The following is a transcription of the message from our April 8, 2023, Good Friday service; it has been edited and updated for clarity:
Nowhere on the Christian calendar does there seem to be a more cruel paradox than Good Friday. The name itself sounds like a paradox. How can something so grievous, how can a rushed judgment and an unfair execution, be called “good”? That is a common question to ask, but I want to consider a different apparent paradox today.
Good Friday clearly has Jesus at its center. It is his trial, crucifixion and burial. It is his passion. It is his suffering. But the day is also about us as the benefactors of that suffering and passion. Jesus's experience is our redemption, and we recognize that. We recount the story every year, and we try to make sense of it. For us, the crucifixion is historical, allegorical and instructional. It is something that really happened to Jesus of Nazareth, itinerant preacher and son of a carpenter, roughly 2,000 years ago. It's also something with a spiritual dimension, something that reminds us of the salvific relationship we hold with the Divine. And it's also something that models behavior for us: compassionate, aware and faithful.
And yet, even while Good Friday resonates with each of us today, we cannot forget that it is about Jesus. It is a time to expand beyond our own presence and personality, a time to consider someone and something beyond ourselves, something expansive and pervasive, which can and should still impact us thousands of years later. Good Friday is bigger than any of us, and the fact that we observe it each year should remind of us that.
So Good Friday is primarily about Jesus and it's primarily about us. How do we reconcile that? The way that we are meant to do that is to recognize ourselves in the person of Jesus and realize our identity as that of the Christ. In that identification, passion finds purpose and suffering finds comfort. Hanna Jacob Doumette, the founder of The Christian Institute, recognized the spiritual significance of that identification. In the booklet The Mystery of Golgotha, Mr. Doumette wrote:
In the language of the mysteries and in terms of Divine Science, to be crucified is to give your life for and to others, to will that life into their soul, consciousness, spiritual environment and being, and to live in them and be one with them in the Name and Spirit of God. It is not to live as a personal self, but as the light, mind and love of God, as His only begotten Son. This is the description of the cosmic duty and nature of the Son of God. To be crucified is to cross the border of division in the name, power and consciousness of the Absolute Spirit and to transfer the life and love of God through spiritual projection. There will remain no division between you and your fellowmen or between you and creation. There will be no I-ness or limitation, but God.
That echoes Paul, who, in his letter to the church at Galatia, wrote: “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
We know that when one of us suffers, all of us grieve; in the same way, when one of us is enlightened, expanded or transformed, we can all share in that transformation. The mystery of the crucifixion is that experience spread cosmically large and with all the weight of human history. When Christ is crucified, all those who follow him are crucified. When the old dies, the new is born. When the boundary between the physical and spiritual is torn away, reality is quickened and truth is revealed. And when Christ is made perfect, all of us are made perfect in a reflection of that attainment. That is the paradox of Good Friday, which is no paradox at all, merely the flow of things. And that is why it is good indeed.
Let us pray:
Wise God,
Thank You for this day
Even as we grapple with its dark gravity.
Expansive God,
Thank You for giving us the ability to see the difference between
Desire and love; animal aggression and human will.
Comforting God,
May we be consoled through all days
Into Easter and into Truth.
Illuminating God,
May we pierce the present darkness
And ultimately be bathed in spiritual light.
Amen.