Good Friday
March 21, 2008
The Rev. James Richardson

A lot of people – including some of you – wear one of these around your neck: A cross.

Some crosses are simple. This one is made with nails welded together. Other crosses are elaborate like one I have from Spain. Some crosses are painted, like this one from Belize in Central America.

Some of you wear a small gold cross on a tiny chain. I wear a ring with a tiny cross embedded in a Celtic pattern.

This cross is from Mexico for celebrating the “Day of the Dead,” and it has a skull at the top. You can’t see it from where you sit, but the skull is smoking a cigarette. By the way, when we were burgled a few months ago, the robbers stole this. The police were able to make an arrest because this Cross is unique and thus identifiable stolen property, and then the police returned it to me.

At home we have a small silver Canterbury Cross over our fireplace. It is round and perfectly symmetrical.

The Cross above me is fashioned after the Cross of San Damiano, which was the Cross at Assisi in Italy that so entranced Saint Francis. The original was made in the 12th century, and has an icon of Jesus on the inside.

There are many crosses in our world. Not all of them are pretty.

On this Good Friday I want to pause and reflect about what these crosses represent. The Cross means nothing by itself. Nothing at all. It is an executioner’s crude tool to create death.

Without the executioner, the Cross is simply two pieces. With the executioner, the wood is put together in such a way that a person can hang from it to die. The executioner gives the cross meaning.

The Cross is how the Romans, then the most powerful government on earth, executed prisoners.

Wood is rare in the Middle East. Very rare. So it likely that other human beings, probably many, many human beings, one after the other, were executed on the same wooden cross that was used for killing Jesus.

The cross was an assembly line machine of death.

Many, many people died on the same cross until the wood was so split or so rotted with blood that these pieces of wood no longer served their grim purpose.

When Jesus died, no one venerated that cross. When the cross could no longer serve as the executioner’s tool, it was simply discarded or burned.

Death-by-cross usually came about by asphyxiation. When a person is hung on a cross, the lungs and heart are strained beyond capacity, and the victim slowly suffocates. Death-by-cross was shameful in the ancient world. Crucifixion sent a loud and clear message to the people ruled by the Romans about who was in charge. Those executed were nailed on crosses near the gates to Jerusalem. The crosses were brutal billboards advertising Roman power to subjugated people as they entered or left the city. You can bet they got the message.

Devout Jews walked on the other side of the road and averted their eyes. And why wouldn’t they? It was a hideous way to die.

There was another reason good, religious people averted their eyes. To the religious, death on the cross was a sure sign of God’s disfavor of the condemned. The cross was certain proof that the condemned prisoner was headed to Hell itself. To avert the eyes was a final act of shunning in a world governed by rules of honor and shame.

So if you think about it, to wear the cross around your neck as a piece of jewelry is a rather shocking thing to do. I don’t say this to be flippant or to offend, but it is a little like wearing a tiny electric chair around your neck.

We can dress it up with spirituality and piety, or make it look pretty, but the cross is still an executioner’s tool. To the ancient world, the cross has nothing to do with God. It is merely a symbol of colonial power.

So why are we so entranced by the Cross? Saint Paul returns to the subject of the cross again and again in his letters to the earliest followers of “the way.”

To the Corinthians, Paul writes that to most of the world, following someone who has died on the Cross was “foolishness” but to those who experience the reality of Jesus Christ risen, the cross represents nothing less than dwelling in the power of God.

And to the Galatians, Paul writes that Christians cannot “boast of anything” except the Cross. What does Paul mean by that? How can he say that this symbol of death and shame – the Roman’s cross – is the symbol of new life and reign of God? What is he boasting about?

I would like to suggest that wearing the Cross around your neck is a sign of defiance against the power of evil, a sign of defiance against power that corrupts and corrodes and kills in our world, a sign of defiance against death itself.

Wearing the cross is more than a mark of being a Christian; it is proclamation that death does not win. Give us your best shot – death does not get the last word.

We wear our defiance right here on our hearts. Christ Jesus has suffered the most painful death a human being can suffer, and shown us how to live.

Yet, the Cross of Good Friday makes little sense without what comes next. We do well to see the three days of Easter as a continuum, or a single event divided into three parts.

Although we hear the Gospel of John tonight, I think the Gospel of Matthew may give us a better feel for the swirl of the events surrounding the death of Jesus: In Matthew, Jesus is executed and dies, the earth shakes and tombs are emptied and the dead are seen everywhere, and it happens all pretty much at once. But take this slowly. There is a lot to take in the next three days.

Tonight with the Cross, we mark the first day. Then comes the second day, Holy Saturday, when Jesus descends to the dead – to the depths of hell– and throws open the gates and lets everyone out. In modern times we have nearly lost sight of Holy Saturday, the second day. We sometimes see it as a day Jesus is resting up off stage before the big Easter Vigil that night. But the second day is the most active day, when the tombs are emptied and the dead are seen everywhere. Holy Saturday is the fulcrum of Easter.

The resurrection on the third day means little to us without Holy Saturday, because Holy Saturday is the day when Jesus finds us in whatever dead place we dwell and takes us with him. We are Easter people because Jesus opens the tombs of hell and sets us free, either in this world or in the next. The third day, Easter itself, finds its full meaning from the first two days.

But we aren’t there yet. Tonight, we stay with the Cross awhile.

In a short while, we will bring a cross into this room and spend a few moments in reflection near it. Then we will distribute the bread and wine that has remained in repose in the chapel since last night – we do that because, of course, we cannot wait to get to Easter, so we get a taste of Easter even tonight, even at the foot of the executioner’s tool, the Cross.

Then tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. in the chapel, we will remember that second day, Holy Saturday, with a few prayers and psalms in the empty and dark chapel. Tomorrow night, the beginning of the third day, we will gather again here at the Great Vigil of Easter. We will remember again that Christ rose from the dead and unlocked the very gates of hell to free us. And we will gather again the celebrate the new life of the Resurrection and we will ring bells and we will baptize three people as the newest Christians in God’s Holy Church.

All of that is why we call this Good Friday, and why, like Paul, we boast of the Cross. The tombs will be empty – once and for all – and we will experience the Risen Christ once again.

But tonight, we boast only of the Cross.

Amen.