A Sermon for Good Friday
March 29, 2024
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.
Last month, I—along with a few members of our parish—traveled south to Daphne, Alabama, for the annual convention of our diocese. We had a wonderful time, and while we were there, we had the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and meet new people and to hear some wonderful presentations on evangelism and Christian formation.
On the last day of the convention, during the closing Eucharist, our bishop preached a sermon and shared a story that I’ve been thinking a lot about ever since.
He could tell it much better than I can, but it basically goes like this…
In his former life, before going to seminary and becoming a priest, the bishop worked as an architect, and part of his job was going and interviewing with potential clients to try and get work.
One of his strangest meetings was with a church.
This church was incredibly popular and successful, and they had grown so much that they needed to build a new building to accommodate all the new people who were coming to worship.
So, the bishop interviewed for the job.
This church was so prosperous that they decided to hire an outside consultant to come in and tell them what they needed to include in the new building.
So, this consultant came in and surveyed the people, and they came up with three recommendations for the new building.
Number one. Put cushions in all the chairs. No pews, only chairs…with lots of cushion.
Second, include lots of technology, and spare no expense. Screens, speakers, all the works.
And their third recommendation. Do not put a cross anywhere in the building. Because apparently, the people they surveyed felt the cross wasn’t pleasant to look at every time they went to church and they thought it was a bit outdated.
When the bishop said those words, my jaw dropped.
And you could hear groans coming from the congregation. For a group of Episcopalians, the idea of not including a cross in a church speaks completely against what we know to be true about Jesus, the one who said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Now, I don’t know whether or not this church actually followed through with it.
But, just the idea of not including a cross—the symbol of our Christian faith—in a church should cause us to pause and wonder why.
This isn’t an isolated occurrence, either.
I recently came across an article from 2018 written by an Episcopal priest from the Diocese of Louisiana, who wrote about a time when he once returned home and went to the church he used to attend during college breaks.
He noticed that the wooden cross on the front lawn had rotted at the base and fallen down, and when he asked the pastor when it was going to be put back up, the pastor responded, “We’re not going to do that. The cross is such a negative image for so many people. We’ll find something more positive to focus on, instead.”
Like with the bishop’s story, I was stunned when I read those words.
Dear friends, if all people see when they look at the cross is an instrument of pain and death, then we have a serious problem. If the only thing people feel when they look at the cross is sadness and despair, then we haven’t done our job as a Church. I’m not talking about just St. Mary’s. I’m talking about the Church as a whole.
As Christians, we know better. Or, at least we should. We know that the cross isn’t just a sad reminder of something that happened two thousand years ago on a hill outside of Jerusalem. It’s a symbol of hope that’s endured for centuries—a reminder for all of us that, through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, salvation has come to the whole world.
The cross isn’t something we should ever be ashamed of because we’re afraid it might make people feel uncomfortable. It’s not something we should ever hide or take down in order to make people feel better about coming to church or belonging to the Christian faith.
The cross is something we should share because we know its true meaning and power. It’s something we should share because we who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ know that the way of the cross is the path that leads to abundant life with God.
Paul wrote about it this way in his first letter to the Corinthians: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Because of God’s great love for the world, he took an instrument of death and turned it into the means of our salvation. Because Jesus was willing to endure the pain and agony of the cross and to give up his life, we have been reconciled with God. The powers of sin and death have been defeated once and for all, and we never have to live in fear again.
And, that’s the reason why we call this particular day, “good.”
Amen.
The Rev. Eric Mancil 