Good Friday 2024
Texts: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42
Toward the very end of his life Jesus called out from the cross, “I thirst.” Someone gave him sour wine on a sponge to moisten his lips, trying to alleviate Jesus’ discomfort. Jesus was physically suffering. After Jesus accepted the sour wine he said, “It is finished”, and he died. His body gave out.
There has been research that reveals the brain interprets emotional pain just as it does physical pain. Anyone who has had a heart-breaking emotional experience knows this. Deep or shocking emotional pain can lead one to feel as if they were physically dying. People have been known to faint from emotional shock.
I knew someone whose parents were immigrants from Italy and they had been married over 50 years and raised 13 children in the United States. The wife died in her early 60’s from a sudden illness, and although the husband was perfectly healthy and still relatively young, he died within a few months. The doctors could not say what happened. His family was convinced that he died from a broken heart. Sometimes intense emotional pain and physical pain are the same.
In the same way Jesus’ pain on the cross was not just physical. It was also emotional. And, though you and I were not there and did not take part in that trial, we too are responsible for what happened to the Son of God, even though we were born and live almost 2,000 years after the fact.
Jesus was alone on the cross for our sins. The collective weight of all the sins humanity could ever commit weighed on his hands and his feet, even those sins still yet to be committed. Isaiah wrote, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid upon him (Jesus) the iniquity of us all.”
His closest friends had abandoned Jesus. Peter lied that he even knew Jesus. Judas had betrayed him for money. The Jewish leaders and the Romans had given him a mockery of a trial, with a predetermined outcome. The crowd cheered on this injustice and spat upon a kind, innocent man.
God had come to us in human form to save us from the consequences of our own evil, and we rejected him, mocked him, and condemned him to die as if he had committed some terrible crime. It was an outrageous injustice.
We know Jesus as the Son of God, and as Our Lord and Savior, but he was also fully human, with physical and emotional needs. It is on a day like this that we remember this.
One of my favorite movies is “Field of Dreams”. The voice that Ray hears on the wind blowing in his Iowa cornfield eventually says, “Ease his pain.” Ray is following a mysterious voice that leads him to be reconciled with his father, who had long been dead. Ray had not previously understood the emotional pain he caused his father, but when the time comes for that meeting between heaven and earth, Ray’s dad is gracious and forgiving.
On this day as we consider our role in putting Jesus on the cross, some of us have the greatest desire to ease his pain. We might not be able to attend to Jesus’ physical pain, but perhaps we can atone for his emotional pain during the time of his Passion.
We can console Jesus these ways. We can shed tears for him, and express how we have failed to live the life his sacrificial grace has allowed us to live, and we can go to the foot of the cross to be with him and not abandon him, we can defend him in our time and represent him truthfully and accurately to those around us, we can stand up for him while others mock us.
We can go back in time to the day of the crucifixion and be loyal, and honest, and courageous, and compassionate. Ultimately, we can ease his pain by loving him as he loves us even now, after all these years. Amen.
