Good Friday Sermon by Neil Ryan

Can you remember the last time you had a moment?

Oprah coined the phrase ‘Ahah moment’ or we might call it an old fashioned Epiphany.

 

….the moment when you get it: the realization, when the penny drops, when the answer dawns on you, when you see it clearly.

 

I’m not sure if anyone does the TARGET puzzle in the Advertiser, but you have to make words out of 9 letters and there’s always a 9 letter word.

You look and look and sometimes it doesn’t matter when you turn it upside down or sideways it won’t come.

The more you look at it the more it won’t come!

THEN – no reason you get it.

 

The sheer relief of it all!

The puzzle is solved.

It’s no longer a mystery!

 

There is one of these moments in the midst of all the events of Good Friday.

 

Up to this point so much has already happened.

Judas had betrayed his Master

Jesus experienced the agony of Garden of Gethsemane

Soldiers arrested him and taken him to Annas the High Priest

Peter denied he ever knew Jesus

Chief Priests and elders came to a decision to put Jesus to death [Matthew 27:1]

Dragged him before Pilate.

 

After Pilate…..

Barabbas a criminal is released in preference to Jesus.

Jesus is stripped, beaten, and a crown of thorns is pushed onto his head.

Then they put a staff in his hands and mocked him saying mocked him saying ‘Hail, king of the Jews’

Then they spat on him and beat him with that same staff…..

led him along the Via Dolorosa carrying his own cross to the place where he was crucified.

 

Right in the middle of all this, is a moment.

It came at the most farcical time of all these events.

 

Pilate says,

Here it is…. It’s like time is frozen for a moment.

Then Pilate spurts out

 

This turns Good Friday on its end!

It’s like someone has just turned on a flashlight in the pitch black!

 

Pilate has no idea what he is doing.

The crowd has no idea what they are asking.

The disciples have no idea what is happening.

 

Jesus says,

I was born for THIS!

I have come to testify to the truth.

 

We need to pay close attention.

The events unfolding here are telling us something we cannot afford to miss.

There is truth here that changes everything!!

 

We have such a hard time with truth don’t we.

We have a love / hate relationship with it.

We want it so badly but it’s a nuisance.

The truth is we only want the truth when it’s saying things we want to be true!

 

When I get booked for speeding I don’t want to be told the truth that I was speeding, I want people to know the real truth that radars are nothing but a revenue raising fat cow. The truth is we should be spending money catching real crooks not people like me!!!

 

What is truth about life?

Many have tried to unravel truth.

From the mystics in mountains of India to people like Dr. R.F. Gumperson, internationally famous physicist back in the early part of 20^th Century.

He came up with what is known as Gumperson’s Law.

 

He observed things like –

·       a child can be exposed to mumps for weeks without catching them, but can catch them without exposure the day before the family vacation.

·       the dishwasher will break down the evening you have dinner for ten.

·       that the parking spaces are always on the other side of the street.

 

Interesting thing about this man who researched the truth about life and humanity is that he was tragically killed in 1947.

 

He was strolling along the road one evening; [In USA] he was obeying the pedestrian rules of walking to the left, wearing light clothing, and facing traffic. He was struck down from behind by a Hillman-Minx, driven by an English tourist who was on the left side of the road.

 

You can come to the conclusion that there is no such thing a truth.

That all of life is random.

That it’s a giant raffle and you just have to watch the numbers fall!!

 

But that won’t do.

We are made for more than that.

Something in our soul will play with that for a while but we want more.

 

Bob Dylan wrote a song that many of us can remember back in the 60’s. Much more courageous search for the truth.

Called ‘Hard Rain’

 

 

It was not a feel good song!

 

On and on the lyrics allude to all manner of human disasters: burning bodies, hunger, unrequited love, a child's heartbreak, prisons and executions.

 

Many radio and TV programs banned it because

it was too disturbing, too upsetting. But the young people sang it for a long time. And as they did, they were saying, "That's the way it is!

 

 

Open your eyes and look! Look at yourself! Look at the world around you! Look at the brokenness. Look at the violence and senselessness.  That is the way it is and God help us if we won't see it: "a hard rain's a-gonna fall."

 

Problem is, we don’t want the truth.

Too confronting.

We don’t want to know the truth about us.

 

Truth is, you and I are governed by a heart that can look so god-like at times…. yet it is ready to defy the God that made us at any given moment!!

 

Truth is you and I would trade Jesus for Barabbas in a moment if the price was right!!!

 

Truth is that what we see here unfolding on Good Friday is a microcosm of the human heart.

 

Truth is that God cannot nor did not avoid the reality of our brokenness, our hypocrisy, our pain and our hunger and our sinfulness.

 

Jesus says,

This King will not avoid the hard rain.

This King will not avoid paying the hard price.

This King will not shrink back from hard road that will take him all the way to the cross.

Why?

