Sermon 2019.04.19
Good Friday
(Isaiah 53; Good Friday year C)

1. What’s so good about Good Friday?  Good Friday… Good Friday. Has it ever occurred to you to wonder what is so good about Good Friday? 

Most of the time, sure, we like Friday. Friday means the work week is over. Friday means the weekend is almost here. Friday is the light at the end of the tunnel. We say it all the time: It’s finally Friday… TGIF – thank God it’s Friday!

But this Friday? This is the Friday we remember the death of Jesus Christ. What’s so good about this Friday? It seems like a more accurate name might be Bad Friday, or Sad Friday. But Good Friday? … Worst. Name. Ever.

Certainly, almost two thousand years ago this was the worst Friday ever for the friends and followers of Jesus the Nazarene.

2. In like a lion...  The week didn’t start out terrible. In fact, a few days before, the disciples probably felt like they were on top of the world. Jesus rode into Jerusalem like a lion of Judah, like a returning king, with the crowds waving palms and singing praises. 

For a few days, Jesus walked around Jerusalem like a lion: roaring in the temple, casting out the money changers, shredding the arguments of those who tried to trick him and trap him. 

This is it, Jesus’ followers thought… This is the moment when God’s chosen one sets all things right! This is the moment when the occupying Roman empire is kicked out of our county! This is the moment when the corrupt rulers are called to account! This is the moment when God’s people finally come out on top!

3. Out like a lamb.  But Jesus didn’t follow the script for a lion. Instead, at the Passover feast, Jesus flipped the script. At Passover, faithful Jews remembered how God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. Moses told the Jewish families to sacrifice a young lamb, and to paint the blood of the lamb on the doorpost of their homes. That night, death passed over the Jewish homes marked with the blood of a lamb, but took the firstborn of all the Egyptians.

Jesus took the traditional Passover meal and reinterpreted it in a strange way: “This bread is my body, given for you… This cup is my blood, poured out for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:26-28; Luke 22:19-20).

Jesus was describing himself as the sacrificial lamb, the Passover lamb whose blood would cause death to pass over his followers. 

Jesus came into Jerusalem like a lion; but he would go out like a lamb – a lamb being led to the slaughter. How frightening this must have sounded to Jesus’ friends and followers!

4. Suffering servant, Lamb of God.  Yet it should not have surprised them. They knew the Hebrew scriptures. The prophets had always foretold that the Messiah would suffer. Almost 800 years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah spelled it out in excruciating detail:

“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain… Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering… he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed… he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth… He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth…. he poured out his life unto death... For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” 
(Isaiah 53:3-5,7,9,12)

800 years before Jesus, Isaiah described the one who would be the sacrificial lamb, the Passover lamb, the innocent one who will bear the sins of all, take the punishment for all.

And then, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptist echoes this when he looks at Jesus and says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). 

Jesus himself made no secret that his road led to death and resurrection. The same day Peter recognized Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, God’s long-promised savior, Jesus explained that he “must suffer … and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life” (Matthew 16:21). 

This was too much for Jesus’ followers to accept. Peter even tried to change Jesus’ mind: “This will never happen to you, Lord!” But Jesus rebuked him, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” (Matthew 16:22-23).

5. Accessories to murder.  This seems like a harsh rebuke, calling Peter “Satan.” But Peter has fallen prey to the all-too-human temptation to think that he knows better than God. Peter thinks he has a better plan… but Peter can only see with a human perspective. 

People are fickle. We marvel at the changing mood of the crowds in Jerusalem so long ago. The same people who welcomed Jesus as a king with waving palms and shouts of “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” … have turned on him by Friday and are shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Jesus hasn’t gone along with their plan. He isn’t going to start a rebellion or overthrow the Romans. He isn’t going after “those guys.” He isn’t doing things our way, according to our plan. 

Instead Jesus challenges everyone – Jews and Romans, disciples and Pharisees, insiders and outsiders, you and me – with a call to follow God’s way, God’s life, God’s truth (John 14:6). 

The Roman governor Pilate’s response to this could be ripped from our headlines today: “Truth? What is truth?” (John 18:38). Fake news, Jesus. Don’t tell me what my truth is. Don’t tell me what to do. Who died and made you the boss of me? … Oh, wait…

The truth is that Jesus sees right into our dark and fickle hearts. We cheer when Jesus gets in the face of others. But when Jesus gets all up in our business? When Jesus calls out our secret sins, our pride, the log in our eye? When Jesus challenges our lust and greed? When Jesus calls us to love neighbors – or worse, to love our enemies and forgive them?

No thanks, Jesus. You’re dead to me. 

With our sinful, sin-filled hearts, we are accessories to the murder of Jesus Christ. We find ourselves right there with the crowds, chanting “Crucify him! Crucify him! His blood be on us and on our children!” (Matthew 27:25). 

6. The Good News of Good Friday.  Friends, we are complicit in the death of Jesus Christ. Our sins drove the nails into the cross, along with the sins of all humanity across all of time and space. Jesus died for you and me. Jesus was sealed into the tomb for you and me. Jesus took the punishment for sin, for you and for me. 

Here’s the thing: what we meant as a curse, Jesus turns into a blessing. His blood is on us and on our children. The blood of Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, has been painted on the doorpost of our souls, and now death will pass over us.

We know this, because we know that Friday is not the end of the story. The Good News of Good Friday is that we know Jesus triumphs over sin and death. We know Jesus breaks the gates of hell. We know Jesus rises to triumphant life on Easter morning, and we know that through Jesus we are promised forgiveness of sins and eternal life as well!

Because we know this, we can truly say: thank God it’s Good Friday!

7. Every knee shall bow.  Friends, we began this day reflecting on the suffering servant from Isaiah 53, the suffering servant who is Jesus. The promise of resurrection and forgiveness is there, even in that dark prophecy 800 years before Christ:

“The Lord makes his life an offering for sin... After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.” (Isaiah 53:10-11)

Christ has born our sins. The blood of Christ justifies us before the throne of God.

Twenty years after the resurrection, the bookend to Isaiah 53 comes in the joyful early Christian hymn that the Apostle Paul records in his letter to the Philippian church. I’m going to invite you to join me in the words:

Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God 
something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death —
even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.  (Philippians 2:5-11)

Have the same mind as Christ, friends. If we want to be a part of the resurrection and the life, we need to be willing to put to death the sin that lives within us. We call upon the Holy Spirit, the Advocate and Comforter promised by Christ, to help us live holier lives.

On this Good Friday, as Jesus died for our sins, we invite you to die to your sin, to be washed in the blood of the Passover Lamb, to bow your hearts and knees before the throne of Jesus Christ and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. We will take a moment now to pray silently. If you’d like to speak with a pastor, you are welcome to come forward…