3.25.16-Good Friday sermon– Last night, on Maundy Thursday, Jesus gave the disciples a new command. Judas betrayed Jesus. And Jesus predicted what Peter would do before he ever did it.
It’s not like Jesus didn’t try to include the disciples in everything he was doing. Jesus told them what would happen and the group was terrified. They ran away and watched him die on the cross from a distance.
The problem between Jesus and the disciples was the same problem God had with Adam and Eve. God gave humans the freedom to choose what they would do, even if the decisions were bad. Isn’t this how most parents raise their children? We can love them beyond reason, we can instruct and guide them, but they grow away from us and make their own decisions. Maybe our influence helps, sometimes it seems controlling, but the love is always there. Regardless of bad behavior, unconditional love never ends.
God had this wonderful plan that God and the people would live forever in the Garden of Eden. It was perfect! Shouldn’t an unconditional love hold you fast to the one who loves you? It doesn’t. Adam and Eve made a different decision. They had the will to choose to follow God or to unfollow God. This decision is our choice between heaven, which is our experience in God’s presence, or hell, the experience we have when rejecting God’s presence. There’s more than enough hell on earth going on; we need to set our sights higher than the gutter and street level.
God calls us to a higher level of thinking, past self centeredness and selfishness. We need to not only think well of other people, but we are called to help them when they need help. Our example was Jesus-he washed his disciples feet last night. He showed what it is to serve and to be a servant. But everybody wants to be the boss. You know how that goes.
So tonight, we hear the story of the suffering servant from Psalm 22 and the crucifixion story from John. Every year, we hear the same story, but from a different gospel. Not a lot changes, there’s a different detail here, a new detail there. But the story remains the same. Unfortunately, so do we.

Unless we can make the connection between Jesus’ death on the cross with God’s plan for salvation, we’re missing the whole story of God’s love in Christ.
In the Old Testament, God made one covenant after another, to cover the ever growing number of sins with which God’s people offended God. Sin, repent, return-sin, repent, return-it was the same pattern for 5000 years.
In the time between the Old Testament and the New Testament, God was silent. For 400 years, God said nothing. What’s the point in talking when no one is listening? The time passed, the roar subsided, the people returned to God-older, wiser and scarred with experience.
As we look beyond crucifixion today, hoping against hope, we remember just how silent it became on that hill. Once the crowds were gone, three crosses, some soldiers and disciples remained. The show appeared to be over and everyone went home. But the ground around Jerusalem shook with an earthquake. The seamless temple curtain was torn in half from top to bottom. When Jesus said the words, It is finished, God stepped into our world through that curtain and took the world in God’s hands, to love them back to life again. Amen.

Rev. Dawn Richie