Here We are so Drawn

Sermon preached on Good Friday, April 19, 2019, at St. Thomas' Church, Bath.

           Jesus speaks three times from the cross in John’s Gospel.  They are more than words, however.  They are actions.  They accomplished something in the moment, but they ring across the ages to speak to us and compel us, also, to action..

           The first words Jesus speaks from the cross are directed at his mother and the one who is called the Beloved Disciple.

To his mother: Woman, here is your son.

To the disciple:  Here is your mother.

           These two are the only followers of Jesus left with him.  The others have all fled.  I want to notice one thing about them:  they do not have names.  Neither of these characters have names in John’s Gospel.  Now we assume we know their names:  Mary, of course, Jesus’ mother, and the Gospel writer John himself, who most people assume was the Beloved Disciple.

           But John does not tell us these names, and I find that very odd.  Why not?  Why not speak the name of Mary, and why not identify yourself as the Beloved Disciple?  It has to be a deliberate choice John has made. Why?

           I think it is because John wants us more easily to imagine ourselves in these roles. We might recoil from the presumption, but I do think we can imagine being the two people who care so deeply for this man that we will not leave him, despite the horror and the danger.  And I think we can imagine being the two people about whom Jesus cares so deeply, so as to refer to them with affection, “mother,” and “beloved.”

           I know on Good Friday we are “supposed” to identify with the mob that calls for Jesus to be crucified.  We are the sinners in this story, and, indeed, we are.  But I believe the Gospel also invites us to be the beloved in the story.

           I said that Jesus does more than say three things from the cross, he does three things.  And what he is doing here is very important.  He is creating that new community of love that he promised, the community of the new commandment, to “love one another as I have loved you,” and “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

           In essence, in giving his mother and the disciple whom he loved to each other, Jesus is creating the church—not the institution, but the communion, people, to use this gospel’s language, who abide in God and who abide together in love.

           Jesus then says, “I thirst.”  And he receives some sour wine on a sponge lifted up to him with a branch of hyssop.  In his thirst Jesus is showing us his humanity in union with ours.  But there is more than the sheer physicality of the moment.

           “Thirst” is one of the major metaphors from John’s Gospel.  Jesus provides living water, so that no one need thirst.  “How can he do such a thing?” people ask.  He is showing us right here on the cross.  Jesus is thirsty humanity, thirsty for union with our Creator.  This is a thirst for abundant life.  “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly,” he has said.

           We seek that abundant life in so many ways on our own.  Through human relationships, through an accumulation of wealth, through social and political commitments that fool us into believing we are on the right side, and sometimes through addictions that make us feel temporarily better.  But none of these things work.

           We must know that our thirst for God is absolute, and we must drink from the well of God’s love without restraint.  Jesus wants us to know we are God’s beloved, but he wants us to know it as if we were the parched woman or man in the middle of the desert with no oasis in site, or as if we ourselves were on the cross, thirsty in the depth of our being, helpless to have that thirst slaked any other way than by crying out to God.

           And Jesus is showing God’s thirst for us.  He is the word made flesh, in his body speaking God’s thirst for the love of you and of me.

           And then Jesus says, “It is finished.”  But, again, not just words.  He says “It is finished,” and “gives up his spirit,” in Greek, paradoken pneuma.  Literally, “gave up his breath,” but again we know this is about more than the physical act of dying, when someone breathes their last breath.

           We could just as easily translate those words, “He handed over the Spirit.”  In his last breath, he knows he has accomplished the purposes of God, to give God’s very Spirit to God’s people.  And we might remember that conversation with Nicodemus, near the beginning of John’s Gospel.  It is time for God’s people to be “born from above,” “born again,” “born of the Spirit.”

           And we might also recall words from that great opening chapter of John.

And to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become the children of God, who were born not of flesh, nor of human will, but of God.

           There is much more coming from the cross than the simple transaction of salvation.  God is angry with sinful humankind—Jesus dies to satisfy that anger—and we are saved when we accept this act.

           No, a union, a communion, flows from the cross, a communion that calls us together in a new family, satisfies our thirst, however deep it may be, and hands over the Spirit of Truth and Love, enabling us to live out his new commandment.

           Jesus had said, not once, not twice, but three times, “When I am lifted up I will draw all to myself.”  And here we are so drawn, drawn into a new way of being with one another and with God.