Good Friday 
March 29, 2013
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

After all these years, there are still things in our rich tradition that jump out and surprise me: passages of scripture or prayers we recite regularly that I’ve never really heard before, at least in the same way.

This year when I was standing at Kathryn’s desk, preparing the bulletins for Holy Week liturgies, I read quickly through the ones for Good Friday. For some reason, I imagined myself as someone walking in off the street who had never been to a Good Friday service before. What would they experience? Betrayal, beating, distress, scorn, blood, abandonment, packs of encircling dogs, bones out of joint, death, and the grave.

I looked up and said to Kathryn “This is really dark.”

It is dark, the darkest day of the year. And yet millions are drawn to it, all over the world. We always have been. There’s something so compelling about it - an innocent man of love and truth, beaten and hung on a cross, earthquakes and darkness, weeping and despair - described in great detail and laid bare for all the world to see. And yet we come, drawn to it as if it were a magnet.

It’s like the attraction to Ash Wednesday - “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Or Dia de los Muertos, with all those grinning skeletons dancing, drinking, getting married. Or the thousands this day on pilgrimage to Chimayo, carrying crosses, re-enacting the Passion. Or Gothic vampire movies, now so popular with young teenage girls.

Are we morbid? What is all this about?

None of us wants to experience suffering or death, and yet we know it comes to all of us. And when it comes, we will not be in control, for it has a life of its own. So perhaps with these ghoulish stories and depictions, we are cautiously trying to make friends with it, so it won’t seem so chaotic, so powerful. After all, isn’t what is known and acknowledged less frightening than what is unknown and repressed?

Maybe by playing with skeletons and vampires, and by praying our way through someone else’s suffering and death, we bring it in closer, but not too close, so that we can make it more familiar, less terrifying, and gain some sense of control. It’s like the old saying “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

But there are times when we can’t embrace the darkness. A devastating loss, a debilitating disease, violence, and even the facing of our own real death when it comes - these things can be impossible to make friends with. They come along like tornadoes, and we are overwhelmed, out of control. No matter how many Good Fridays we’ve been through, we’re not prepared. What do we do then?

In the years I have walked with others through times like these, I have only seen two things that seem to help. And they both are ways in which Jesus himself endured his own Passion.

The first is a return to the present moment in God. By an act of the will, we can choose to focus our attention not on what is churning around in our brain - Why did this happen, how badly this might turn out, what it will be like if it does - but rather, on what is actually happening right now. We look at what we know, not at what we do not know. And what do we know, right now, at any time?

We know the physical sensations of our body, whether we are well or sick, comfortable or in pain. We know what comes through the other senses - what we see, hear, and touch. We know the people who surround us, the love we give and receive. We know the sky above, the earth below our feet. And we know God’s Spirit, always here.

In times of suffering, it is a very simple yet powerful shift to move from what is churning around in our brain to the moment at hand. It takes us away from what might be possible and grounds us in what is actual. This, I believe, is part of what Jesus was talking about when he spoke of the kingdom of God. It is here; it is now; it is among you; it is within you, he said.

Even when things are not going well, even when there seems to be chaos, there is our breath. There is the comfort of love, the sunlight through the window, the stillness that opens up and reveals the divine dimension. Returning to the kingdom of God in this present moment, we can move from panic to peace, regardless of our external circumstances.

I think that Jesus carried this sense of the divine dimension, the kingdom of God, through all his trials. I think that when betrayal, arrest, humiliation, and suffering came to him, he was at the same time open to something else, something that could not be harmed or taken away from him. This doesn’t mean that he was tranquil, unperturbed - he was human, like all of us. But I imagine that he was also in touch with the divine dimension, even at the end. How else could he have said, at the end, when things were at their worst, “Into your hands I commend my spirit”?

The second thing that seems to help when we are overwhelmed with difficulties is the big picture. When our friend Ellen Novak died last fall at the much-too-young age of 61, leaving behind two teenage children and a life she loved, she had managed to get to the big picture.