Because now we can face the truth about ourselves and know that the King has come to do something about it.

 

Through a series of chance circumstances, a celebrated Broadway actress found herself sitting in a crowded church, listening to a reading of the "Passion of the Lord." For months the woman had been suffering from what she described as a "terrible cavity somewhere in the abdominal region."

 

She had been examined by several doctors who found no physical cause for her pain. She had undergone exploratory surgery at her own insistence. Again she was found to be well physically. Now, in church, as the Passion Story moved toward its climax, she felt the cavity cut deeper into her being than ever before: an overwhelming feeling of emptiness.

 

Then came Jesus' words, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" The woman said, "I shall never forget that blessed moment when, in my emptiness, I felt at one with Jesus. I realized that His anguished cry to the Heavens was coming from the very depths of his soul.

 

I realized that this Jesus, whose friends had betrayed and denied Him and whose own People had delivered Him to the executioners, was experiencing unbearable loneliness.

 

And suddenly I knew that the cause of my ailment was spiritual, not physical! I was lonely for the Love of God."

 

The famous French writer, Paul Claudel, once said that "Christ did not come to do away with suffering; He did not come to explain it; He came to fill it with His presence."

 

This is Easter.

The truth is we are lonely for the love of God.

Our sinful heart has tried to be in love with everything else but God but we’re still lonely!

 

The truth is we have tried every possible way to live with out God and we want so badly to convince ourselves that we can.

Then Jesus says something in a moment that changes everything.

 

I was born for this.

Something with in us can only say thank you!

Even as we hear Jesus in the Garden asking God if there was any other way than the cross, our heart wants to believe there could be a better way.

But Jesus says,

This morning we come to say thank you!

Thank you for the truth.

Thank you for the cross.

Thank you for filling our loneliness with your presence.

Thank you that now we can face the hard rain because we will never face it alone!

 

Today we marvel at this moment that changed everything.

Let’s join together to look at the cross.

Let’s participate in Lord’s Supper.

Let us as an act of faith say thank you Lord for….

 

filling my life with your love,

forgiving my sin by your sacrifice

facing me with the truth about myself

          freeing me to live with a sense of eternity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Easter is the heart of our faith. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation upon which Christianity is grounded.

a)     Do we ‘make enough of it’?

b)    Should it be a ‘festival’ or ‘special occasion’ or better to be celebrated in our continual worship each week of the year?

c)     Share something that touched you as you worshipped over this Easter.

 

2. Read John 18:28-40

What strikes you as you read this passage?

What do you make of Pilate?

[See also Matthew 27:11-26]

 

3. Read v37

This is the ‘moment’ that changes everything in this story. Jesus redeems what looks to be a hopeless, miscarriage of justice and declares he was ‘born for this…’

a)     Read the whole verse. What exactly was Jesus born for?

b)    Pilate says, What is truth….[v38]

·       What truth is Jesus revealing in the cross?

·       Why do we find truth so confronting?

·       What are some of the ways we avoid facing the truth?

 

Bob Dylan wrote a song that many of us can remember back in the 60’s. In some ways it is a search for the truth.

Called ‘Hard Rain’

 

 

The ‘hard rain’ is falling in our world today. How is this generation handling the ‘truth’ about ourselves, about our world, about God?

 

What is the ‘truth’ in our secularized world?

How do we communicate truth in a world like this?

 

4. “Truth is, you and I are governed by a heart that can look so god-like at times…. yet it is ready to defy the God that made us at any given moment!!

 

Truth is you and I would trade Jesus for Barabbas in a moment if the price was right!!!”

 

Discuss

 

5. Through a series of chance circumstances, a celebrated Broadway actress found herself sitting in a crowded church, listening to a reading of the "Passion of the Lord." For months the woman had been suffering from what she described as a "terrible cavity somewhere in the abdominal region."

 

She had been examined by several doctors who found no physical cause for her pain. She had undergone exploratory surgery at her own insistence. Again she was found to be well physically. Now, in church, as the Passion Story moved toward its climax, she felt the cavity cut deeper into her being than ever before: an overwhelming feeling of emptiness.

 

Then came Jesus' words, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" The woman said, "I shall never forget that blessed moment when, in my emptiness, I felt at one with Jesus. I realized that His anguished cry to the Heavens was coming from the very depths of his soul.

 

I realized that this Jesus, whose friends had betrayed and denied Him and whose own People had delivered Him to the executioners, was experiencing unbearable loneliness.

 

And suddenly I knew that the cause of my ailment was spiritual, not physical! I was lonely for the Love of God."

 

a)     How true is that for all of us?

b)    How does the cross deal with our loneliness?

c)     How important is it that Jesus knew what it was to be completely rejected and forsaken by God?

 

6. The famous French writer, Paul Claudel, once said that "Christ did not come to do away with suffering; He did not come to explain it; He came to fill it with His presence."

 

Discuss