April 18, 2025 Sermon - Good Friday

Transcript >

A few of my colleagues have been left scratching their heads this week. One of them, who serves in Episcopal Parish down in Florida, shared an image from a local megachurch in his community earlier today, in which it said, He is risen! Celebrate Easter with us on 15 different occasions, beginning April 18th and running through April 20th. My daughter's godfather in Philadelphia similarly sent the outside sort of welcome sign to a parish or a church in his community that also read, this same year, this same week, the Easter egg hunt is postponed to Friday, April 18th. Again, trying to figure out the logistics and the math on all of this. But I honestly think it speaks to something that we are experiencing this year rather acutely. And I've talked about this over the course of our Lenten journey. I think our experience this year is one of desperately desiring to see the empty tomb and the light at the end of the tunnel. It is particularly difficult for us this year to experience this moment of solemn, silent sadness. With everything seemed so broken and chaotic and uncertain right now, the proclamation of new life, of transformed life, is ever more appealing. And I think it's so appealing this year that some of us just want to jump forward to Sunday and not leave the space, the important work that we have before us tonight and through the day tomorrow.

Deacon Janice and I on Tuesday attended what is an annual tradition here in the Diocese of Washington, but is a very ancient tradition throughout the church. And that is for clergy to gather with their bishops at some point in Holy Week and pray for and with each other and to renew our vocational vows as priests, bishops, deacons, and even lay people in ministry to the gospel of Christ. This year we were particularly blessed to have Bishop Eugene Sutton, the recently retired bishop of Maryland, join us as the preacher for this service. And he highlighted on Tuesday the gospel passage, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha on their way up to Jerusalem. And there's this incredibly provocative statement made in the context of that narrative. The disciples are feeling rather fraught Uncertain about what to do, they know that people are seeking after Jesus and seeking his life, and they know that everyone knows that Jesus and Lazarus are very, very close and tight. And who speaks up but Thomas and says, let us go to that we may die with him. Let us go too that we may die with him. That is an invitation that we have tonight. To enter into the profound truth of the death that is before us.

You know, every one of the disciples is complex in his or her own way. Thomas, after this profound statement of truth, goes on to become known as Doubting Thomas because in the resurrection narratives, he will not believe in the resurrected Jesus until he sees the physical proof. Peter, Peter, the Petros, the rock on which the church is built, denies his Lord and Savior three times in tonight's reading. None of us escape our shortcomings, the places where we just don't hit the mark. In tonight's invitation, the profound truth of us journeying with Jesus into our own deaths is the opportunity For us to let die within ourselves those things of brokenness and incompleteness. Those places of shortcoming that still pervade our lives even when we strive to seek the kingdom. Tonight is our opportunity to join in laying those things down in their tomb, that we may arise in just a few short days in the glory of Easter with our risen Lord, our transformed lives, our promise of everlasting life.

Years and years ago, when I was still in my church youth group of the church I grew up in, we went out on a week-long mission trip and camp to New Mexico. And the culmination that year of the camp experience was a service the last night in which the speaker invited us all to take those cheap little sticker my name is stickers that you find and to write on each one Barabbas and to put Barabbas' name on our heart. Because in truth, we are each Barabbas this very night. The death that we are dying, the death that will lead to transformed life is solely because of what Christ is doing in this very moment. Solely because of the sacrifice he is making on the cross. We have been liberated into that transformed life by virtue of what is being done this very moment in the life of our Lord and Savior Jesus. And so again may we journey with him tonight. May we embrace and celebrate the goodness of the empty tomb. But may we be mindful of the places of death, the places that we need to bury our own sin, our own brokenness, our own shortcoming tonight. That it may be in the tomb, in a tomb that will be resurrected into transformed love and compassion. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.