A Homily for Good Friday
April 7, 2023
Text: John 18:1-19:42
Loving God, on this most solemn day in the life of the Church, we ask you to be gentle with us and to show us your love and mercy. Help us, we pray, as we bear witness to the events of our Lord’s suffering and death and as we contemplate their meaning for our lives. And then use us, we pray, as instruments of your healing in this broken and sinful world. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Several years ago, Chelsea and I went to the movie theater to see a wonderful film. Some of you may have seen it before. It’s called The Shack, and it was based on a book by William Paul Young. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it to you.
The main character in the film is a man named Mack who suffers a terrible loss early on in the movie when his daughter, Missy, is abducted and killed.
Several months after the tragedy, Mack receives a strange note in his mailbox, inviting him to go to “the shack,” the place where police discovered evidence of his daughter’s murder.
At first, he’s hesitant to go, thinking that it might it be some cruel joke. But, eventually, he decides to go, and when he arrives, he discovers that God is waiting for him.
In The Shack, God appears to Mack as three different people—each representing a different part of the Trinity. God the Father, or “Papa,” as he’s called in the movie, appears to Mack as an African American woman played by Octavia Spencer.
God the Son appears as “Jesus,” a young, Jewish carpenter, with olive skin and dark hair, and God the Holy Spirit appears as “Sarayu,” a young Asian woman.
There are so many memorable scenes in The Shack, but there’s one in particular that moves me to tears every time I watch it.
It occurs early on in the film, after Mack meets Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu for the first time. Papa invites Mack to come inside the house and help her make bread for supper.
And after some time, while they’re working in the kitchen, Papa tells Mack that she knows there’s this great divide between them because of what happened to his daughter.
She tells Mack that she wants to heal the broken relationship between them.
But Mack is angry. He tells Papa that she abandoned him and his daughter when they needed her the most. He tells her that she must have a bad habit of turning her back on those whom she supposedly loves, including Jesus.
“He said it himself,” Mack says, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Then, Papa looks at Mack and shakes her head.
“No, Mack,” Papa says, “you misunderstand the mystery.”
Then, she takes his hands in hers and shows him the scars on her wrists. She says to Mack, “Don’t ever think that what my son chose to do didn’t cost us both dearly. Love always leaves a mark. We were there together. I never left him. I never left you. I never left Missy.”
Now, The Shack is just a made-up story. It’s a wonderful story, but it’s a work of fiction, based on the ideas and imagination of one person.
But, to me, this scene between Mack and Papa and the conversation they have serves as a beautiful illustration of the kind of love that God has for each of us and the kind of love that Jesus demonstrated on the cross.
It’s a powerful scene, and I love that line toward the end that Papa says to Mack.
“Love always leaves a mark.”
And, I think it’s absolutely true.
Think about it for a moment. Think about all the great loves you’ve known in your life and how they’ve impacted you. The love of a child. The love of a husband or a wife or a significant other. The love of a parent. The love of a close friend or family member.
We wouldn’t be who we are today without the people in our lives who’ve loved us and touched us in some way.
Because love always leaves a mark.
True love—when it’s self-giving and sacrificial—leaves behind an impression that marks us and changes us forever.
And there’s never been a truer love than the love of Jesus, who endured the worst that humanity could inflict upon him and laid down his life on our behalf so that we might be forgiven and reconciled with God.
It’s why we call this day Good Friday.
It’s not because of the suffering Jesus endured.
It’s what God was able to accomplish through the suffering. An instrument of pain and death has become for us the instrument of our salvation.
If Palm Sunday invites us to contemplate the shock and scandal of the cross, Good Friday invites us to contemplate the healing power of the cross—that through our Lord’s Passion and death, he conquered death and opened up for us the way to eternal life with God.
God didn’t force Jesus to go to the cross, and I don’t believe that it was God’s will for Jesus to suffer and die the way that he did.
God sent Jesus to teach us a better and more loving way to live and to save us from the power of sin and death, and despite the pain and suffering it caused him, he never strayed from the path that God called him to walk.
Jesus chose to go to the cross for you and for me so that we might never be alone again, and because of that great act of love, we have been changed forever. Death has been defeated forever. We have been marked as Christ’s own forever.
Because love always leaves a mark. Amen.
The Rev. Eric Mancil 