Where Were You on Good Friday?
a sermon based on John 20:19-31
by Rev. Randy L Quinn

It has always been curious to me that our culture seems to like preparing for celebrations more than we enjoy actually celebrating.

Think about it. There are always more advertisements before an event than there are after an event. We put up lights for Christmas as early as we can – but few people keep them glowing beyond Christmas Day. Baby Showers happen before the birth much more often than they are planned afterward. Even wedding celebrations are often more oriented toward pre-nuptial parties – from bridal showers to bachelor parties and rehearsal dinners – than they are toward the actual wedding receptions.

I know that when Ronda and I were married, I had family fly in to Kansas from Washington, Colorado, and Wisconsin. They arrived a day or two before the wedding. No one stayed more than a day afterward. The wedding was over. It was time to go home.

The largest worship attendance dates on the church calendar are Christmas and Easter – and the Sundays immediately before them. People like getting excited for these important holidays, but very few people want to celebrate them for more than a day. Large crowds will gather on Palm Sunday, before Easter, but not today, for instance.

Yet the church calendar says Easter is a season, not a Sunday. There are 52 Sundays in a year – and one in seven is included in the Easter season. Today is the Second Sunday of Easter. So we will continue to sing “alleluia.” We will continue to dress the church in white. (And if it weren’t for my allergies, I’d encourage the Altar Guild to keep the Easter Lilies up as long as they would last.)

Easter is the defining event in the Christian faith. Not surprisingly, therefore, it defines our worship throughout the year. That’s why we worship on the “first day of the week” rather than on the seventh day. We gather in honor of the resurrection throughout the year in honor of Easter rather than in response to the commandment to rest on the Sabbath day.

Whether our culture teaches us to linger over celebrations or not, the church continues to celebrate Easter! We celebrate for more than one day and for more than one season.

Our text today is taken from John’s Easter story. It begins at the end of the same day that began at the empty tomb.

Shortly after that first Easter morning, the rumors began. Most of the rumors said Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead. Some rumors said his body had been stolen. Other rumors said his resurrection was a myth the Disciples invented.

Those rumors all took people’s attention away from the empty tomb.

Still other rumors said Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead because he never died. There were rumors of how Simon of Cyrene not only carried the cross of Jesus; he also died on the cross for him. There were stories of how Jesus only seemed to be dead on the cross, and when Joseph of Arimathea took him down, it was part of a dramatic plot to fool the world.

Those rumors all took people’s attention away from the cross.

Each of the Gospel authors knew some of those rumors. And each wrote their account to counter them. So effective were they that by the time John wrote his gospel, few of those rumors were still circulating. Matthew, Mark, and Luke who had all written their gospels prior to John had dispelled most of the rumors.

But within the church theories began to arise. People were looking for ways of trying to understand who Jesus was and what it meant for him to die. Some of those theories have become part of the church’s tradition and doctrine, others were branded as heresy.

In some ways, these heresies were more damaging than the rumors. And some of them persist to this day.

One of those heresies was known as Docetism. It said that Jesus was not really human. He only appeared to be human. God came to our world and merely pretended to be human; he never took on real flesh and blood. He was a spirit that looked real and acted real, but he was only a spirit and not a man.

John writes his gospel for several reasons, but one of his points is to squelch this particular heresy. The opening phrases of his gospel say it eloquently:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

John 1:1, 14

So we aren’t surprised that when John tells us about Jesus appearing to the Disciples, he also refutes the heresy by having Jesus clearly indicate his body was the same body that had died on the cross. He shows them his hands and his side (v 20, 27). No spirit would have scars from death – only a human body would have had such scars.

So Jesus appears to them and proves that he died. His presence proves that he was raised. The harder part for them seems to be believing that he actually died. After all, how many of them actually witnessed the death and how many had joined Peter in denying him and running in fear?

We don’t know who was in the room at the time; the gospel only says that the disciples were there – though we know not all of them were present, since we know that at least Thomas was absent.

And we know they were fearful. Fearful of the Jews, John says; I also believe they were fearful of what would happen to them if, in fact, Jesus was alive. After all, they had abandoned Jesus at the cross. If he were alive, would they not expect to be punished? Would he not be justified if he was raised from the dead and abandoned them?

Jesus could very well have entered the room and asked, “Where were you on Good Friday?” “Where were you when I needed you?” “Where were you when I was displaying the most dramatic example of God’s love?”

Before we get too smug about that, we need to consider that he could quite legitimately ask the same questions of us. Where were you on Good Friday? Where were you when he needed you?

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says there will be people who will be asked why they didn’t feed him or clothe him or sit with him in his loneliness (Mt 25:44). Jesus could very well ask us where we were on Good Friday.

Maybe we have become too complacent and no longer live in fear of God’s judgment for what we have done and what we have not done. But the truth is we are no better than those first disciples who huddled together in fear on that first Easter evening.

When Jesus offers the disciples “peace,” I am convinced he was calming their fears about what he might do – what he could do – when he appeared. They may have lived in fear of what he had every right to do to them in response to their personal failures to stand by him.

The miracle that took place that evening was not the same miracle that took place that morning. It is still Easter day, but John is no longer recording for us the miracle of Jesus being raised from the dead. They had already seen and heard about that miracle. No, the miracle here is that when Jesus comes into the room he offers forgiveness rather than judgment.

Jesus goes on to say that it is up to us to continue performing this miracle.

The miracle of resurrection has continued to be celebrated every week throughout history. It is both a celebration of a past event and the celebration of a future promise when we will all be raised with Christ.

The miracle of forgiveness, however, is a miracle in the present. We make it happen. Jesus breathes on those first disciples and empowers them to perform this miracle.

We have inherited both their promise and their responsibility. We are the ones who make the miracle of forgiveness happen in today’s world. Or we are the ones who keep forgiveness from being experienced.

There have been periods of time in history when this promise and responsibility was used to excommunicate people from the church. People were shut out and denied access to the community of faith and the sacraments of the church. In the most extreme form and in the saddest times in church history, those who were not supporting the church and its ministry were put to death. It can be argued that the absolute worst time was during the Crusades when people of good will were used by the church to condemn and execute Muslims.

Hopefully we no longer hear the call to condemn in these words but the offer to forgive. Hopefully we can learn from those disciples who gathered that night and took this as an invitation to reconcile with one another.

Thomas was not with them that first Easter evening, for instance. Thomas did not receive the breath of Christ nor did Jesus personally empower him to forgive others.

Rather than condemning him for leaving the church in a time of crisis, rather than lording it over him that they now had power he did not, the disciples sought Thomas out and invited him to join them again. When he was there the following week, Thomas became the first to experience the miracle of reconciliation.

My prayer is that we will look around and find ways to invite the “Thomas’s” of our community to join us and be reconciled with us.

I am firmly convinced that this is the most important work of the church today – the working of the miracle of forgiveness.

When we do that, there will be no doubt that Christ is present here. Instead of rumors about a stolen body or a spiritual resurrection, rumors will begin that Christ is still alive and well.

Then others will join in the Easter refrain:

Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia. Amen.