After months of fear and resistance, after feeling that her life was closing down and ending badly, it began to open up. In that opening she could see her whole life, her children’s lives ahead of them, the sweep of humanity, life and eternity, earth and heaven. And it gave her peace.

Every religious tradition, including ours, offers some kind of continuation of life beyond the 8 or 9 decades (if we are fortunate) that we enjoy here on earth. Whether it is heaven or karma or a return to the Source from which we came, there is a conviction that this is not all there is. Spirit is unhindered by time and space, by what we call the physical laws of nature, unhindered by death. We are a part of a reality not only beyond the material plane, but beyond our imagination.

Jesus knew this, of course. At his trial, he said to Pilate, who threatened him with death, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And he comforted the thief hanging on the cross next to him by saying “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Today, in our solemn remembrance of those gruesome last hours in Jesus’ life, we are doing something that is pretty dark. We draw near to the darkness in the hope of reducing its power over us. We face it in the hope of learning something from it.

As we peer into this darkness, we see that this it is filled with God’s loving presence, that the kingdom of God is even there. And as we stay there, looking yet more deeply, we also see that it opens up to a reality beyond our imagination, to eternity. This is why we call this Friday “Good.”

In elementary school I had a good friend who was a Roman Catholic.  While our friendship was tolerated by our parents, I certainly couldn’t attend church with her or she with me.  If she were a boy, our friendship would not have been tolerated because the potential of dating would be an intolerable thought.  But Mary Miller and I talked about church and God and Jesus because those were important elements in our lives.  I wore a plain gold cross around my neck and Mary wore a crucifix.  In our conversations, we realized her church did not have a cross without Christ crucified and in my church there was not a crucifix to be found.  I asked my grandfather about this and he replied simply: “They are more into the suffering and we are more into the saving.”  

That answer satisfied me then, mainly because whenever my quiet grandfather answered my questions, I listened.  Now I know there is much more to the issue of suffering and salvation than an either-or answer.   Much of Jesus’ life and teaching rests on paradox.  Jesus challenges us to live in tension:  the first will be last, lose your life to gain it, the burden is light, those who come late will be paid the same as those who worked hard all day.  His very human death was no different: Suffering is a way to salvation.  

The cross symbolizes suffering and salvation.  Today we embrace the suffering.  And although we know the end of the story, today we sit at the foot of Christ being crucified.  As a child it may have felt good to have the clean cross of victory and salvation, but I learned you cannot live without the flip side of the crucifixion.  This very emotional day tells us precisely that: we cannot have one without the other.  It is something to contemplate.  In pursuit of that, I give you two questions to ponder.
The first question is:  Why are you here?  The second is:  What is saving you today?
 Why are you here?  What brings you to this place on this black Friday they call Good Friday?  Are you here out of habit because this is simply what you do during Holy Week?  Is it because Fr. Christopher told you to go for a home run?  Is it for an emotional high or low?  

Are you here because you, too, are feeling crucified and want company?  Or is it because you simply wonder about this day and are trying to understand what the Gospeler John meant when he wrote: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” What kind of God do we have anyway?

Is there a more subtle reason?  Do you have this nagging feeling that perhaps you have not been able to hold your ground in this post-Christian era and too many times you were guilty of shouting “crucify him” without saying the words out loud.  Perhaps your actions didn’t reflect your heart.  Perhaps it was just easier to keep your mouth shut than to open it and reflect the heart of Christ.  Perhaps you are here to just say to God that you are sorry.

Well, there are as many reasons for being here as there are persons in this place.  Times haven’t changed.   In the 4th century there was a pilgrim named Etheria (or Egeria or Sylvia…we are not sure or her name) who travelled from Spain to Jerusalem and kept an extensive diary which included the events of Holy Week in the Holy City.

