As we began the three-day liturgy on Maundy Thursday with the “first act,” the anamnesis of Jesus' invitation to his disciples to be a humble and serving community and to live in communion centered around the Eucharist, after a brief intermission, we enter the second act of our Passion Play, Good Friday. Regardless of our religious tradition, Good Friday is a day that is recognized by almost all Christian traditions. The center piece of our scripture readings for today is the Passion from the Gospel of John. This extended narrative from chapters 18 & 19 takes us through Jesus' arrest, his trials (first before the Jewish authorities and then before Pilate), to the crucifixion and death, and ending with his entombment.
While the structure of John's passion is basically is the same that we find in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the details are quite different -- the timing/dating of the events, the role some of the characters play, the use of Hebrew Scripture, the dialogue, and the theology of John's passion narrative are very different from synoptic gospels. This week, I spent time reading the commentary of Dr. O. Wesley Allen, Jr., an associate professor of homiletics and worship from Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky. For Dr. Allen, there are two notable distinctions in John.
First, is how John presents the vision of the cross. The past few weeks, we’ve had a mixture of Mark and John Gospels. Many of the readings from John have focused on Jesus’ announcements of his impending glory, always pointing out that even though his miracles, or “signs” as John identifies them, have been demonstrations of God’s work in Him, that he has not yet been “glorified.” Dictionary definitions of “glorified” include “cause to be treated as more splendid or excellent than would normally be considered” and “to honor with praise, admiration, or worship” and “to praise the glory of God.” The healings, the preaching, even the raising of Lazarus while not “normal” are, for Jesus, not the reason to praise, admire, or worship. For Jesus, what is worthy of praise to the glory of God is at the end of his earthly ministry.
John is signaling and important reversal of language – in spite of its horror and its humiliation, the cross is not to be understood as defeat. The whole of Jesus' ministry, the entire gospel of John, leads to this moment of Jesus’ being "lifted up." The cross is the hour of Jesus' (and God's) glorification. Dr. Allen notes that for many, we see the glory of resurrection as overcoming the humiliation and degradation of the cross, but Jesus, in the gospel of John, is saying the opposite. This is “Good” Friday, and what God is doing in the cross is good. Indeed, death is reclaimed by Jesus from something to be feared because of its unknown consequences, and is repurposed as an integral part of Jesus passion, DEATH, and resurrection. We must die in order to live. And the cross is the focal point of that understanding – as an instrument of death it becomes a catalyst for eternal life. The cross is transformed, taken from its “normal” meaning and made a point of our “worship” by which we “give glory to God.”
The second way in which the gospel of John is unique is that in this narrative, Jesus is in control. Unlike the Mark gospel which we read last Sunday, in which Jesus says very little, is manipulated by the Temple and Roman hierarchies, in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is very much stage managing this act of the play. Jesus, in a way very different from the first three gospels, choreographs his own suffering and death reinforces the presentation of the crucifixion as an element of God's plan instead of a defeat which God must overcome with the resurrection. For John’s original readers, who themselves had wondered why God had allowed such tragedies as the destruction of the temple and the Diaspora of the Jewish people, this sense of all being God’s will or plan must have been very comforting.
Still, just because the John helps us to see God's grace and glory in the cross, this does not mean that there is no place for sadness in reflecting on it. In fact, there is so much sadness in John’s description and interpretation of the crucifixion that many of us cannot help but be moved. Still, we place our grief in the background of our joy, a strange and wonderful mix of sorrow and celebration.
This mixture of many feelings is precisely what the Passion and this night are all about. We are in a beautiful liturgical space that certainly places the cross at the center of our worship, as it is every week, but last night we stripped the altar of all its beautiful appointments. We ourselves are humbled to see our savior on the cross, but we are also sharing a celebration of the glory of God in this moment. And while this act of the play doesn’t allow us to sing out our thanksgiving, as we will tomorrow night, we should, as Dr. Allen shares, certainly be able to muster up a hearty, "Amen," even if we do so with a tear in our eyes. (Allen)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, O. Wesley Allen, Jr. 2012. “Commentary on Gospel.”. 6 April 2012.
While the structure of John's passion is basically is the same that we find in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the details are quite different -- the timing/dating of the events, the role some of the characters play, the use of Hebrew Scripture, the dialogue, and the theology of John's passion narrative are very different from synoptic gospels. This week, I spent time reading the commentary of Dr. O. Wesley Allen, Jr., an associate professor of homiletics and worship from Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky. For Dr. Allen, there are two notable distinctions in John.
First, is how John presents the vision of the cross. The past few weeks, we’ve had a mixture of Mark and John Gospels. Many of the readings from John have focused on Jesus’ announcements of his impending glory, always pointing out that even though his miracles, or “signs” as John identifies them, have been demonstrations of God’s work in Him, that he has not yet been “glorified.” Dictionary definitions of “glorified” include “cause to be treated as more splendid or excellent than would normally be considered” and “to honor with praise, admiration, or worship” and “to praise the glory of God.” The healings, the preaching, even the raising of Lazarus while not “normal” are, for Jesus, not the reason to praise, admire, or worship. For Jesus, what is worthy of praise to the glory of God is at the end of his earthly ministry.
John is signaling and important reversal of language – in spite of its horror and its humiliation, the cross is not to be understood as defeat. The whole of Jesus' ministry, the entire gospel of John, leads to this moment of Jesus’ being "lifted up." The cross is the hour of Jesus' (and God's) glorification. Dr. Allen notes that for many, we see the glory of resurrection as overcoming the humiliation and degradation of the cross, but Jesus, in the gospel of John, is saying the opposite. This is “Good” Friday, and what God is doing in the cross is good. Indeed, death is reclaimed by Jesus from something to be feared because of its unknown consequences, and is repurposed as an integral part of Jesus passion, DEATH, and resurrection. We must die in order to live. And the cross is the focal point of that understanding – as an instrument of death it becomes a catalyst for eternal life. The cross is transformed, taken from its “normal” meaning and made a point of our “worship” by which we “give glory to God.”
The second way in which the gospel of John is unique is that in this narrative, Jesus is in control. Unlike the Mark gospel which we read last Sunday, in which Jesus says very little, is manipulated by the Temple and Roman hierarchies, in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is very much stage managing this act of the play. Jesus, in a way very different from the first three gospels, choreographs his own suffering and death reinforces the presentation of the crucifixion as an element of God's plan instead of a defeat which God must overcome with the resurrection. For John’s original readers, who themselves had wondered why God had allowed such tragedies as the destruction of the temple and the Diaspora of the Jewish people, this sense of all being God’s will or plan must have been very comforting.
Still, just because the John helps us to see God's grace and glory in the cross, this does not mean that there is no place for sadness in reflecting on it. In fact, there is so much sadness in John’s description and interpretation of the crucifixion that many of us cannot help but be moved. Still, we place our grief in the background of our joy, a strange and wonderful mix of sorrow and celebration.
This mixture of many feelings is precisely what the Passion and this night are all about. We are in a beautiful liturgical space that certainly places the cross at the center of our worship, as it is every week, but last night we stripped the altar of all its beautiful appointments. We ourselves are humbled to see our savior on the cross, but we are also sharing a celebration of the glory of God in this moment. And while this act of the play doesn’t allow us to sing out our thanksgiving, as we will tomorrow night, we should, as Dr. Allen shares, certainly be able to muster up a hearty, "Amen," even if we do so with a tear in our eyes. (Allen)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, O. Wesley Allen, Jr. 2012. “Commentary on Gospel.”
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