Sermon for Good Friday
“What mean ye by this service?”
This has been the question that has framed our Holy Week meditations. It reaches its climax in this service on this day which we are privileged to call Good Friday. Christ is crucified. Christ is dead. What, indeed, do we mean by this service?
Simply put, we behold him who we have pierced, as Zechariah prophesied and as we hear at the end of the Passion according to John. We behold Christ Crucified and dead on the Cross. That is the most basic answer to the question. But like so many questions, it only opens us out to more and more questions. Why is Christ crucified? What does it mean? Who crucified Christ? The questions are as disturbing as the answers.
“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” So goes the old spiritual. The question is not merely rhetorical. Of course, in a literal sense we weren’t there. The crucifixion was long ago and far away. And yet, in a metaphorical sense, the sense of the hymn itself, and theologically, we are there. And even more, we are they who crucified our Lord.