In her account of Good Friday, she relates that when it came time to venerate the cross, the Bishop seated himself at a table behind the large crossbeam, holding the beam firmly in both hands.  Two hefty deacons stationed themselves at either end of the beam as the faithful came by to kiss the cross in memory of Jesus’ sufferings.  Etheria writes that this precaution resulted from an incident several years earlier when a pious pilgrim, anxious for a relic, took a bite out of the cross instead of kissing it.    

I agree with the commentator who says this story holds a warning for us.  As we gather here to remember Jesus’ death, we must guard against becoming that ancient pilgrim with strong teeth and splinters in his gums.  We could say, “Look!  I was there!  I can tell you about the emotions, the music, the words, the silences.”  I showed up.

Whatever brings us here, Jesus on the cross is our common ground.  Why are you here?  Are you a pilgrim looking for a relic?  Are you a casual visitor searching for answers?  There are answers at the foot of the cross.  But how does one sort out the intense suffering and the resulting salvation?  Here is one analogy:  Think of yourself as parents who are bedside of their very sick child and are praying to God to let them bear the pain instead of their child, not because they are masochistic or guilty, but simply because they love the one who is suffering.  

Today’s Good Friday Liturgy invites us to embrace the suffering of Jesus on the cross as we would the pain of a family member or friend we love deeply. (Read quote from Nouwen’s Road to Daybreak)   And through our prayers in this service we are invited to embrace not only Jesus’ suffering, but the suffering of our brothers and sisters throughout the world.  A commentator continues, “The cross is raised before us, not as a souvenir taken down from the shelf and dusted off for our admiration, but as the bed of our suffering brother, who incarnates and bears the world’s pain.”

“Like all the events of his life, the death of Jesus stands as our judgment.  We can respond to it like curious tourists, who look and then move on, little changed except for some painful splinters.  Or we can recognize the face of the one we love, though ‘marred beyond human appearance,’ and embrace his pain as ours,  In that embrace, we find our own pain enfolded in God’s love, united with the world’s pain and healed because Christ first loved us and embraced our pain.”  (Author unknown.  Excerpt beginning with story Etheria comes from Homily Service: An Ecumenical Resource for Sharing the Word, Vol.20, No.1, April 1987,pp. 27-28)

Why are you here today?  My second question folds into the first:  What is saving you now?  I was away from the parish for most of Lent.  As a Lenten study, many here read Barbara Brown Taylor’s book An Altar in the World.    I read it a couple of years ago when it first came out and frankly had not reread it for our communal study.  But when I picked up the book last week, I found I had highlighted the story in the introduction where Ms Taylor relates that she was invited to preach on the topic of “what is saving your life now.”  BBT writes, “It was as if he(the priest)had swept his arm across a dusty table and brushed all the formal china to the ground.  I did not have to try to say correct things that were true for everyone.  I did not have to use theological language that conformed to the historical teachings of the church.  All I had to do was figure out what my life depended on.  All I had to do was figure out how I stayed as close to that reality as I could, and then find some way to talk about is that helped my listeners figure those same things for themselves.  The answers I gave all those years ago are not the same answers I would give today—that is the beauty of the question….the principle is the same.  What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth.” (unquote,p.xv)

No spiritual treasure exists apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth.  That is precisely what Jesus taught by his life and death.  We say:  Jesus is my Lord and Savior.  Jesus saved me.  What does that mean?  How is Jesus your Savior?  How is Jesus your Salvation?  What does he teach?  What does Jesus say to you?  What does his suffering on the cross and death do to save you?

What, indeed, is saving you now?  Now, this moment.  The answer can and will change.  Here are only  a few things I have discovered for myself.  It isn’t a job that saves me.  For years I depended on my various job identities in church work to explain to the world who I was.  It isn’t my good looks.  I still have a great smile that has blasted me through and saved me a lot of times.  But I am, friends, growing older and am shaped differently and I have a decided limp.  Good looks aren’t going to save me.  Alcohol saved me from reality for many years.  It helped me to get away from inner pain, to go somewhere else.  It no longer saves me, it will in fact kill me if I abuse it.  

