GOOD FRIDAY -sermon trilogy 2015

The sermons for Maundy Thurs, Good Friday, and Easter have interwoven the stories from the hundred loonies given to members during the month of January.  Each person was to take their loonie and use it to further God’s mission in the world. To date 36 stories have been written in the book, others are awaiting the opportunity to give them.  God’s mission continues every day, unfolding before our very eyes.

Last Sunday we heard the Passion narrative from the Gospel of Mark, rather, than, the John reading we hear today.  In Mark, two bandits are crucified with Jesus; we hear that they join with others and taunted Jesus. This is all we are told.  In the Gospel of John we are given even less information: two others were crucified with him, one on either side.  John doesn’t label them as bandits or criminals– although they must have been; neither gets a plaque above their heads like Jesus does; John makes no comment as to whether the two taunted Jesus. They were there… unnamed, unnoticed, and disregarded.

Crosses are placed across our landscape every day. The nameless and falsely accused are sent to prison and death, often unnoticed as the busy world carries on at an inhumane speed with oft times questionable ethics.

The nameless ones in our midst are nameless and silent: some because they have opted out of business as usual, others because they are so far on the margin they avoid human contact, and others -more often nameless- because we push them to the margin and purposefully keep them at least at arm’s length.

The rituals of Good Friday bring us to the foot of The Cross … and the crosses of the nameless who continue to be crucified.  We are humbled in the bidding prayers and in the Solemn Reproaches as to those whom we forget, whom we have hand in crucifying.  Again and again God calls, “Oh my people, O my church, what more could I have done for you. … you have prepared a cross for your Saviour.”

Crosses have been made:  the shadow of death is a lived reality with death being a very real possibility for:

The disabled senior panhandling in Bayer’s Lake

The nameless restaurant server

The person asking for money on Spring Garden Rd

The old man at McDonald’s and his woman friend

The man jamming with his guitar for coins of the passersby

The unnamed beggar

A woman begging at the entrance to Bayer’s Lake

A young man on Young St needing a room for the night

The unnamed co-worker who is a 22 yr old single-mom

It is at the foot of this cross that we kneel.

Douglas John Hall wrote, “If you claim to be a disciple of the crucified one you must expect to participate in his sufferings; if you preach a theology of the cross, you will have to become a community of the cross.  Anything else would represent a kind of hypocrisy. … this theology is only authentic – only ‘for real’ – insofar as it gives birth to a community that suffers with Christ in the world.”   He comments that we are to be a “A cruciform people.” We are to be the cross, to bear the cross, to name the crosses in our midst: poverty, wage disparity, inequality, accessibility of jobs, lack of affordable housing and day care, pensions and disability shortfalls. We are to be the voice to name the nameless.

A voice that through our loonies carried to:

Syrian refugees through CLWR

To 200 high school students who attend weekly KD lunches at St. John’s United Church in Lower Sackville – keeping them from idle-ly wandering through Sobeys on mass at lunch time

To those touched through the Fellowship of the Least Coin

To the poor through advocacy of an ecumenical initiative started by Roman Catholics to reduce poverty

In the closing act of today’s service we hear the words,  “By the holy cross you have redeemed the world.”

It is through Jesus’ act of compassion that the hope of tearing down crosses becomes a reality. Although we do not hear it in the Gospel’s read this year, the Gospel of Luke speaks of relationship; as Jesus speaks to the one bandit, the is redeemed, and to be in relationship with Jesus, Jesus promises, “today you will be with me in paradise.”  This is the deconstructing of the cross. Naming, being in relationship, facing death so that new life might be a hope, a possibility, a reality.

The loonies given to the nameless were but a beginning to relationship, to facing death and the crosses in our midst -

At the foot of the cross, as we stare death in the face, as we know not what to do, as we lament at the crosses in our own time, as we shiver in chaos ---- in silence -----------------

The heavens open and we hear proclaimed

Behold the life giving cross, on which was hung the Saviour of the whole world.

The words don’t make everything right, but, the words hold hope and promise. There is a surprise.

Entering relationship with the nameless who bear significant crosses – we were touched.

Who would have expected the surprise of Jesus from the cross speaking back to us:

With thank-yous, “I can’t accept that,” a blessing – in the name of God from me to you.

Perhaps it is us on the cross and those we deem to have crosses are free – for they have already and do face death daily.

Face death: face the crosses, face the lack of relationships, face the big issues, face your inabilities, face the nameless – and in death see that it is the way to life and truly living with purpose.

Behold the life giving cross, on which was hung the Saviour of the whole world. Thanks be to God. Amen.