The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews is the vicar of St. Hilda-St. Patrick. The sermon for Good Friday, April 15, 2022, was preached using the manuscript below, as a response to John 18-19 and Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9.
Two opening notes:
First, from Dr. Sara Parks,
an historian of early Judaism and early Christianity,
‘Jesus lived and died a Torah-observant
(and rather conservatively so)
Jew.
So did Paul. …
The idea of a messiah is Jewish.
Reinterpeting current political events
in light of Hebrew/Greek Scriptures
was Jewish.[1]
‘Debating whether or not God
was going to destroy the empire
using a Jewish military or a Jewish martyr/sacrifice
WAS JEWISH.
When a text in the New Testament says
“The Jews” (?? ‘????????)
it does not flat out mean “all Jews.” [2]
It means in context
things like “temple authorities,”
“elites,”
“a different group from me that I’m angry at,”
“a group trying to urge pagans to full Torah Observance,”
or even
“a group I’m retroactively throwing under the bus
because I’m scared of Rome
crushing my group next.” [3]
That’s why I read
from the Common English Bible tonight
and we’ll make sure that’s printed next year.
Second,
you aren’t so bad
that God needed to kill Jesus
in order to be able to love and forgive you.
Empire killed Jesus
for being a good rabbi
and a threat to the power structure.
And what a threat he was,
a threat dealt with by our human,
broken sinfulness
through which God continued to carry out God’s plan
for the salvation of creation.
Not by the need for a blood sacrifice
but by showing that love,
God’s ultimate love,
defeats fear and defeats death itself,
as we’ll celebrate tomorrow night.
“We do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who in every respect
has been tested as we are,
yet without sin.
“Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness,
so that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help in time of need.”
Personal or corporate,
meaning shared and communal,
not corporations,
sin is all around us.
How hard, though,
do we work to absolve ourselves
of the way sin seeps through our lives
and separates us from one another
and is part of living above our places?
In concluding a Maintenance Phase episode
about Michael Pollan,
Michael Hobbes observes that
“You read about this stuff and you’re like, ‘
Oh, my God, everything I’m eating
was picked by somebody,
who’s working under terrible conditions.
Everything I’m wearing,
the car that I drive
is polluting the environment.’
It’s not clear what we should do with that
or what we should do about that.
And a lot of us just carry around a lot of anxiety,
because we’re powerless.
You have your one vote
that you do every four years or whatever.
But other than that,
even a local political action or something,
it’s very hard to see change from that.
It’s very difficult.
You’ve got this massive population,
especially of upper class,
white, fairly privileged people,
who are aware of their own, our own
complicit in all of these systems,
because we’re the people
that are doing most of the consuming in America.
So, there’s this constant need for exoneration.” [4]
Earlier in the episode he repeated the refrain
“there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism,”
not even necessarily as a promotion of other forms of commerce
but to highlight the way that sin
individual and corporate
seeps through our lives
and separates us from one another
and is part of living above our places.
“We do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who in every respect
has been tested as we are,
yet without sin.
“Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness,
so that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help in time of need.”
We read in our book study of White Too Long
Robert P. Jones’ observation
“It is white Americans
who have murdered our black and brown brothers and sisters.
After the genocide and forced removal of Native Americans,
the enslavement of millions of Africans,
and the lynching of more than 4,400 of their surviving descendants,
it is white Americans who have used our faith
as a shield to justify our actions,
deny our responsibility,
and insist on our innocence.
We, white Christian Americans, are Cain.” [5]
Our role – explicit or implicit –
in ongoing systemic racism
is something I’ve addressed before.
Our forebears’ roles,
which we may not have been aware,
in turning Good Friday into a day of terror for Jewish people
is in our history
and can’t be ignored
lest we fall into that trap and into that sin
again.
Michael Hobbes points out
that in The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Michael Pollan is one person
trying to give us ways to absolve ourselves.
Robert P. Jones points out
the ways we collectively
have tried to hide behind being “Good Christians”
and ignore the past and present realities
of the linkage with Christian practice
and racist attitudes and policies.
Jones concludes that we, white Christians,
are Cain.
The message of Christian scripture is
the necessity to acknowledge our broken, sinful natures,
which don’t need a blood sacrifice to overcome,
but which we cannot overcome ourselves.
We try!
It’s good to be a part
of what hopefully is a better way of living
even if we’re not trying to cover guilt.
Yet, as I talked about with love last night
we don’t get it right.
It’s been nearly 60 years since the Voting and Rights Acts
yet Black votes are still extremely suppressed
and this week a 26-year-old Congolese immigrant
was shot by a police officer in the back of the head
while being held face down.
Regardless of our personal or our group’s share or burden
sin seeps through our lives
and separates us from one another
and is part of living above our places.
This is not the end.
Sin and death don’t have the final word.
After pointing us in the direction of Cain,
Jones says,
“God is giving Cain the opportunity for confession, for honesty,
knowing that this would be the best path
for Cain to begin reckoning with the traumatic experience
of having killed his own brother,
the pain he has unleashed for himself and others,
and the consequences that will inevitably come.
God’s questions were a compassionate invitation to Cain,
giving him an opportunity
to avoid the twisting of his personality that this trauma,
and the perpetual deception required to cover it up,
would inevitably bring.”[6]
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews assures us
“We do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who in every respect
has been tested as we are,
yet without sin.
“Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness,
so that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help in time of need.”
Mercy and grace aren’t excuses
to not try.
Mercy and grace, however
are the goodness of the Cross.
No matter how good we try to be
no matter what kind of behaviors we undertake
looking for our own exoneration
through our own saving our selves actions
there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.
We fall short.
“We do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who in every respect
has been tested as we are,
yet without sin.
“Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness,
so that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help in time of need.”
Look on the wood of the cross,
on which was raised the savior of the world.
O come,
let us worship.
[1] https://twitter.com/drsaraparks/status/1514620504115597327?s=21&t=pJORyJ4Wn6Ckdznm_WCaAQ
[2] https://twitter.com/drsaraparks/status/1514620506942713856?s=21&t=pJORyJ4Wn6Ckdznm_WCaAQ
[3] https://twitter.com/drsaraparks/status/1514620509199212544?s=21&t=pJORyJ4Wn6Ckdznm_WCaAQ
[4] https://maintenancephase.buzzsprout.com/1411126/10367336-michael-pollan-s-the-omnivore-s-dilemma#
[5] Jones, Robert P.. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity (pp. 230-1). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
[6] Jones, Robert P.. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity (p. 231). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.