that we were really, actually, in church today?  This is clearly not what most people do these days, at least not in this most secular of cities.  Would those who find out what we have been up to on this day find it outlandish, or quaint, or eccentric, or innocuous, or, perhaps, even subversive?  What does it, what might it mean to be known as a follower of the one who was crucified on this day? ….to be known as one who associates with the crucified one’s followers, even to be one of them?

            This is not entirely different from the question put to Peter in various ways in the passion narratives.  “Your tongue betrays you.  Were you not with the Galilean?”  “Are you not one of this man’s disciples?”  “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” 

            Can we imagine such a question being put to us?  Can we imagine how we would squirm, how we might answer?    But Peter is emphatic:  “I do not know the man!”  After disowning, after denying his Lord not once, not twice, but three times, the cock immediately crows.  How utterly believable are those accounts which say that on hearing the cock crow, Peter, that rock upon whom the church was to be built, and arguably one of the greatest of the Holy Apostles, went out and wept bitterly. 

            At least Peter, and that other disciple in John’s account, stuck around a little while to see what would happen.  The rest of the disciples after Jesus’ arrest simply deserted him and fled.  Some Holy Apostles, there! 

            In our ambivalence, in our wavering, even in our denying, we are in good company.  And yet…..     What is truth? 

            Jesus, questioned by the high priest, suggests in reply that he has preached and spoken openly.  For this impertinence, he is struck by one of the officers, but then Jesus asks, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong.  But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”—a fair enough question on one level, but an outrageous effrontery to the high priest on another.     .…What is truth? 

            Jesus is then brought before Pilate—who asks directly enough to those who have brought him, “What accusation do you bring against this man?”  The answer?....   “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over.”  This is of course no answer at all.  There is no logic here, but to seek logic is to miss the point of what is at issue.  Jesus has become, Jesus is, in his very being, the total subversive.    What is truth?   

            So Pilate tries further:  “What have you done?”  Jesus answers somewhat inscrutably, “my kingdom is not from this world.  If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.”  Pilate:  “So you are a king?”  Jesus:  “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice,”  And so, finally, we get to Pilate’s, “what is truth?”—and Pilate’s summation: “I find no case against him.” 

            To my mind, if there is anything this interchange as a whole suggests, it is that Jesus is inherently subversive.  He thinks, he speaks, he acts differently—in such a way that it is clear that he is of a different order, has a different set of sensibilities, he simply does not accept, refuses to recognize the rightness, the legitimacy of the  status quo and those who uphold it.  He has come to announce, to inaugurate, to incarnate in his very being a different order.  And he will continue to be who he is even if he must pay the ultimate price for it.   

            In spite of whatever uncertainties Pilate may have had concerning Jesus’ guilt, Pilate was enough of a political realist to see that things were getting seriously out of hand.  And so, Jesus is put to death by the Roman authorities, finally, as a political threat if not actual revolutionary. 

            Religion and politics not only do mix, they are inextricably related and intertwined.  Jesus did not die as an isolated religious zealot or martyr who held strange beliefs, or was quaint, or eccentric, or innocuous, but rather as one who if left to his own devices would turn this world, its order, its sensibilities, upside down. 

            And, if we see in his cross anything at all having to do with our own salvation, with God’s own work, with our own calling, our lives cannot help but be very different as a result.  Certainly, and at the very least, we cannot be content in being so quaint, so innocuous or eccentric as to be labeled as merely “religious.”  Now I acknowledge that in our day, we are seeing religious zealotry and fanaticism going to ever greater levels around the world.  It is certainly true of many Muslims.  But it is also true for many Christians.  But still, for the most part within our own society, to be simply or merely “religious” is hardly something  seen as perhaps deserving death.  Perhaps that should give us pause…     What is truth? 

            Today is, I believe, a day on which our focus is, quite properly, not so much on ourselves, not on our reactions to the events of this day, but quite simply on the events of this day, and on our Lord himself.  But I don’t believe we can really focus on our Lord, and on that cross, without at the very same time sensing our own denial, our own complicity, the judgment that is indeed upon us.  We need forgiveness; we know not what we do; we do not have entirely clean hands. 

            Most of us—dare I say all of us?—are not very subversive in anything like the way Jesus was.  Nor are we likely to be.  For all of us have too much of a stake in an order that has, for the most part, treated us very well indeed.      

            It was Reinhold Niebuhr in particular who has helped me to understand that, in Christ, we have a vision, an ideal, which we cannot really incarnate very fully, and yet which calls us into question at every turn.  Niebuhr called this the “impossible possibility.”  But, as Paul so eloquently puts it in his Epistle to the Romans, the law of our members wars against the law that is in our minds.  “I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it….   Wretched man that I am….” 

            This is what it means to be enslaved to sin.  And a very integral part of that sin is in our own watering down the desperateness of our own situation, in our telling ourselves and each other that we really aren’t so bad….  ….in fact, all things considered, we’re really pretty good…., and on we go.  What is truth?   

            And yet, having said all this out of both sides of our mouths, and having meant it all, the final word has not yet been spoken, the final saving act has not yet occurred.  And that is, finally, what this day is about, and what makes it “good.”  For at the very moment of Jesus’ death upon that cross, as the reality of the agony of Jesus on that cross hits us, we, like that veil of the temple, can be shattered from top to bottom.  It is possible for our earth, our world, our very beings to shake. 

            The rocks are split and the tombs are opened—our own tombs of our own making.  The foul air can be dissipated, and our deadened, our deadly bodies can come out, come into the light.  If we want to come out, we can be transformed by all that is taking place, and to know that a truly cosmic event has taken place, is taking place, before our very eyes and within our very souls on this day.   

            And there is more, so much more to be said and experienced before this drama is finally over.  More about our savior.  And as a result, more about ourselves.  And so, once again, what is truth? 

            A bit later in this service, a large cross will be brought into this church, and laid on that bare altar. 

            A bit after that, the sacramental bread, the body of Christ, in repose since the Last Supper last evening, will be offered to us a final time—before it is spent for us and then is no more, for all that is left of that divine, sacramental presence is given to us on this day.  And then, having nourished us even on this darkest of days, it is spent, it is gone.  For Christ has died—in order that we might live. 

            For us right here, right now, this is the very family for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross. 

            Can we, dare we, begin to grasp the enormity of what is going on here? …and of that terrible question, what is truth?....     These are not easy questions and this is not an easy day; and no one can answer them for you.  But quite literally, everything is at stake in the answers each one of us gives, and in what we do with them.

            We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.                                      

Amen.
       

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