I say Jesus is my Savior.  What do I mean?  I mean just that.  Jesus teaches me how to live in paradox, how to live mindfully each moment in this world if I simply pay attention.  It’s pretty simple because it’s about embracing the suffering in a circle of love that reflects God’s love to me and to the world.  It is about relationships.  It is living out the great commandment to love God with all your heart and mind and soul.   And if you love God, you must surely love God’s creation, this earth, our planet home.  I felt it more than ironic that during this Holy Week we remembered the first anniversary of the Gulf spill, that we continue to read of the impact of nuclear power uncontrolled in Japan, and today is in fact Earth Day.   I find it hard to believe that my husband Fred as a reporter covered the first Earth Day in 1970 in Bloomington,Indiana.
 Another sermon might be:  Are we crucifying the earth which is, in fact, the same as crucifying God?  More simply, sitting at the foot of the cross, we might ask ourselves if we are playing any part in causing the earth’s suffering.  Are we, in fact, connected to everyone and everything, by the arms of Jesus stretched out on the cross?  That is connected, of course, to the rest of the great commandment.  Jesus says, to love the Lord your God with all you heart and mind and soul.  The second is like unto it:  love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Can you love your neighbor, can you love God if you don’t love yourself?

Can you embrace the suffering?  Can you prepare yourself to walk from the foot of the cross and through the cross knowing you are not alone?  Can you wear a two sided cross of suffering and salvation on your chest and in your heart?

Why are you here?  What is saving you now?  Amen

Good Friday  Year C
St. Michael and All Angels, Albuquerque, NM
The Rev. Carolyn W. Metzler+
John 18:1-17

             At the risk of sounding irreverent, the first part of today’s Gospel reads like a very bad play that can’t quite get off the ground.  After all the build-up, the Last Supper, the foot washing, the new commandment, Jesus’ high priestly prayer, we arrive in the Garden where the greatest betrayal in history is about to take place, but they just can’t quite get it together.  It is a familiar place, where Jesus and his disciples had gathered before at happier times.  It was a place of intimacy, where friendship had been celebrated.  They’d certainly picnicked here, enjoyed conversation, maybe napped under the trees on when the air was still on hot afternoons.   It was a reasonable place to go now.  And everybody shows up.  Judas, with his battalion of soldiers, the temple police, the Pharisees—all who had been plotting and scheming for this moment for a long time.  They couldn’t WAIT to get their hands on him.  Jesus had the opening line.  “For whom are you looking?”  They all answered in rehearsed union: “Jesus of Nazareth.”  Jesus replied, “I am he.”  Literally, his words are “I, I AM,” the name of God.  That’s when it all went wrong—perhaps some realized they were in the wrong play, or playing the wrong part.  They fell back, some to the ground.  Hey wait a minute—we’re supposed to be the good guys!   The director yelled “CUT!” and they started again.  “For whom are you looking?”  “Jesus of Nazareth.”  “I told you, I am he.  I, I AM. You’ve got me.  Let’s these men go.”  And then Simon, always the one to act before thinking, grabbed his sword and sliced off the ear of Malchus.  I tried to imagine this when Judith read it last night.  Do you realize how hard it is to cut off an ear with a sword?  That wasn’t in the script, either.  It was one bungled beginning.

            There is only one person in this whole fiasco of an arrest who is calm, and in control, and that is Jesus.  His own time of temptation had passed, his time of doubt, his terrible dread.  He had come through it.  He was clear, focused, and not about to abandon course at this point.  If love was the goal, love was also the way there, and that way led to the cross.  Once Jesus was taken into custody, his had no more control over events.  Control, the ability to affect the outcome of things, had been surrendered by him.  He was without control.  But he was not without power.

