The Very Rev. Dennis J.J. Schmidt
29 March 2002
This year I come to Good Friday with a different mindset. It has become more personal, more real and the outrage of the cross is a gut feeling and not a heady concept. I come to Good Friday on the smoldering embers of September 11th. I approach this day with a real anxiety created out of the violence, the threats, and the fears that stalk us. Scripture phrases like, Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1Peter 5:8) The Prophet Jeremiah was right when he said, They have treated my wounded people carelessly saying peace, peace when there is no peace. (Jeremiah 6:14) Violence surrounds our lives and quiet fear and suspicion stalk our streets. Violence is not just something over there, away from us, an abstract report on the news. It is now an intimate acquaintance. Violence once committed haunts our lives forever. I think of Peresi, our mother from the Sudan who suffers from colloids. Colloids are scar tissue that instead of healing continues to grow so that they must be surgically removed. She has the wounds because of being attacked with knives in the Sudan. And so her life is an example of knives that have lead to endless knives, suffering that does not leave her but actually physically grows. Her scars tell the truth that 90% of our world lives daily and now after September 11th it is a part of the streets we walk too.
When you consider the passion narrative, you cannot help but think about the central role that violence plays in our faith. When we consider Jesus and his ministry there is no human condition that his teaching, healing, life and death that is not embraced by him. The story of his life reaches its climax in vortex of violence and death. The old mediaeval theologies have left us with a shallow understand of the role that his death plays in our salvation. They explained his death as if it were a trial, a courtroom drama. Jesus takes our place in the trial they argued. He stands in for us the grievous sinners, the criminals who deserve the punishment of death. He bears our sentence for us and as such appeases the just outrage of God. While there are deep threads of truth in this attempt to explain the crucifixion, I am convinced that there is deeper and more substantial truth woven in the crucifixion. First and foremost it speaks loudly the truth that God bears all things with us. He bears the power and results of violence. He bears torture and death. He does so with love and forgiveness. Jesus offers his life as a sacrifice of love. He makes peace for us by his sacrificial love. He teaches us that love cannot be sustained where there is no peace and that peace is given where we bare the pain of others. He teaches us that resurrection is the fruit of sacrifice and that peace is the sign of its presence. New life happens when we sacrifice for each other and peace is the net result. New life with God happened for us when Jesus was sacrifice for us, and peace is the net result. It is a peace that passes understanding.
We do not make peace in any broken relationship by forcing our ways upon others. God would not force himself on us. There is no peace where we do not make room for the differences of others. God does not demand uniformity. There is no peace where we take but rarely give. God does not forcefully take from us. God in Jesus teaches the healing power of giving. There is no peace where daily bread, health and security are not possible. God does not ignore the poor, the powerless, the hungry and the sick to create a pretend peace. He joins the poor as one with them suffering the fate that has always been theirs: violence, ridicule, hatred, prejudice and death. Peace is made only when we sacrifice for others. When one says no to self, even when it hurts or deprives self, so that another thing can be for the other, peace is the result. The cross is truly at the center of Gods desire for shalom to reign throughout all lives, because it is God making the most precious sacrifice he can, so that peace may be made for us and between us.
We do not appropriate this truth without being driven to silence and stillness, and without in someway appropriating the significance of a sacrifice that is made out of love for us. On Good Friday, for many centuries, the Church has attempted to appropriate the significance of Jesus death and significance that there were three days that we could not touch the living Lord, the significance that his death was a true and real sacrifice. And so for centuries on this one day there is no communion. When we do not approach the altar for communion with him, it reminds that the sacrifice had to be real for us to receive the peace and the new life. And so we return to that ancient tradition today so that we may contemplate the depth of the loving sacrifice he made for us and thus ready our hearts to receive the peace he will give us in the resurrection. For resurrection is the fruit of sacrifice and peace is the sign of its presence. May we open our hearts to make sacrifice as he did so that resurrection peace may live between us, and the power of violence in this world be finally and totally broken.
Amen