Through the Eyes of John: Good Friday Meditations
admin | 25 March 2016These meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross were read at this morning’s Good Friday service.
Through the eyes of John
Good Friday Meditations
Ecumenical Service at Christ Church, Windsor
March 25th, 2016
Introduction: Fr. David Curry
“They shall look upon him whom they have pierced”
We immerse ourselves in the Passion of Christ. Such is the purpose of the Christian season of Lent and, especially, Holy Week. On this day which we call Good Friday, we gather to immerse ourselves in the Passion of Christ according to St. John. In the classical liturgical traditions of western Christianity, the Passion according to St. John provides the template for our contemplation of Christ crucified, gathering up into his words what is present in the other accounts of the Passion. We see through the eyes of John. It is John who, quoting Zechariah, names the purpose of our Good Friday contemplations. It is, he says, that the scripture might be fulfilled, “they shall look upon him whom they have pierced.” It belongs to our good to look upon the crucified. Why? To learn the deep lessons of sin and love. In that we find our sorrow and our joy.
Another feature of the Christian Church’s devotions on Good Friday is the meditation upon the Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross. These are taken from all four Gospels. The first, second and seventh words are taken from the account of the Passion in St. Luke’s Gospel. The third, fifth and sixth words are taken from St. John, while the fourth word is found in both the Passion according to St. Matthew and St. Mark. Scripture illumines scripture and, in some sense, the Gospel of John, and, especially on Good Friday, the Passion according to St. John shapes our understanding of the central mystery of Christ’s crucifixion and the meaning of human redemption. Through the eyes of John we shall look upon him whom we have pierced.
Let us pray
Almighty and everlasting God, who, of your tender love towards mankind, has sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
First Word: Scott Gilbreath, Warden of Christ Church, Windsor
“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23. 24)
First words often catch our attention. The last words, too, especially of the dying, hold our attention. Here is the first of the last words of Christ. Forgiveness. What is forgiveness? It isn’t about pretending that what has happened hasn’t happened. It isn’t simply about ignoring wrongs which are suffered and done by us and to one another, not to mention sin which is always against the truth of God. Forgiveness does not ignore sin and judgement. It just doesn’t stop there. If sin is about our denial of the goodness of God, forgiveness is about the power of God’s goodness in the face of sin and evil. The God who creates out of nothing recreates even out of our will to nothingness, even out of our sin and our ignorance about the real meaning of sin.
John helps us to see this. He tells the powerful story of the woman taken in adultery. She is hauled before Jesus as a way of putting him to the test about the strictures of the law which mandated the stoning of adulterers, a sad reality even in parts of our world to this day, it seems. “Jesus,” John tells us, “bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.” It is the only time in the gospels that we are told Jesus wrote something. What he wrote we do not know. We only know from the Evangelist what he said. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” The accusers “convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last.” Only Jesus and the woman are left. “When he lifted up himself … he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?” To which she replied, “No man, Lord.” Jesus said to her “Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more.”
A most powerful scene, it at once convicts us of our judgements against one another and convinces us of the greater goodness of God which is there for us to live again and always. “Go and sin no more.” There is more than the folly of our sins. Christ crucified convicts us of our folly but seeks our good in the Father’s forgiveness. Christ crucified is the book of love written for us to read. Only as convicted in our own conscience can we learn the power of forgiveness. It means new life. He who is lifted upon the cross speaks the word of forgiveness and love. It is his First Word to us. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”.
Leader: Against thee only have I sinned,
People: And done that which is evil in thy sight.
Let us pray:
Blessed Lord, who in love and forgiveness prayed for those who nailed you to the cross, and taught us to forgive one another as you have forgiven us: Take away from us all bitterness and resentment towards one another, and give us the spirit of mutual forgiveness and brotherly love; that in perfect charity, we may be partakers of your everlasting kingdom; for your mercy’s sake. Amen.
The Second Word: Fr. David Curry
“Verily I say unto thee: Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23. 43)
Paradise is a Persian word referring to a park or garden. It has become an integral and important word in our daily vocabulary and, of course, in our biblical vocabulary. It is associated with the story of creation, with the idea of the Garden of Eden. It signifies the harmony of God the Creator with his creation, the harmony of our humanity with everything else in the created order and, most importantly, the original harmony of our humanity with God. And yet, Paradise is lost, lost through human sin. Such is the story of the Fall, “Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree,” as the poet Milton puts it, which brought about the “loss of Eden.”
That loss turns paradise into a wilderness and the place of suffering. The contrast between paradise and wilderness also belongs to all of our environmental concerns about our misuse of creation. Yet the wilderness of human sin and suffering is also the place of learning about the greater goodness of God and his provisions for us. The wilderness remains God’s world in spite of us.