            A little over twelve years ago, I attended an execution in South Carolina.   I was the companioning chaplain for Andy Smith, a man I had befriended 16 years earlier, a man I had come to love and respect.  We had talked about this event, and how he could approach a death over which he had no control.  Every moment of that night of horror, Andy maintained unwavering grace, dignity, and presence.  The guards, with whom he had developed a friendship, clearly did not want to do what they had to do.  They apologized as they prepared him for death.  I’ll spare you the details.  Executions are horrifying, especially when they are supposedly humane.  But strapped to the gurney, Andy forgave them.  The scene was not too dissimilar from our first Gospel.  I watched them lash him down and was overwhelmed with rage.  I hold the rank of brown belt in karate and had a momentary impulse to take down about three of the guards, stomp on the needles, and halt the appalling chain of events which were coursing down the single trajectory of death.  That action would have succeeded in getting me thrown out in disgrace and never permitted to set foot in a prison again; it would have delayed his execution by about five minutes and he would have died without the presence of a single person who loved him.  I had no control over these events.  But I was not without power.  I could pray, and I prayed mightily.  I could sing, and I sang the Trisagion loudly enough that it was picked up by the Associated Press reporters in the witness booth.  I could love, and love him I did.  In that place of incarnate evil, I could bring love and song and prayer, even if I couldn’t stop the execution.  Those three actions were far more subversive than impulsive violence.

            Throughout the crucifixion narrative, Jesus is a man of power.   I came to understand Good Friday quite differently this year while I was preparing a sermon on the Transfiguration.  There Jesus was on the holy mount, speaking with Moses and Elijah, and he was “talking with them about his departure which he would accomplish in Jerusalem.”  I thought “departure” was an odd word to use for “death,” or “crucifixion.”  It sounds like he’s headed for the airport, not for Golgotha.   So I looked up the original word which we translate “departure,” and what do you know—it’s “exodus.”  Like early sun breaking over a canyon wall flooding the valley with dazzling light, Good Friday was transformed for me.  Jesus is not a victim, powerless and helpless against his tormenters.  With that one little word, Jesus is the new Moses, leading all God’s people out of slavery to death and the endless cycles of revenge and retribution.   This “exodus” is something which he was to accomplish.   It was an achievement reached because no torturer, no execution team, no temple police, no religious authorities could take away who he was and what he was about.  Shortly before he died, Andy had told me of all the humiliations he had suffered in a cruel attempt to dehumanize him.  I asked him how he could remain so cheerful in the face of it all.  He gave me this great smile, spread his big hands across the glass separating us and said, “They can’t take nothin’ from me that I don’t choose to give ‘em.”  Andy also knew the difference between having no control, and having no power.

            The Mystery of it all for me is that this power that Jesus maintained throughout his torturous death came precisely because he “emptied himself,” in the words of Paul in Philippians.   “Though he was in the form of God, he did not equate equality with God as something to be grasped, but he emptied himself; he poured himself out and became obedient unto death, even death on the cross.”  We read it last Sunday.   Godly power is not something to be grasped, earned, manipulated, or honed through workshops and seminars.  Jesus had power simply because he let everything go except love.  What he was called, what he wore, what he was thought of by others simply didn’t matter.  All the things that make for false ego, Jesus could let go like so much chaff in the wind.  What gave him power to lead us Like Moses through the wilderness that day was not what he had, but what he released.  Only love remained, for his executioners, for his absent disciples, for the terrified Peter, for the slave of the high priest with the bleeding ear.  It was love that gave him the power to accomplish what no amount of control could ever fulfill.  

