Good Friday C – March 29, 2013

Good Friday Homily                                             March 29, 2013

 

Luther Memorial Church                                      Seattle, WA

 

The Rev. Julie G. Hutson

 

We view the cross on this night from a distance….the distance of thousands of years – the distance of skepticism – we distance ourselves from the cross by making it into something manageable and acceptable.  It is a wall decoration or a piece of jewelry.  It is art or image.  It is sung word or spoken story.

But the cross is, ultimately, an instrument of death.  And not just death – tortuous death.

Understanding it as such changes our viewpoint.

There is one viewpoint, in particular, though, that I find unimaginable, when considering Jesus on the cross.  In my wildest imaginings and in my worst nightmares I cannot comprehend what it might have been like for Mary, the mother of Jesus, to stand at the foot of the cross and watch him hanging there.  No mother wishes to see her child in pain.  And for Mary, I imagine that this was the culmination of a lifetime lived in the certainty of her faith and in the uncertainty of this radical teacher that was her son.

This past Monday, in the life of the church, we observed the Annunciation of Mary – we remembered the visit of Gabriel to her as a young girl to announce to her that she would be bearing the son of God.  It was unusual to find this commemoration falling during Holy Week, yet it felt somehow oddly right.  Because if we take our cues from Mary on this night  we don’t leave the foot of the cross.  We don’t look away.  We stay there, no matter how painful it might be.

We stay, in 2013, because we know the rest of the story.  We can endure Good Friday because we know that Easter is coming.  But Mary and the others gathered there didn’t know…not for sure.  Peter denied knowing Jesus three times, and the other disciples eventually ran and hid behind locked doors.  But not the women and not his mother.  She would stand at the foot of the cross, keeping vigil with this boy child of hers – the very one announced to her by the angel, the tiny babe in the manger, the boy in the temple and the radical teacher of love.

The poet Sylvia Sands wonders at his mother in her poem entitled “The Mother”

People are kind.

Come away, they cry.

No need to put yourself through this.

He’ll understand.

But I am his mother,

And though nailsl pierce his body,

And a sword sunders my soul,

I must stand with him,

I must stand by him,

I must stand up in this his hour of dying.

And yet, and yet,

There’s more at stake than that.

From somewhere within

This horror of great darkness,

Gabriel-haunted still,

I dream dreams, hear voices, see visions.

I see others.

Mothers, sons, brothers, daughters,

Sisters, fathers, friends, lovers,

A vast army who will not turn away;

Clad in the armour of fidelity

And hollow-eyed courage,

They will stand by,

Stand with,

Stand up,

In those slow, diming,

Dove-grey hours of dying…[1]

May we, on this terrible Good Friday, like Mary, keep watch at the cross, not because we know the rest of the story, but because we know the author of the story.

Amen.