From Friday to Sunday

Sunday Scriptures from the Narrative Lectionary

Psalm 118:17, 21-24

Luke 24:1-12

It is Friday. Good Friday.

This picture of stone walls and crosses was taken this Good Friday morning in Jerusalem by a Presbyterian peacemaker who shared this picture on Good Friday morning. The picture is of a portion of the path that Jesus walked to his execution.

Good Friday is an important part of Easter Sunday. Today, as we prepare for worship, we are orienting ourselves for worship on Sunday morning, Easter morning. But we cannot arrive at Easter without Good Friday, and to skip over the events of Jesus last days would trivialize his work on the cross, and diminish the Good News of resurrection. I pray we will take time to prepare. I encourage you to take time today or tomorrow to read the entire Gospel of Luke, from beginning to end, as part of your preparation. If you do not have time for the entire Gospel, I encourage you to begin with chapter 22 in the Gospel of Luke, and to read to the end.

Last night’s Maundy Thursday worship was helpful for remembering and reflecting on the whole story in preparation for Easter. Our service went through the last week of Jesus’ life: his entry into Jerusalem, his anointing by the woman with the jar of expensive perfume, his turning over the tables in the temple, those who plotted against him, the Last Supper, praying in the Garden while his disciples slept, his betrayal and arrest. Jesus was a man on death row and yet not behind bars. Surrounded by people who had no idea what he was up against, by others who were struggling to understand, and by those who were so offended by him that they wanted him dead, he moved deliberately toward his execution. All the while he remained peaceful. He retained his wise mind. He never abandoned prayer, including prayer for his enemies. And he continued – as he had done all of his ministry – to welcome people in.

Jesus slept his last night on Wednesday. He rose from sleep for the final time for the day of his Last Supper with the disciples, the celebration of the Passover together. On that Passover celebration day (our Maundy Thursday) Jesus and the disciples broke bread and ate together. They remembered the faithfulness of God who led the people out of Egypt, who broke the bonds of slavery and oppression and set the people free. Later that night after their Passover celebration of liberation and freedom, he went to the Garden to pray. There, his disciples could not even keep their eyes open while Jesus sweated blood in agony. Soon, he was betrayed, was taken into custody and bound in oppression.

Luke tells us that those who held him in custody bound him and beat him. They blindfolded him and mocked him asking, “Prophesy! Who hit you?” (Luke 22:63). And they heaped insults on him. The One who welcomed and fed and healed and tenderly held children was mocked and insulted. To all of this, Jesus responded not with violence but by absorbing the violence in suffering love.

How do you read these words? Do you feel what Luke is telling us?

Luke’s account of Jesus last week brings me to silence. Tearful silence. There was so much concentrated hate and fear and self-preservation and sin all focused on Jesus. So much violence poured out on the One who came that all might never be thirsty again and have abundant life. R. Alan Culpepper powerfully asks in his commentary on Luke, “What love is this that will neither cease to love nor overrule our freedom to reject that love? The one who was mocked and beaten, moreover, is the one who will sit “at the right hand of the power of God” (v. 69) . . . The juxtaposition of the mocking of Jesus and the questioning of his messiahship foreshadows that Jesus will, indeed, triumph in spite of those who sought to kill him. The Lord we worship has identified with the rejected and the despised” (Culpepper, 441).

Jesus is tried and Pilate declares Jesus’ innocent three times. But Pilate capitulated to the crowd who press him with demands to crucify Jesus. In Luke chapter 23, verse 23, verse 24, and verse 25, Luke shows us the accountability of the crowd for reversing Pilate’s initial decision. The crowd, “did not recognize the time of [their] visitation from God” (Luke 19:44). And Pilate, a seemingly spineless leader, “handed Jesus over as they wished” (Luke 23:25).

Jesus' condemnation brings us to some important considerations as we prepare for Easter Sunday.