            When we are invited to “take up our cross and follow him,” the centrality of love is at the heart of that also.  Taking up our cross is not about petty Lenten disciplines, certainly not about giving up chocolate (sorry!), not how noble we are because we put up with someone obnoxious.  Taking up our cross is not even about coping with cancer or a difficult parent.  Taking up our cross is not some unexpected hardship that comes our way.  Taking up our cross is about knowing where the real source of our power is—and is not.  It is not in our competence, or our wealth, or our education.  Real power is not even in how holy we are.  It rests only and completely in our openness to the self-emptying God who goes all the way to the cross—and beyond it—to demonstrate God’s limitless love.  Real power has nothing to do with how much we control events or other people.  It has everything to do with our on-going, evolving surrender to the God who emptied Godself completely to become us; to be born with our birth, live our life, and die our death.  Real power is about knowing that we live God’s life, and opening ourselves as fully as we can to that grace.  God lived our life, so we can live God’s life.

            What began as a bumbled scene in a Garden became a passionate drama where all the forces of life, death, authority, fear, forgiveness and love are played out to their fullest.   In life, Jesus’ arms opened wide to embrace all who would follow him.  In death, Jesus’ arms opened even wider, embracing those who knew not what they did, embracing those disciples who abandoned him.  Beyond the cross his arms continually open wider and wider to embrace us with all our failings and all our betrayals, our bad choices, our ego-driven obsessions.  He is the Lover of all he has created, drawing us into that embrace.  It is there, in that embrace from the Cross that we find his love has freed us and made us whole.  And that, brothers and sisters, is why we call this Friday “Good.”    Amen. 

Good Friday
April 2, 2010
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Everywhere there are crosses: on church steeples like ours, as tattoos, on billboards, and along the roadside, marking the sites of fatal accidents. The image has become so common that we almost cease to see it anymore. The comedian Dick Gregory said once that if we really wanted to convey the meaning of the cross, we would wear as jewelry  tiny gold electric chairs around our necks. 

Recently I read that the psychologist Carl Jung said that the image of a naked man hanging on a cross has to be one of the most potent symbols of human life. But the question is, what does this symbol communicate? 

For me, it says three things. The cross tells us that in martyrdom, the powerless become powerful. It tells us that suffering can be redemptive. And it tells us about how we find fulfillment, paradoxically, in self-denial. 

I have been to the site of several martyrdoms: the Gandhi Smriti in New Delhi, where he was assassinated by a separatist; a church rectory in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala, where a Franciscan priest who gave voice to the poor was killed by a military death squad; the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Martin Luther King was shot by a sniper; and, of course, Jerusalem, where Jesus was martyred. 

In all of these locations, I stood on the very site where the death took place. In each site, at first I felt sickened, terribly sad. But then I became aware of a palpable sense of spiritual power. A kind of hush falls over everyone when they approach, for we know that we are entering holy ground. This hush is not grief or anger; it’s awe. At the site of a martyrdom, it’s as if this small world suddenly becomes vast; time and space open up; and we see God at work in history, in this death. What is it that causes this feeling in us? 

I think it is the knowledge that the injustice committed is made small and petty compared to the sacrifice made by the martyr. The separatist assassin, the death squad, the racist, the Roman soldiers – they all become powerless and insignificant when compared to the person they try to destroy. And the one who is killed, however great in life, becomes, in death, even greater: filled with God’s light and power. It’s as if, right when the world tries to do its worst, it is unmasked as impotent. It is a kind of victory over the things we are all afraid of: cruelty, random violence, and unfairness. What a liberating feeling. 

This is not just a truth about famous martyrs. It is a truth about us, too. Whenever we are victims of the unfairness of life, we can become larger, too. We can also see our enemies as impotent, and we can see God at work in life. 

Now I’m a person of privilege: a white, educated American male. And so I haven’t been on the receiving end of much prejudice in my life. But because I’ve sided with gay and lesbian people, I’ve tasted a little bit of the contempt that they, and that every misunderstood minority receives. And I can tell you – it has resulted not in beating me down and making me smaller, but connecting me to a larger thing, to the work of God in this world. My opponents become like so many gnats. 

