The Rev. Noah Van Niel
March 30th, 2018
St. John the Evangelist
Good Friday (B)
For whom are you willing to die?
Apologies if that’s putting too fine a point on things, but this is a day of fine points. A day not for metaphor and allusion but for flesh and blood, skin and bone, nails and wood. It is a day of piercing directness: “For whom are you willing to die?”
Every Good Friday I ask myself that question. And as I roll through the list of people in my head I am often surprised, and more than a little ashamed at how few people are actually on it. Apparently I am not the hero I cast myself as in my mind. And I resolve every year lengthen that list.
Your list may be longer. I hope it is. You may also be someone who is willing to die for an idea over and above just a person: for country, for freedom, for equality, for peace. Working from the assumption that you cherish your life, the willingness to sacrifice it for another person or an ideal, so they can keep living is what we rightly consider the greatest gift you can give someone else. To say, “Your life is more valuable than mine” is the most powerful thing one can say to another. We have a lot of names for it: courage, heroism, selflessness. But God would call it “love.”
Think on those relationships, those connections with the people you would die for. Chances are they are the most substantive, loving relationships of your entire existence. When I think about my list, they are people or ideas I love in a way that defies expression or explanation. And more truthfully they are those whose love for me has sustained me and shaped me through my life. Now dwell on that person or people or ideal and know that the love you feel for them is but a piece of the love Jesus has for you. Jesus died for you, because he loves you.
Which brings us to the cross. The intersection of death and love, pain and beauty, loss and gain. There, emblazoned for all to see, is the extent of Jesus’ love for you. For us, yes, for ideals yes, but for you. Jesus was willing to die for you. You made it onto his list. Every single one of us did. Jesus suffered not just for his family, but for those who never knew him; not just for his friends, but for his enemies; for those who lived in his time, for those who came before him and for those who were yet to come; those who would know him only through faith, and story and prayer, and sacrament still he died for them. That’s me. That’s you.
This sacrifice, made out of love, is emblematic of the God we believe in. There is no stronger force in the universe than that kind of love. It was, John tells us, there from the beginning and all things that have been created passed through it on their way from nothing to something. And it was there at the end, strung up for all the world to see. The world is laced with that love. It is the fuel on which it runs. It is the truest thing we know and the most wonderful thing imaginable.
We have the chance to give thanks for that love today. To kiss, or reverence this wooden cross, this emblem of love. Do so in recognition of the love given to you and in thanksgiving for the love it inspires in you. But our gratitude need not stop there, at the foot of the cross. When you go forth from this place today think on those people you love so much that you are willing to die for them, and give them a call, or a hug, or a kiss and say thank you. Because they are what make this Friday, good.