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Good Friday

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Texts & Discussion:

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22
Hebrews 10:16-25 or Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42

Other Resources:

Commentary:

Matthew Henry, Wesley

Word Study:
Robertson

This Week's Themes:

Suffering and Death of our Lord Jesus
Redemption of Humanity
 


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Sermons:


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Crucifying Jesus
a Good Friday sermon based on John 18:1-19:42
by Rev. Heather McCance

When I was seventeen, I took part in a Good Friday service at my home church. When the cross was brought into the church and placed in its stand, the priest invited us all to gather around it and write our names on small slips of paper. He then brought out a hammer and some nails, and one by one, we each nailed our own name to the cross. It was quite powerful, a reminder that Jesus hung there for each one of us.

A few years later, I attended a church that handed out a version of this morning's reading. Members of the congregation read the various parts of the reading, and we, the congregation, were to be the crowds. So we, who only a few minutes earlier had sung out "All glory, laud and honor," now called out "crucify him! Crucify him!"

It's a very jarring progression we make from Palm Sunday Sunday to Good Friday. We enter with joy, waving our palm branches, singing our praises to the king who comes in the name of the Lord. And we then bear witness through the ages as we hear him crying in anguish from the cross. Our emotions are stirred, sometimes in spite of ourselves, and we can find ourselves protesting, "How could they do it?" The chief priests were one thing; Jesus had clearly threatened their power. I can understand Pilate, too: he was a politician, caught up in a tight-rope diplomacy act--trying to please the crowds to forestall a riot.

Looking back at what happened on that Thursday night and Friday morning nearly 2000 years ago, I find myself pulled in two directions. One is to wonder, "How could they do what they did?" I wonder about Pilate, walking the tightrope between the wishes of the crowd in front of him, close to riot, and the demands of his Roman rulers back home. I wonder about the chief priests, sworn to never take a human life, and yet dodging their own law by getting the government involved, because of a man who threatened their authority. I wonder about Judas, what it was that caused him to do what he did, and the despair he must have felt afterward that made him take his own life. I wonder about the crowds, the ones who called "Hosanna to the Son of David!" on the first day of the week but yelled out "Let him be crucified!" on the sixth.

On the one hand, I find myself condemning them. I would never do that, I think. I can't imagine being a part of a crowd so bloodthirsty. I can't imagine giving into such an obviously unjust demand just for politically expediency. I can't imagine the level of hypocrisy needed to say "Thou shalt not kill," and then seeking a man's death. That year I was asked to read the part of the crowd in the story, "Crucify him!" I found the words catching in my throat, I wanted so very badly not to say them. [continue]