Good Friday Sermon 2025

I wonder how many of us are aware that when we listen to the Passion read dramatically on Palm Sunday, the reading always comes from one of the synoptical gospels: Matthew, Mark or Luke.  But the reading on Good Friday – the reading the choir have just sung to us – always comes from St John’s gospel - always.  It is important to grasp this because the synoptic gospels and St John’s gospel offer two very different perspectives on the crucifixion, two sides of the same coin; which when taken as a whole help us to see how the death of Jesus was the death of the One who was wholly God and wholly Man.  And only by this death could the world, could you and I, be saved. 

As we ponder the sacrifice Jesus makes for us with his death on the cross, we tend to think of Good Friday as a day of solemnity and grief.  And we are right to do so.  But if you take care in reading the John’s Gospel account of the Passion you will realize quickly that celebration is probably more the mood John invites rather then solemn grief. Because, according to John, Jesus’ death is no tragic accident but rather the culmination of Jesus’ earthly mission to rescue a fallen humanity from the power of sin, death, and a world captive to evil and draw them to God’s abundant life. Jesus, in other words, goes to the cross not just willingly but eagerly, for the cross is actually his throne, the place where he will be lifted up and from which he will draw all persons to himself. 

The first time I realised this was some years ago when I was studying and had to write a long essay on the earliest Christian poem in English, “The Dream of the Rood” meaning the “Dream of the Cross”.  In reading this Anglo-Saxon poem, dating from the 8th century, I came across a view of the crucifixion which had been obliterated – at least for me – by later medieval interpretation, in which the crucifixion is agonisingly dark.  In the poem we find Christ expressing the values of Anglo-Saxon culture; courage, loyalty, good versus evil, generosity, courtesy and the heroic code.  Jesus is the head of his clan who steps up gladly as his peoples’ champion to take on and defeat the powers of evil.   

This is how the “Dream of the Rood”, describes the crucifixion. 

Girded him then 

God Almighty 

When he would step on the gallows, 

For all mankind, 

Mindfast, fearless. 

There are two places where John’s description of Jesus’ triumph through the cross comes to fullest expression. The first is the scene in the garden on the night of his betrayal. In John it is never called the Garden of Gethsemane but only identified as a garden.  For John, it is a garden, reminiscent of that earlier garden in Eden in order to contrast Jesus’ steadfastness with Adam’s failure. 

In the descriptions of this scene provided by Matthew, Mark and Luke, there is always a moment of agonizing self-doubt when Jesus asks, even begs, his heavenly Father to remove from him this cup of suffering and then Jesus comes through this moment of grievous testing and doubt by affirming, “not my will, but yours, be done”.  There is no such moment of trial in John. Quite the opposite, when the Roman cohort come to arrest Jesus and Peter tries to defend him by attacking one of the soldiers with his sword, Jesus orders him to put away his weapon and asks, “Am I not to drink the cup the Father has given me?”. In other words, this is the mission for which Jesus was born. 

What a gift to us are the two standpoints: John’s point of view and the Synoptic writers’ point of view.  We do not have to choose one over the other but hold them in tension and together they give us the whole picture.  In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus is portrayed in all his humanity – his fear, his suffering, his moment of doubt – and in this Jesus we find ourselves.  But in this same Jesus we see the human being conforming his will to the Father’s will and coming through - Thy kingdom come, thy will be done - on behalf of all humankind. 

In John’s gospel, we see Jesus, fully God, aware for always of what must be done, that evil can only be overcome by absolute love and self-sacrifice.  Jesus’ death is not the end but a means to an end.  Jesus embodies the power of self-sacrificial love, a love that is deeper and more profound than even the law of justice.  

The second scene which shows the difference between the Synoptic gospels and John’s gospel is the crucifixion itself.  Jesus utters no cry of despair from the cross in John but instead fulfils prophecy, gives orders to his followers, and finally dies saying, “It is finished,” or perhaps more strongly, “it is completed” or “it has been paid in full” or, perhaps most powerfully, “it has been accomplished.” On the cross, that is, Jesus is saying – nay, shouting – “Mission accomplished!” All that he had been sent to do he had completed successfully. 

But hold on, again keeping the tension between Jesus, fully God but absolutely on the cross, fully Man, we do not want to lose the cry of dereliction, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Or worse still, “Why have you abandoned or deserted me?”  Because this is where so many people in our world have found themselves and are at this very moment.  Jesus always has the Father with him.  He has gone up to Calvery with his Abba, Father.  But now the sin of the world which he is carrying for us, overwhelms him.  God the Father Almighty is still there but Jesus loses sight of him.  C.S Lewis said in “Mere Christianity”, humans don’t have the fortitude to even consider how much Jesus could suffer.  We cannot comprehend it.  Only the Son of God could face this end. 

As we hold in tension, the cry of dereliction in the synoptic gospels and hear John’s shout of victory, “It is accomplished!” we are invited to see God’s incredible power to love expressed through the death of his son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ.  We are invited never to doubt that Christ has power over any kind of seemingly meaningless suffering we are facing because he has already endured the worst forsakenness for us.  In love he has ensured that we never suffer alone.  In suffering and death we know Emmanuel.  God is with us. 

So, how come you might say, how come we have such different perspectives in our Passion narratives?  What we see in our gospels is the first generation of Christian witnesses meditating on and coming to a deeper realisation of who Jesus was and what happened on the cross.  From Mark, the earliest gospel to be written, to John, the last, we are listening to writers whose ideas are developing as they contemplate and apply the gospel to their own situations.  We do the same in our Christian journey.  We meditate, we learn, we apply, we are changed.  So, as we look upon the cross today, upon the extraordinary love and forgiveness manifested there, we are invited to ask, where am I on this journey and where do I want to be?