Good Friday 2005 Service of Tenebrae

Hebrews 10:16-25

We come to worship this Good Friday as an act of remembrance. We come to remember the suffering and death of Jesus. But we do not come as to a funeral, to sit and grieve, but we come to an abandoned battlefield. The signs of the fighting still present, the land still smoking, but Jesus isn’t found there.

For the wounded Jesus has moved on, through the valley of the death and the gate of heaven. Leaving a part of himself in every place yet always moving on.

But we come, anyway, to see the scars, to remember the pain. To be reminded that even God knows sorrow and alienation and loss.

We are reminded that God is present even in the darkest places this world holds. God is present in the bomb shelters of Baghdad, in the refugee camps of Darfor, in the shelters of Story County.

God in Jesus came to be in those places, among the least of these. Eating with sinners and healing lepers. Gathering in the outcasts and casting out the elite.

And provoking people, always provoking people to acts of love and mercy.

His disciples wanted to see a great political movement, a reinvention of the government perhaps, an overthrow of the Romans.

But what they got was a peaceful peasant who dealt not in arms but in relationships, not in stocks and bonds but in forgiveness and love.

Jesus brought with him a new way of living in a crazy world. A way that makes all people equal, all people valuable, all people loved.

If you are on the bottom of societies heap, this is good news indeed.

But the folks on the top of the ladder did not want to hear it, and so they watched for a sign of weakness, a word of heresy, and opportunity to do the man in.

And thought they found it. And brought Jesus in, had others torture and kill him.

And went home for a nice supper.

Not knowing the power of God. Not knowing the persistence of God. Not knowing the love of God. This is not enough to stop God. Death is not strong enough to keep God away from the world. Death is not powerful enough to hold God down.

God in the flesh, now wounded, has felt the darkness and knows how to die. Yet also knows that death is never the end. “It is putting out the light because the dawn has arrived.” (Anon.)

Knowing what we know, hearing the story again, sitting in silence in the dark, knowing the dawn is coming, should be enough to provoke us.

Provoke us to love and good deeds. Provoke us to living in the hope of the coming dawn; bringing as many folk as possible to join us for the party that comes in the morning!

“He who has promised is faithful, even through death.”

“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope…encouraging one another…”

And may our remembering give us strength for the journey.