I’m sure you have experienced unfairness and misunderstanding, perhaps even prejudice. Can you let these small martyrdoms be a source of life, rather than death? Can you see that in injustice, the perpetrator is unmasked as impotent, and that your goodness can never be taken away from you? This is powerful; it is liberating. 

The cross also tells us how suffering can become redemptive. The naked man, a poor peasant from Galilee strung up to die in the big city of Jerusalem, suffers. During those 3 hours, he died a slow, tortuous death. And we call it good, for his suffering brings forth good. The evil of Jesus’ suffering is redeemed, because it draws people to God. 

I don’t want to romanticize the suffering of others, but I can say that I have heard the voice of Anne Frank, who said that “in spite of everything, I still believe that people are basically good.” I have heard those who have suffered years of painful chemotherapy say that their ordeal set them free, that it helped them become the person that God created them to be. I have seen the dignity and overcoming beauty rising up out of the suffering of the poor in places like Haiti. I’ve seen that suffering can be redeemed. 

My own suffering in life has been minimal, especially compared to these other examples. The worst of it is that at times, I have felt mildly depressed, alienated, temporarily without meaning, motivation, or direction. But it is in those periods that I have grown the most. They took me to a deep place inside that I could not have reached without suffering, and in that place, I found God at work, making me more real, more at peace. 

Some of you have suffered greatly; others, like me, not so much. But we’re all somewhere on the continuum, for, as the Buddha said, life is suffering. For a person of faith, life is suffering redeemed. In our darkest times, it is possible for us to hit a kind of bottom, to sit on the ground and discover that we are not alone, and this is not the end. It is, in fact, a beginning. Out of that place God helps us to become more free, more true. And we wouldn’t have become so without that dark place. 

Finally, the cross tells us about fulfillment found in self-denial. Jesus knew what was coming. He knew that there were plots to take his life. He could have gone back to a quiet carpenter’s life in Nazareth. But he didn’t. He kept on going. In spite of the cost, he kept on speaking out against the powerful; he kept on gathering and loving and healing the outcast; he kept on being true to God. He laid down his life for his cause. He denied himself – he denied his natural, human desire for self-preservation – to remain true to God and so that his message would reach more people. 

There are people who give up much in order to serve others: Franciscans who live among the poor; people in Catholic Worker communities living in ghettos and serving soup to the homeless; those who take literally Jesus’ words to “sell all you have, give the money to the poor, and come, follow me.” 

But we’re not all called to this kind of obvious, material self-denial. My version of self-denial is not dramatic. It has been the quiet self-denial of holding my tongue because a parishioner needed my acceptance more than he needed my disagreement. It has been the self-denial of occasional long hours of work that will really benefit other people, instead of staying home, where sometimes I’d rather be. It has been the self-denial of tithing a portion of my income every month, just giving away money that I could have used on travel or savings or something fun. 

You exercise self-denial, too. Whenever you temporarily put aside your own preferences and serve the greater good, you walk the way of the cross. 

But the amazing thing is that while self-denial may feel like deprivation in the moment, it can lead us to a fuller sense of self. For a life that is focused only on the fulfillment of its own desires and preferences is small. A life that seeks continual expansion and blossoming for itself alone becomes empty. A life that is, on the other hand, sometimes pruned, held back, and denied, becomes healthier, thicker, more beautiful. 

This is because self-denial connects us to people and things outside of ourselves. In giving away our time, money, and energy, we are more than ourselves. We are part of the world around us. And our actions go out, creating a ripple of good. 

This Friday is a time to take in the potent image of a man hanging on a cross, and reflect on why that image affects us so. It is a time to remember how injustice reveals the impotence of evil and the potency of good. It is a time to seek the freedom and integrity that can come out of suffering. And it is a time to see in self-denial the potential for a much larger self. 

This Friday is powerful, and it is good. 

Sorry, the full text for this sermon is not available at this time.