This word is sometimes referred to as the word to the penitent thief. Mark and Matthew describe Jesus as crucified between two thieves. Luke doesn’t and neither does John. Luke calls them evil-doers, malefactors. John merely says that he was crucified with two others with “Jesus in the midst”, a powerful image. Jesus is in the midst of our sufferings. He is with us in the wilderness. John tells the story of Christ feeding the multitude in the wilderness, a story about so much made out of so little, five barley-loaves and two small fishes from which so many are fed. The story is profoundly sacramental. Jesus takes bread and gives thanks and after they are fed he bids the disciples “gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost”. Twelve baskets are filled with the fragments of the five barley-loaves, a basket for each of the twelve tribes of Israel, it might seem, a basket for each of the twelve apostles of the Church, too, it might seem.
One malefactor rails against Jesus; the other says, “Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom.” The paradise of human redemption is about more than a return to Eden but not less than Eden. His kingdom is paradise plus. Something more and greater is made known to us by Christ in the wilderness of human sin and suffering. Such is the power of this Second Word. “Verily I say unto thee: Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”.
Leader: He was wounded for our transgressions,
People: He was bruised for our iniquities.
Let us pray:
Blessed Saviour, who at this hour did hang upon the cross, stretching forth your loving arms: Grant that all people may look to you and be saved; who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
The Third Word: Rev’d Bill Gibson (Windsor United Church)
“Woman, behold thy son! and thou, behold thy mother!” (John 19. 26,27)
The third word from the Cross is John’s first word of the crucified. It speaks to us about our relationships and care for one another. It speaks to us about the church as the place where the redemptive love of God for our humanity is to be lived out among us. Jesus speaks directly to Mary, the blessed Mother and to John, the beloved disciple. “And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.” To Mary, Jesus says “behold thy son.” To John, Jesus says, “behold thy mother.” How do we look at one another? Do we see one another as Christ sees us?
John alone tells the wonderful story of the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee where the water was turned into wine. At the heart of that story is the intriguing dialogue between Mary and Jesus, one of the few dialogues between them in the Gospels. “They have no wine”, Mary observes to Jesus about the wedding feast, naming in a way the human predicament. We lack the means of our joy and salvation. To which Jesus replies, “O woman, what is that to me and to thee. Mine hour has not yet come”. A puzzling comment, and, yet, one which Mary seems to understand. She says to the servants, “whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”. In a way, she voices yet again the very definition of her own being. Mary’s “be it unto me according to thy word” is the condition of Christ’s Incarnation, his being with us in the intimacy of his humanity derived from her.
The rest is history. Water is turned into wine; not just a little but a lot; not just ordinary stuff but the very best wine. What does it all mean? John tells us that this was the “beginning of signs” which Jesus did, a beginning which already connects to his ending and which belongs to his hour. The miracles of the Gospels all speak to what God seeks for our humanity, namely, the healing and the restoration of our wounded and broken selves, our wounded and broken world and community. But “this beginning of signs” alone shows what that healing and restoration is for. God seeks our social joys. He seeks our taking delight and taking care of one another. It can only happen through his word in us, through our doing “whatsoever he says”. It means our prayerful attention to the Word and Son of the Father who commands that we attend to one another. The church is Marian if it is to be the church at all. It is altogether about our hanging on the words of the crucified and learning how to behold one another in care and compassion. Such is the power of this Third Word. “Woman, behold thy son! and thou, behold thy mother!”
Leader: Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us,
People: And sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Let us pray:
O Lord Jesus Christ, who from the cross commended your mother into the care of the beloved disciple: Keep under your perpetual providence and care those to whom we are bound by ties of kindred and affection; and grant that the love which we know on earth may lead us onward to the love of you; who with the Father and the eternal Spirit are one holy Trinity of love, world without end. Amen.
The Fourth Word: Rev’d Rob Heffernan (Windsor United Baptist Church)
“My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mt. 27. 46; Mk. 15. 34)
At the heart of the Crucifixion is this most disquieting and disturbing word, Christ’s cry of dereliction. It is the cry of one who feels utterly alone, utterly abandoned, utterly desolate. Such is the real meaning of sin and evil. It is about desolation and nothingness because that is what sin and evil are about, a denial and a withdrawing from all that is true and good. Nowhere is that more graphically captured than in this word which Matthew and Mark both record.
