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The Reverend Canon Beth Knowlton
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
April 2, 2010
Good Friday - Year C
12:00 pm
When I was a child, there were few words that got my attention more
quickly than, "Elizabeth Marie Clemmer, come here." I don't need to
tell you, this was never a call to celebration. It was a call to an
accounting. Why had I left something in a place it had no business
being left? Why had I failed to attend to an assigned task? Why had a
neighbor seen me a place I had no business being?
When I heard the call, I got to wherever my mother was, on the double, with my stomach firmly lodged in my throat.
I
hated being in trouble. I tried to do whatever I could to avoid it. I
learned quickly what things appeared to be most important to my
parents, my teachers, to all in authority, so that I could hit the
mark. If I hit the mark, I was good. I was worthy of love. If not, I
was separated, defective, and needed to get my act together.
Once
I was in trouble, I did everything I could to get out of it. I
apologized. I tried to correct the mistake. I wanted to somehow pay my
way out of this terrible feeling of failure and disappointment.
I
vividly remember one occasion where I messed up. I had fought with my
mom. I couldn't even tell you what I did or what we fought about. But I
remember how I felt. I remember being terrified that somehow, I had to
fix this feeling in my stomach. There had to be a reconciliation. And
then I did something rather strange.
I took a 3x5 note card, scrawled a note of apology with a blue felt tipped pen on it.
Then, I taped two quarters to the card, and left it on my parent's bed.
This makes no sense to me now.
It makes all the sense in the world to me now.
I
was not raised in a religious tradition that reminded me of my
sinfulness. I was always told of a loving God. I was certainly never
told that I needed Jesus to pay a debt for me because I was so sinful.
My parents never said their love for me was predicated on perfect
behavior.
But deep down, I was worried. Two quarters taped
clumsily to an index card, somehow symbolized my impression that I had
to pay my way back into being loved.
We come to Good Friday from
many places, with many needs. But I suspect many of us share a
question. Who do we need this Jesus to be for us? What salvation is
being offered to us on the hard wood of the cross?
Do we need
Jesus to be someone who shares our despair? The Jesus who humanly cries
out in the garden for his suffering to be taken away? Do we need Jesus
to be someone who has been shamed and mocked on the cross? Do we need
Jesus to be someone who offers comfort to those who are being crucified
alongside him? Do we need Jesus to be someone whose crucifixion causes
the sun to darken and the earth to shake?
Who do we need this Jesus to be? Today, at the hour of his death.
For
a long part of my journey these were the elements I was most aware of
needing. It was how I could make sense of my own need for Jesus as
Savior. I needed Jesus to be able to understand the depths of my own
humanity and be so radically affiliated with it that this would be
raised up into the life of God. No matter how far away God felt,
through the mediation of this Jesus, those human needs would be known
and honored.
This picture of Jesus still comforts me when I come up against my own despair and limits.
It is an important Jesus for us to need. It is the Jesus we are given in the passion accounts from Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
But
those are not the needs we have met on Good Friday. The Gospel of John
doesn't give us any of that. Instead, John gives a Jesus that perhaps
we don't even know we need.
The Jesus who comes to us today
has had any notion of "relate ability" stripped away. We cannot take
this passion account, look at this Jesus and then discern some
practical advice for how we should approach our own suffering.
But
that is a gift. While we need Jesus to be connected to our humanity, we
can never leave it at that. We need Jesus to transcend our own
potential and offer us something else in its place. We need this Jesus,
the Christ to turn our world upside down.
When the world is
turned upside down, we see the victory that so strangely comes through
death. That God --- in and through the Jesus of Good Friday has offered
us an abundance of love. A love we can never measure.
The love
that is offered on the cross is not something we can calculate our
share of. We cannot pay for it on a 3x5 note card with coins and scotch
tape. It is stronger than any cry of suffering or more powerful than
the strongest earthquake.
It is an act of such purity that it forever wipes out the measures we can imagine. It is pure gift.
We
have it from our birth. It takes more than a lifetime to appreciate.
But it has been given. And it comes to us today. It comes to us on Good
Friday.
Amen
Comments? Contact Beth Knowlton at: BKnowlton@stphilipscathedral.org
