Good Friday: Amazing Friday

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Good Friday Service, April 10, 2009

Good. Good Friday. I’ve always had a problem with that. I never quite understood it, why we called it Good Friday. I know, I know, I’m the one with all the theological education. I should know why it’s called Good Friday and I’ve heard all the explanations. We call it Good Friday because this is the day in which Jesus died for our sins. This is when He won our salvation. Therefore, it’s good, yes, good for us. It didn’t work out so well for Jesus, though. So I wonder, good?

I read a new explanation this past week. They say Good Friday has actually been condensed, kind of like goodbye. Maybe you didn’t know this but goodbye used to be God be with you and they shrunk it down to goodbye. Now you see, that’s what happened with Good Friday. It used to be God’s Friday and now it’s Good Friday. I suppose I could go with God’s Friday but I have another suggestion. I’m going to say that we rename today. I don’t know if it’s going to catch on or not, probably not, but at least indulge me for tonight. I think we should call it Amazing Friday. I think that fits a whole lot better than Good Friday. Amazing Friday. It’s Amazing Friday because this is the day in which we commemorate the death of Jesus, do we not? And usually when you think about the death of a loved one, don’t you gather round as a family and friends and you tell stories about their life and you recall events that you shared with them and that’s part of the healing process. So if this is the night in which we commemorate Jesus’ life and we remember His death, then shouldn’t we take a look at all of Jesus’ life. And if you do that, my friends, if you look at all of Jesus’ life in one sort of broad stroke, there’s only one word that really describes that. And that’s amazing. It’s just simply amazing. From his conception to his crucifixion, it’s amazing.

Think about His birth. No, think about even before He was born. Doesn’t it strike you as amazing that Jesus came and lived among us? You see, I’m not even talking about the miraculous conception of Mary, about how the Holy Spirit overshadowed her and now a virgin was going to give birth to the Messiah. No, no, I’m talking about Jesus sitting in heaven next to His Father. He is the all powerful, all knowing God sitting at the right hand of His Father. He has all of eternity in front of Him. He is spirit. He is eternal and now He makes the decision to be part of His creation, not only to become part of His creation but He says that He’s going to grow up in the womb of a young woman and spend nine months developing, that He’s going to be so vulnerable that He would be completely dependent upon Mary, God being completely dependent upon one of His own creation. And Jesus makes the decision to come. What other word is there to describe it besides amazing? How else do you explain it? It’s not rational. It doesn’t make sense. It’s just amazing.

If you page through the pages of the gospels, you’ll find out that, time and time again, people describe their experience with Jesus as being amazing. Even his parents. When Jesus was 13 years old, they went off to Jerusalem. They’re going to celebrate the Passover. They do all of that and they leave with the whole entourage. And, all of a sudden, they notice Jesus isn’t around anymore. So His parents have to trounce back to Jerusalem to try to find Him. Do you recall the story? After searching for him for three days, they find Him in the temple and He’s in deep theological discussions with the teachers of the day. And He’s befuddling them and He’s answering them and asking them challenging questions. There’s only one way it was described. It says, “Everyone who heard Him was amazed at His understanding and His answers.” Just amazed.

Think of the things that Jesus did in His ministry. Think of the lives He touched, the people He healed. Most of the time, it was done very quietly. He would just simply look down and say, “Your sins are forgiven.” Or He’d reach out and He’d touch someone and their eyesight would be back or, all of a sudden, they could hear or their leprosy was gone. But there were those occasions when a crowd gathered around. Maybe you remember there was the paralytic and his friends so desperate to take him to see Jesus but they couldn’t get close. They climbed up on the roof of the house. They dug a hole in the roof of the house and they lowered the guy so he was right smack dab in front of Jesus and, there he was, waiting to be healed. Jesus has compassion on him, tells him that his sins are forgiven. He gets flack from the Pharisees that are around and then He says, “Well, is it easier then just to say to you, ‘Hey, get up. Take your mat and walk away.’” And so it says, “The man immediately got up, took his mat and got home, praising God and then everyone was amazed and gave praise to God.”

How about His disciples? Disciples were with Him for three years, 24-7. You’d think that they’d seen everything. They witnessed this. They watched Him walk on water. They saw Him turn water into wine, the whole gamut. They saw all of that. But when they were in the boat in the middle of the lake and this storm comes up and these experienced fishermen are fearing for their lives because they think this is it and Jesus is snoozing in the back and they go and wake Jesus up and say, “We’re going to die, Jesus.” And He kind of sleepily looks at them, yawns, looks out and says, “Be still.” And like that, everything is calm. There is only one thing they could think of. It says, “They were amazed and they said to one another ‘Who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey Him?’”

Over thirty times in the New Testament, people describe Jesus as being amazing. Whether it’s the authority with which He speaks or whether it’s the actions which He does or it’s the teachings He has, people are constantly amazed at Jesus. And there are even those accounts that people don’t say they’re amazed but you know they had to be amazed. When He said to Lazarus who’d been in the tomb for three days, “Lazarus, come out,” you know that Mary and Martha were amazed when their brother came out alive.

