Good Friday - April 18, 2003
By The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland
(From The Lectionary Page)
In the month of September, in the Year of Our Lord Seventeen Hundred and Seventy-Six, General George Washington’s armies were in retreat and the war that would come to be called the American Revolution was not going according to plan. Little more than two months earlier, fifty-six men, representing the thirteen United States, had signed a document penned by Thomas Jefferson that begins with the words,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…
The power and the poetry of these words are such that I have difficulty imagining that they alone were not enough to free a people from oppression. How could the English parliament, upon receipt of this document, not immediately see the justice and rightness of the American people’s need to be free? How could King George III, being presented with this declaration, not have promptly recalled all British soldiers, repealed all British taxes, and wished the American people the best of luck? And yet, the words were not enough. Blood would have to be spilt, and British and American soldiers would have to be killed, before the American Colonies would be free.
In that month of September it could not have looked to General Washington like the Revolution he was fighting would ever be successful. He was out-manned, out-gunned, out-trained, out-historied, and indeed out-classed on every level important to a military general. And in that dark September, Thomas Paine, an English writer turned American soldier, wrote these words:
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
I have for the past several months been thinking a lot about early American history. In part because I am looking for inspiration and reference to ground my thoughts and feelings about the War our country is now involved in. And in part because I am reading a book by a young woman named Sarah Vowell ("The Partly-Cloudy Patriot". Simon & Shuster: NY. 2000). In her book, Ms. Vowell talks about the events of the American Revolution, and wonders at how the possibility of failure must have loomed large in the hearts of those who lived through it, however sure we are today from our greater perspective. And she admires the words of Thomas Paine and his exhortation to the “summer soldier and sunshine patriot.” Then she makes a long list of all the things our country has done wrong or badly through our short but bloody history, and comes to the conclusion she is only a Partly-Cloudy patriot herself.
I have three thoughts about all this. The first is that Thomas Paine was right. Something worth doing is even more worth doing when it is hard to do; yet for most of us the doing will be too hard. The second is that those dark days of the American Revolution must have been just a little bit like Good Friday. The third is that, at best, I am only a Partly-Cloudy Christian.
Just as the words of the Declaration of Independence were not enough to free the American colonies despite their poetry and rightness, so were the words of Jesus, the power and poetry of his parables and teachings, not enough to free us. Just as an American freedom required sacrifice of blood and lives, so to did our freedom require Jesus’ sacrifice of blood, and life.
All of the Joy of Easter Sunday is founded here tonight. We are at the very bottom, the uttermost root of everything Jesus came to bring us: Life, and that abundantly. Good Friday, this one dark and terror-filled day of despair holds upon its breaking shoulders the entire weight of our freedom. On this day, when not only the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots had abandoned the cause, but even the most intimate of Jesus’ followers became betrayers and despaired; on this day when the good fight became not difficult, but impossible; on this day, when no human being could make the sacrifice required, God was killed.
In the face of such brutal reality, there is not one among us upon whom the sun shines fully. We are all Partly-Cloudy Christians, we are all guilty, we are all condemned.