Sermon preached by the Rev. Jeanne Roddick

Good Friday – it’s hard to think of what's "good" about the pain and humiliation and suffering that Jesus endured on this day.

Rather than dwell on these things many are tempted to rush ahead to the joy of Easter morning.

But I have met many, people for whom Good Friday and Jesus suffering on the cross has brought profound consolation.

And reflecting on what was different between those people consoled by Good Friday and those who want to rush past it, I have come to this conclusion: Good Friday is a day when those who suffer in this life enter into the mystery of God's suffering with them.

Because of Good Friday they understand that God knows the suffering of those who can read with integrity and from their own experience the "suffering servant" passages from Isaiah as their story, and the Psalms of lament as their songs.

God knows the suffering of the poor, of refugees and the displaced, of those who live in fear in occupied territories, of those who constantly feel vulnerable to economic, political, and military forces beyond their control, or even the control of their whole family or village or perhaps even nation.

God knows the suffering of the hungry and the outcast, of those taken advantage of because the world sees them as weak.

God knows the grief of the grieving, and the pain of betrayal at the hands of those from whom you would expected loyalty.

God knows the distress that just might be the hardest of all to bear: the terrible loneliness of one who is suffering and who feels torn from or abandoned by everyone who might provide consolation - even God himself. God doesn’t just understand, He knows the pain and the anguish that people suffer because He suffered it in the person of Jesus.

Our God naked on the cross, put there by fellow human beings whose humanity has been twisted by hatred and violence is an everlasting sign for poor, suffering, and vulnerable people that says: I know how you feel. This is not just a well-intentioned "I feel your pain" spoken by someone who offers comfort; it's not just a pious version of "I've been there, and I remember just how terrible it was" - expressing relief as much as anything else on the speaker's part that it's now over.

The broken body of Christ on the cross is representative of God's eternal character. God was and is and always will be until the day when every tear is wiped from people’s eyes and sorrow and death shall be no more present with, and one with those who suffer. I am reminded about the story Eli Wiesel, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, told about an event in the Nazi concentration camp where he was imprisoned when all the inmates were assembled and forced to witness the hanging of three prisoners. Two of the men died quickly. The third victim, a boy, was so light that he remained writhing at the end of the rope for half an hour. As the prisoners watched the boy’s slow death in horror, Wiesel heard a gruff voice behind him ask “Where is He? Where is God?” And Wiesel felt himself answer in his heart, “He is here, hanging from this gallows.”

Strength and power and faith can be reinforced by the knowledge that God is in the midst of all human suffering. Jesus taught this by his words and actions in the weeks before he set his face towards Jerusalem. He said that the poor, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, and those who were hated and reviled and persecuted were blessed, and honoured by God; he spoke out against the rich and the comfortable and to the elite of Jerusalem at whose mercy he was, and found none.

Many people in this world have been taught from before they could speak to fear anything and anyone who might remind them of their vulnerability to illness, to age, to misfortune, to grief, to loneliness, to death. But the events of Good Friday show that in these things we can closely identify with the aching cry of our suffering God who was the Word made Flesh and asks us to be the same.

Reflecting on the events of Good Friday theologian Henri Nouwen said this: “It was a terrible scene yet one permeated with a haunting beauty which came forth from the magnificent love of His Heart. His crucified figure silhouetted against a darkening sky is the everlasting reminder that to live is to love and that to love involves not only joy but also suffering.”

In the darkest moments, against the apparent futile pain of the world the cross of Christ Jesus allows us to enter into the mystery of a suffering God hanging on a cross upheld not by the cruel nails but by His own great love for humanity. The God of the Gospel is not a lofty, unfeeling God. The God of the Gospel is the God who was with Christ to the very end, the One who knows pain from personal experience.

The full meaning of that word Emmanuel, which we use in our Christmas carols, was lived out in Jesus’ death at the place called Golgotha. This God of Good Friday is the God of all sufferers whether they know it or not. In the words of poet Edward Shillito:

The other gods were strong;

but thou wast weak;

They rode but thou didst stumble to a throne.

But to our wounds only God’s wounds

can speak.

And not a god has wounds but thou alone.

But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak?

Today is Good Friday. Not Black Friday. Love outweighs the evil. Purpose surpasses the futility.

Please do not think for one moment that I understand it all. I don’t, and never will in this life. I cannot understand why God has left the door open for evil, or why God permits suffering to continue. One thing I do know: God was in Christ on the cross. God not only sympathised with the victims of cruelty, God became a victim, and still identifies with every victim around the world. Where some see only despair, God’s gives amazing grace. God is with all who suffer with every victim with all who are afraid that they may know and see Him as the suffering, dying, and living God and let Him be the source of their life as they share pain and suffering and sorrow and hope however and wherever and with whoever they can.

May it be so in all of our lives. Amen.