How about the woman who was accused of adultery, thrown down at the feet of Jesus? And there the crowd stands tossing rocks in their hands because they can’t wait to hurl them at her because that’s the punishment for adultery. And Jesus diffuses the situation and He looks down at the woman and He says, “Do none of them condemn you?” She looks up and says, “No.” And then He says, “Then neither do I.” Tell me she wasn’t amazed. Tell me she wasn’t awestruck at this man. “Neither do I.”

The people of Jesus’ time were amazed at Him. Are you? You should be because He lived for you. He lived for you. Scripture tells us that, St. Paul writing to the Church at Galatia, says this, “But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son born of a woman, born under law to redeem those under law so that we might receive the full rights of sons.” That we might be considered Jesus’ brother, that we might be able to call upon God in heaven as our Father. In fact, He goes beyond that. He says we could call Him Abba Father, we could call Him Dad in heaven. Jesus came for you and Jesus lived for you. That means Jesus went through nine months in the womb for you. That means Jesus lived and He struggled and He laughed and He cried and He died for you. Now I find that humbling and amazing.

If you think His life was amazing, that’s nothing in comparison to His death. Take a look at the situation surrounding the death of Jesus and you’ll be amazed. Pilate was. Jesus is standing before Pilate and Pilate is interrogating Him, questioning Him, trying to get something out of Him and Jesus stands mute. He won’t say a word back to Pilate. You know what Scripture says? That finally, Pilate is so exasperated, he says, “Don’t you understand what’s happening here? Don’t you understand the accusations against you?” And Scripture says, “But Jesus said nothing and Pilate was,” you guessed it, “amazed.” How could he not be amazed? He knew Jesus was innocent. He knew they were just trumped up charges. He even said that “The religious leaders are just jealous and they’re trying to get something on you. Say a word, Jesus. Defend yourself, Jesus,” and he can let you go but Jesus doesn’t say a word. It almost makes you think that He wants to be found guilty, doesn’t it? You almost think that He knows what’s going to happen. He did. He knew all of the stuff that Judas was doing. Didn’t He tell His disciples before the troops ever arrived, He said, “Stand up. Get ready. They’re coming to arrest me.” And then, all of a sudden, they’re there. Better than that, days, weeks ahead, before they even came into Jerusalem, He told His disciples on more than one occasion, “When we get to Jerusalem, they’re going to arrest me. They’re going to crucify me. I’m going to die and they’re going to put me in the grave.” Jesus knew. He knew everything that was going to happen. And yet He didn’t say a word. Isn’t that amazing?

Oh, maybe you can pass it off and you can say, “But He was God, you see, and He knew how the story was going to end. He knew what was going to happen three days later. He was God so He could stand up underneath the pain. He could take all the agony that He was going to go through.” Have you forgotten His humanity? Have you forgotten that just moments before the soldiers arrived, Jesus is in the garden sweating drops of blood, calling out, “Father, is there another way? Couldn’t there be another solution?” In His humanity, He did not want to die. In His humanity, He had to have all kinds of anxious thoughts about the fact that He would face not only the physical pain but to feel the weight of the world of guilt upon Him and to face hell itself. “Isn’t there another way?” Jesus didn’t have to die. He chose to die. At a moment’s notice, with the snap of a finger, a legion of angels could have been at His side. Now isn’t that amazing?

And if you’re not amazed at the Son, then be amazed at the Father because the Father in heaven looks down and the Father turns His back on His Son. His Son is crying out to Him for another way and He remains mute. His arms hold back the angels from rushing to His aid. The Father hangs His head but He doesn’t say a word. How do you explain that? What word do you use to describe it other than amazing? Pilate was amazed. Are you? You should be. Because He died for you.

Jesus didn’t say a word and the Father didn’t release the angels for you. As Jesus stayed mute before Pilate, as He endured the whipping, as He felt the thorn of crowns upon His head and as He hung upon the cross, He thought about you. Scripture attests to it. Paul, writing to the Church at Rome, says this, “You see, at just the right time, while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” I don’t want to break this to you but that’s you and me. We’re the ungodly because we don’t follow God on our own. We can’t do anything good on our own. He goes on to say, “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die.” So if you were good, maybe, possibly, someone would die for you. But each of us knows, even if no one else around us knows, we are not good. We know of our own sin. We know of our thoughts, our actions, our words. We’re well aware of the fact that we are not good. So no one’s going to die for us. But then he goes on and he says this, “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were still against God, while we were going in the opposite direction, while we were still lost to sin, Christ died for you. I don’t know any other word than amazing. I don’t know how to describe the love of God or the actions of Jesus than to say it’s amazing.

That’s why I think today is not Good Friday. I think it’s Amazing Friday. When you look at the life and death of Jesus, I don’t know how you can be anything else but amazed. Are you amazed?

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church