The Rev. Robyn Neville, a Ph.D. candidate in religion at Emory and a HTP parishioner, was our guest preacher for the noon service on Good Friday.

Throughout the world today, Christians are remembering the violence and the suffering that Jesus Christ endured on the cross.  We remember the way Christ was mocked and humiliated; the flogging, the crown of thorns, the sarcastic title, “King of the Jews,” placed above his head on the very instrument of his torture.  We remember Pontius Pilate's ambivalence, and the rage of the crowd, and Jesus' quiet, deeply wise and loving responses to his captors.  We remember Jesus' care for his family, even during the last moments of his earthly life; his concern over his own mother, his acknowledgment of his dear friend, John.  His last words, according to the Gospel narrative for today, were, “It is finished.”  

But what is finished?  What happens on the cross?  What is completed, or made whole?  What does this terrible death mean, what does this horrible narrative of violence and sadness mean for us?

Throughout Christian history, the “Passion” of Jesus Christ - “passion” coming from the Latin word that means, to suffer – has carried an underlying current of shame and guilt.  From the eleventh century onward, Christian art began to depict the crucified body of Christ in such a way as to inspire in the viewer profound sorrow and feelings of unworthiness.  Especially in the high Middle Ages, the crucified body of Christ came to stand for the guilt of humanity; Christians were instructed to look on Christ's wounded body, which they carved in wood and ivory, which they painted on altar pieces, which they reproduced on the walls of convents and village churches alike.  Christians were to gaze on this twisted body of Jesus, with  his head bent down ever so slightly, as if in resignation to his fate, as if in prayer, as if in death, and they were to feel pain and sorrow for the fact that, because of their sins, this poor, innocent person had to suffer such a terrible and ignominious death.

It is true that Christ died for us.  He did not die merely as a political prisoner, although his death certainly reminds us of the pain that prisoners of conscience endure, even today.  Nor did Christ die merely as a misunderstood prophet, although his death certainly reminds us of the rejection that God's wisdom-speakers have endured in this world.  Christ's death was profoundly more than these things – but what exactly does it mean for us, today, on this day that we perhaps ironically call, “GOOD Friday”?  What could possibly be good about it?

The cross reminds us of suffering, of the always-present fact that life is not always under our control.  For those of us who have experienced deep suffering, we can perhaps agree that there is something tyrannical about the experience of a pain that cannot be escaped from.  Some pains can be escaped from or resolved; some illnesses can be cured, some emotional wounds can be healed; some relationships can be restored; some hardships can be turned around; some losses can be made whole.  But sometimes there are moments of suffering in this life that we can't escape, despite our best efforts.  Sometimes we suffer, through no fault of our own, through no help of our own.

It is at these times of intense suffering, I think, that God seems farthest from us.  When we suffer in this total way, we feel that there is no help.  We feel that no one will understand our pain.  We are, in fact, often afraid to name our pain to the people in our lives because we fear that they won't understand, and that they will try to soothe us with words that will only feel empty.  We feel fragile and unlike ourselves; total suffering, in fact, has a demonic quality to it, insofar as it tends to break up our own identity, it breaks up who we know ourselves to be.  And we can't get away from the suffering itself; in these moments of extreme suffering, we feel bound to our pain.  We feel nailed down to the experience of inescapable suffering.

At one point or another, we all go through this experience, some to greater extents, some to lesser.  And at one point or another, we all feel cut off from God.  Sometimes it's only for the briefest moment.   Sometimes it's for years.

This is the place which Jesus entered when he allowed himself to be nailed to the cross.  That place, where we are nailed to what is hurting us, where we can't get away, from which we can't pull ourselves free.  That place, where we are carrying our burdens, carrying them and carrying them with no-one to share the weight.  This is the place to which Jesus chose to go.  He chose to go there, where we are, in the place that makes us feel so far away from God, so alone and so uncared-for – Jesus filled that place with the power of divine light.  He filled it so that we would know that there is no place in this universe, there is no depth of our pain, that is able to be cut off from or hidden from God's love.

The cross isn't about our guilt or our shame or our unworthiness.  Let that one go.  Let that association go for a minute.  Instead, know that when Jesus was nailed to the cross, he was being nailed to the place where we are.  He was being bound to our darkest places.  And that he was and still is saying to us, “This is how precious you are to me.  This is how much you are loved.  This is how far I would go to show you that you mean something.  That you are my special, wonderful child.  That I know about your pain and your suffering and how alone you feel sometimes, and this is how far I will go to make you understand.  Understand that you are never alone, ever, even when you hurt, even when it seems that the world is falling down around you.  Even when you feel pulled apart, understand that I am right there, being pulled apart with you.  And understand that this is how beloved you are.  This is how cherished you are.  I will stand in your place of pain, and I will not let you go.”

The cross isn't merely about our sin; it is truly about God's love.  It is about God saying to us, stop twisting yourself up in knots and thinking that somehow you deserve to be punished, that somehow you deserve to suffer.  Know instead, God says, that I am with you.  God gets up on the cross because that's where we are – we can't get away from the pain that sin causes; we're stuck to it.  God goes up there and becomes stuck to it, too.  And because he's God, he can overcome that experience and redeem even the worst and most destructive effects of suffering itself.

This is precisely what makes this Friday our “Good Friday.”  It is good because today, we are reminded that God is so in love with us, so bound to us, that God even loves up the darkest places in our souls.  God wants us to see Christ's body suffering on the cross because God wants us to know that not even affliction, not even oppression, not even annihilation can separate us from God's love.  The cross is where God reaches into the farthest place in our hearts and says, in that quiet, wise voice, “you, my beloved one, are worthy and good and more wonderful and lovable than anything else I have made.  And because I am here, this darkness has no power over you.”

When we look at the cross, we are reminded that Christ has that power.  Christ has the power to be in solidarity with all who suffer.  Christ is there, in the Sudan, yearning for peace.  Christ is there, suffering along with our soldiers and with the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Christ is there in Haiti.  And Christ is here, in Decatur, in our homes.  In the homeless shelters.  On the streets.  In the street gangs.  In our schools.  With our children.  With our friends.  With our enemies.  Christ is there, and he is loving all of us, with arms that opened wide in order to bring all of us in.

For the rest of the liturgical year, we will celebrate Christ's life.  Today is the one day that we focus upon his death.  That death was not an end, but rather an explosion, an event that broke open what it means to be human, and what it means to be in communion with the divine.  May God give us the grace to allow ourselves to be wrapped up in God's love – that unconquerable love that goes so far, even to the farthest place, to bring us into God's heart, to bring us back to where we belong.  
Amen.


The Reverend Robyn Neville
Doctoral Student, The Graduate Division of Religion
Emory University