The last of the so-called “I am” sayings in John’s Gospel is Christ as the true vine and about our abiding in him. The so-called “I am” sayings are a series of metaphors in which Christ identifies at once with the revelation of God to Moses as “I am who I am” and with us in terms of images such as: “I am the door”; “I am the bread”; “I am the light”; “I am the resurrection and the life”; “I am the way, the truth and the life”; “I am the good shepherd”. In all of these sayings, Jesus speaks about his relation to the Father. Here that relation is most explicit. We are bidden to abide in his love for the Father. “For apart from me,” Jesus says, “you can do nothing.” “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you, abide in my love.” How? “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love”. To what end? “That my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full”.
And yet, in this fourth word there is only despair and emptiness, it must seem, desolation and abandonment, even the loss of the relationship of Son and Father, the very thing that John especially in his Gospel has wanted to reveal to us. How then to make sense of this word? It captures the radical meaning of sin and evil. Jesus experiences the radical meaning of our will to destroy, our will to annihilate, our will to nothingness. The power of this word however does not just lie in the experience of the desolating wilderness of human sin. Its real power is that it is still a prayer. There is the intensity of his prayer to God even in the moment of dereliction and loss. And it is a prayer that retains some sense of the personal. “My God! My God!” This gives us pause whenever we see the letters OMG, the digital culture’s acronym for “Oh My God.” Christ’s cry is not such a casual commonplace, an empty and meaningless calling out to whatever or whomever. He voices the full intensity of the desolation of human sin. Yet he names it and voices it to God. It is the heart-rending prayer of the heart-broken. But it is still a prayer. Such is the power of this Fourth Word. “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?”
Leader: The chastisement of our peace was upon him;
People: And with his stripes we are healed.
Let us pray:
O Lord Jesus Christ, whose most bitter passion has tasted death for every one, and has borne our sins in your own body on the tree: Grant us, we humbly pray, a broken and a contrite heart for all your sorrows, and the loosing from our sins in your most precious blood; that we may live henceforth as those who have been bought with a price, and glory only in your cross. Amen.
The Fifth Word: (Rev’d) Hedley Hopkins
“I thirst” (John 19. 28)
It is the next to the last word of Christ on the Cross according to John and it already points to his last word of Christ, “it is finished”. “Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfil the scripture), I thirst”. Finished and fulfilled, accomplished and concluded, these are all related concepts and terms. They suggest that there is more to this word than just the physical horror of the pain and suffering associated with crucifixion. There can be no denying the physical realities of human suffering. Such things challenge us about care for the dying, our care for the suffering. That cannot be neglected or overlooked. Indeed, as Matthew makes abundantly clear, such things belong to the kingdom of God. “I was thirsty and you gave me drink”. In so doing to “the least of these my brethren,” Jesus says, “you did it to me”. Here he thirsts literally, to be sure, but he also thirsts for our good, our blessedness. And his thirst in us is our blessedness too. “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.” His thirst points to the fulfillment of what God seeks for our humanity.
John tells the powerful story of the encounter between Jesus and the Woman at the well of Samaria. Jesus says to her, “Give me a drink.” She asks “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” As John explains, “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans”. The encounter partly turns on this issue of religious controversy between Jews and Samaritans which is about a matter of interpreting the law and particularly where the law was given to Moses. The sectarian divisions among Christians and among Muslims to this day are part of the ancient stories of Israel. And one which Jesus challenges. “Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink’, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” Wells are meeting places and places of great significance in the cultures of the Middle East. Here Jesus uses the well as a place of meeting to show what God ultimately seeks for us. “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life”. The woman says, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”
She is a woman who has suffered greatly, it seems, in terms of relationships especially with men. As Jesus reveals, she has “had five husbands and he whom you now have is not your husband”. As with the woman taken in adultery, his words are more a matter of fact than judgement. He reveals himself to her as the Messiah, the Christ, and makes the point that true worship is about “worship[ing] the Father in spirit and truth”. The woman went her way into the city saying, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” Her witness leads to others coming to Jesus. “Many Samaritans,” John tells us, “believed in him because of the woman’s testimony”.
Christ thirsts for our good. He seeks to bring us the living waters of eternal life in the midst of the confusions and the brokenness of our relationships with one another. His thirst is for our good in his love for the Father. Such is the power of this Fifth Word, “I thirst”.
Leader: Worthy the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength,
People: And honour, and glory, and blessing.
Let us pray:
Blessed Lord, who on the cross endured the thirst both of spiritual desire and of physical anguish: Satisfy the longings of our hearts, we humbly pray, and sanctify all our sufferings by your own; who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Sixth Word: Pastor R. Andrew Barker (Windsor Church of the Nazarene)
“It is finished” (John 19. 30)
All is accomplished, ended, finished, indeed, fulfilled. What is that ‘all’? All that belongs to human redemption. Good Friday makes no sense apart from the doctrine of the redemption of our humanity. God seeks our good through our sin and evil. The Cross is the most powerful image of that truth and reality. Christ is made sin for us that in him all sin, past, present, and future, is overcome. What is fulfilled is all that belongs to the restoration of our humanity. Our challenge is to enter into its meaning.