For years, efforts have been made to blame Jewish leaders for the death of Jesus rather than the Romans. Culpepper importantly notes, “During the Middle Ages and in more recent memory, however, assigning blame for the death of Jesus to the Jewish leaders has led to terrible atrocities against Jews. How bitterly ironic that a Gospel that emphasizes Jesus’ inclusive love should be used as a weapon against persons of another religious tradition” (449). Our response to Christ’s crucifixion should not be hostility toward others, but the reflection that any one of us may have done the same thing had we been there. The disciples did nothing to stop the events. Judas betrayed Jesus. Peter denied Jesus three times. And all the people shouted again and again, “Crucify us!” This story is not an indictment of one person or people or group, but of the guilt of all of us. Had we been there, we may have folded just as these others did.

Here it is also appropriate to reflect that just as we are not to point responsibility for Jesus’ death on the Jews, we are also not to use the Gospel as a weapon against persons of other religious traditions. In our modern world, people of other faith traditions – Muslims, for example – are too often the targets of hate by people who claim Christ as Savior and at times even in the name of Jesus. This is not the way of Jesus. He came for the entire world, loves the entire world, and will gather every people and nation when he returns. To hate another person, seek their demise, shame them in Jesus’ name is not the way of Jesus. If miss that, we miss what Jesus did.

Jesus was led to the Place of the Skull, taking a path through Jerusalem that included the street captured in the picture above. Then, Jesus was crucified. Crucifixion was not uncommon in this time. It was a method of capital punishment designed to humiliate and inflict pain. Nailed to and raised on the cross, Jesus continues to be mocked by many of those gathered. In response, Jesus prays for those who crucify him (Luke 23:34).

Two others were crucified with Jesus. One of them addresses Jesus by name (Luke 23:42). He asks Jesus to remember him. His request reminds us of the cries of those in need and those dying in centuries past and today. Joseph, for example, serving as the Pharoah’s chief cupbearer predicted that his fellow prisoner would be released in three days (Genesis 14:14) – “Remember me when it is well with you.” Hannah prayed to God, “Remember me,” (1 Sam. 1:11). So also did Nehemiah (5:19, 13:31), Job (14:13) the Psalmist (25:7, 106:4) and Jeremiah (15:15). The criminal is requesting that Jesus remember him when he is delivered from his suffering and comes into his kingdom. Jesus grants him even more. In the last of the “today” pronouncements in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells the man he will be with him. Like Lazarus who lived a life of hunger and suffering, this man would experience the blessing of God’s mercy. The poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame – and this man – would be gathered into the Great Feast.

When Jesus dies, Luke tells us that the sun stopped shining, that the curtain of the temple was torn in two, and that Jesus cried out to God, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (23:26). Standing nearby a centurion declares, “Surely this was a righteous man” (23:47). Silently, at a distance, stood the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee, watching these things. Joseph of Arimathea asks for Jesus body, takes it down from the cross, wraps it in linen and places it in a tomb cut in rock, “one in which no one had yet been laid” (Luke 23:53).

Then, there is silence. A full day of silence. The silence of violence. The silence of death. The silence of a closed tomb.

But thanks be to God, that is not the end of the story.

On the “first day of the week” (Luke 24:1), it is the women who go to the tomb where Jesus was buried. They find no body, but are met by two men in gleaming clothes who stood beside them. “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee?” (Luke 24:5-6).

“Then they remembered his words” (Luke 24:8).

Luke remembers the women as the ones who realize that Jesus has risen from the dead. It is the women who put together Jesus’ words with what has happened. When they tell the Apostle’s, the Apostle’s do not believe them. Peter runs to look in the tomb, trying to understand and amazed at what happened. It indeed does seem to be an “idle tale” – something too good to be true. But Easter reminds us that Christ is risen. Death and hostility and hate do not have the final word.

Why do you look for the living among the dead? What do you look for this Good Friday? What will you look for on Easter Sunday? What do you remember and how do you want to be remembered?

Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ has risen!

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Works Cited:

R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.