Good Friday
April 3, 2015
Psalm 22
John 18, 19 (select verses)
What to preach on Good Friday? A lot of preachers ask that question. Last year I worked with a group of preachers from across the country in an online course. The last two weeks of the course fell close to Holy Week, so we turned from our exploration of contemporary homiletical theory to conversation about preaching in Holy Week. Several said they didn’t preach on Good Friday. A couple admitted they didn’t conduct services on Good Friday anymore. Their congregations didn’t seem to want them. Those who had services shared how they managed to avoid preaching: music, drama, silence. Not because they were too tired by Friday to preach. They feared they wouldn’t have anything to say, or would say the wrong things.
These preachers, who I believe to be representative of many more, were afraid they might upset some members of their congregations. They were afraid to say what they really believed about Jesus’ crucifixion. To be more specific, they didn’t accept the doctrine of atonement by penal substitution.
They assumed many people in their congregations did. These folks, after all, love to sing “The Old Rugged Cross.” I had to agree that much of the hymnody we call on, and a lot of the music chosen for choirs determined to sing cantatas, reflects just one theology of atonement. Good Friday probably isn’t the best time to ignite a theological debate. But I challenged these mainline Protestant preachers to consider the likelihood that a significant number of people within their congregations may not hold any hard and fast interpretation of the crucifixion. More likely, there were as many questions among their folks as the preachers wrestled with in their own hearts.
The first Christians wrestled, too. By the second generation of the church, the era of the New Testament, disciples came to some conclusions about the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross for them and the world. New Testament texts support at least four interpretations of the significance of the crucifixion: Christ the ransom; Christ the Victor; Christ the representative; and Christ the sacrificial substitute. There are hints and threads, but no consistent position. Yes, there are seeds of what is still the most common interpretation, substitutionary atonement or penal substitution. The doctrine didn’t take the finished form it now has for a good nine or 10 centuries after the New Testament. St. Anselm of Canterbury crafted the frame many Christians now fit around the old story.
Suppose some people in your congregation think they know all they need to know about what the cross means for them. How do you, gently, get them to consider there are other ways of exploring the mystery of the cross? How do you reassure those who can’t go along with so much Good Friday piety? Stay with the story. Look to the earliest interpretations of Jesus’ crucifixion we can find. The book of Acts represents some of the first Christian proclamations. Skip ahead to the first reading for Sunday (Acts 10:34 – 43) for a hint to what the early church believed. Jesus fulfilled a mission God gave him. The authorities of religion and empire could not accept someone who did what he did and represented what he represented. So they executed him as a common criminal, a potentially dangerous but easily expendable outsider. But. God. But God, as our psalm for today suggests, doesn’t leave the apparently defeated in the depths. And that, says Peter, has changed everything.
Stay with the story today. Save the discussion of the ongoing and eternal significance of the cross for Christians and the world for another day. All Presbyterians could benefit from a serious exploration of the breadth of theologies of the cross. Just not today.
