Good Friday homily

April 2, 2021

We believe—and we say we believe—that Jesus is God’s Word made flesh. We believe that he was truly and fully God, while being truly and fully human. This is a great mystery. Nothing we can prove. Something that could make our brains ache if we think about it too hard, too deeply. It’s beyond us human creatures. 

We celebrate Jesus’ divinity and humanity at Christmastime, when our hearts swell with joy. When we sing along with the angels. When everything feels magical and fresh and new. When we gaze down at the precious baby, whom we believe to be God in the very flesh. 

But on Good Friday, we gaze on Jesus, and we see the full weight of humanity bearing down on our God-in-the-flesh. He feels incredible physical pain and suffering. He feels incredible emotional pain and suffering. He knows what abandonment feels like. He knows what injustice feels like. He knows what hopelessness feels like. He knows what fear and sadness feel like. For any time any of us humans may have cried out in the last year, “I can’t breathe!”—whether from a deadly virus or from cruel injustice or from the weight of anxiety—Jesus cries out, too. For any time any of us have suffered violence, Jesus bears the marks of violence on his body. For any time any of us have felt broken, alienated, mistreated, disillusioned, terrified—Jesus’ heart aches along with ours. 

We humans have great hope in the promise of Easter—that pain and darkness and death are not the end of the story. They do not have the final word. But today is not Easter. It’s still Friday. And Friday is still part of our journey. So we sit in silence, holding the pain.

Yet, there is still a goodness in Good Friday. Our comfort today is that we have a God who knows what it’s like to be fully human. Who knows our pain and chose our pain. We have a God who truly is with us. Amen.