In the famous farewell discourse of Jesus in John’s Gospel, Jesus prepares the disciples for his going from them at once in terms of his crucifixion and in terms of his ascension or homecoming to the Father. “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” Holy Week and especially Good Friday draws us into the deeper meaning of the Passion of Christ. The redemption of our humanity means that we are drawn into the community of divine love, into the life of God revealed in its fullness in Jesus Christ. John is especially at pains to make this clear.
The Gospels are written, as they can only be, in the light of the extraordinary event of the Resurrection. The accounts of the Passion are only possible in the light of the Resurrection. Something has changed and it changes how we see and understand things especially the events of the past. The Gospel accounts of the Resurrection show how the disciples come to know the risen Christ and that in turn leads to an intense scrutiny of all the events of his Passion and to all of the words of Christ. The Gospels are all about seeing everything in the Hebrew Scriptures and in human experience in an entirely new way. Nowhere is that more clearly presented than in Jesus’s farewell discourses. We shall have sorrow but our “sorrow shall be turned into joy” Jesus says and all “because I go to the Father”. It is the mantra of Eastertide but it is also the meaning of “it is finished”. What remains is for us to learn from its accomplishment. Such is the work of the Holy Spirit, what Jesus in John’s Gospel calls “the Spirit of truth” who “will guide you into all truth.” “In the world,” Jesus says, “ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” Such is redemption. Such is the power of this Sixth Word. “It is finished”.
Let us pray:
Leader: Behold the Lamb of God,
People: Which taketh away the sin of the world.
O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, who takes away the sins of the world: Grant that as your sacrifice for our redemption was full, perfect, and sufficient, so nothing may be wanting in our service and sacrifice for you as members of your mystical body; for the honour and glory of your holy name, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Seventh Word: The Rev’d Dr. Jeff Hosick
“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23. 46)
The words from the Cross begin and end with an explicit address of the Son to the Father. “Father, forgive them”; “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”. In a way, this word gathers up all of the preceding words. It gathers up the whole of the Passion. Everything is gathered into the hands of the Father. Everything is gathered into the dynamic of the community of divine love, the living love of God as Trinity.
Our humanity is radically incomplete without God. This last word of the crucified is about the true homeland of our humanity. It is found in the embrace of the Father. The image of hands is a powerful scriptural image. One the one hand, there is the treachery of Jacob disguising his hands as the hands of Esau to steal his brother’s birthright from his blind father, Isaac. On the other hand, Isaiah envisions God as asking “Can a mother forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?” Only to have God answer “Yea, they may forget, yet I will not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49.15). There is something quite powerful and strengthening about everything being gathered into the hands of the Father.
John tells the story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus by night and learning just what it means to be born again. It means being born upward into the things of the Spirit. He speaks about the purpose of God in his own being. “No one has ascended up to heaven”, he says, “but he that came down from heaven” before going on to suggest how human redemption is about the lifting up of the Son of man and our looking upon him whom we have pierced. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life”.
The Book of Numbers relates that the people of Israel “spoke against God and against Moses” saying “why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” As a consequence, God sends fiery serpents among the people. This moves them to a kind of repentance, a recognition that they have sinned against the Lord and against Moses. They ask him to intercede for them. Moses is directed to “make a fiery serpent and to set it upon a pole; and every one who is bitten when he sees it, shall live”. Their sin is made objective to them in the form of the bronze serpent. In repentance they look and live. Jesus applies the image to himself as being lifted up so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. But we have to look upon him.
John ends his account of the Passion with Zechariah’s prophecy, “they shall look upon him whom they have pierced”. That is what Good Friday is about. We look upon the crucified, upon the one who has gathered everything that belongs to human redemption into the hands of the Father. We look and only so shall we live. We lift up our eyes to the one who is lifted up on the Cross. He has gathered everything into the hands of the Father. Such is the power of this Seventh Word. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”.
Let us pray:
Leader: We shall look on him
People: Whom we have pierced.
O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who at the ninth hour of the day, with outstretched hands and bowed head, commended your spirit to God the Father, and by your death unlocked the gates of paradise: Mercifully grant that in the hour of our death our souls may come to the true paradise of your love; who, with the Father and the Spirit, ever lives and reigns, one God, world without end. Amen.