Good Friday - John Style
I rarely manuscript but Holy Spirit led me to write one this past Friday
Good Friday Reflections for John’s Gospel
The first time we behold Jesus in John’s Gospel was through the eyes of another John – John the Baptist. When John the Baptist laid eyes on Jesus, he cried out, “Look! God’s lamb who takes away the sin of the world.” Every moment from then on in John was like a countdown to arrive here at Golgotha where Jesus was handed over again and again, until He was hung on a cross.
Some of Jesus’ first words in the Gospel after, “come and see,” where to His mother after she let him know that the wedding reception they were at had run out of wine. Jesus says to her that his time had not yet come. Yet mothers being mothers, ignored her sons statement and said to the servers at the party to do whatever Jesus tells them to do. So Jesus takes water and transforms it into wine. From that point on there was a countdown to the cross, where when Jesus’ side was pierced by a spear there would be another mixture of water and blood. We are told by Isaiah He is pierced for our transgressions and by His wounds we are healed.
Jesus’ mother is there at the cross. Mary is there for Jesus’ first sign in His ministry that points to the cross, and she is there to the very end. Just like Jesus with His disciples in chapter 13, Mary loved Jesus to the very end, and Jesus loved her. At a great moment of agony nailed to the cross, being publicly humiliated and taking on the powers of Evil in the world, Jesus looks to his mother and to the disciple whom he loved and said, “Here is your son.” And to the disciple, “here is your mother.” Most assume that is John himself. I actually think that disciple is Lazarus as that is how he is described in the Gospel. Does not really matter who. What truly matters is that even in His greatest pain, Jesus saw those He loved.
He saw you on the cross too. Obviously we do not have the same relationship with Jesus as Mary did. Yet in other places Jesus asks, “who are my brothers and sisters? Those who seek to do the will of God.” In Chapter 17 of John Jesus prayed for you and continues to pray for you. In chapter 19 Jesus suffers for you and in the midst of that agony, Jesus sees you. He sees your beauty and He sees your sin. He sees your brokenness, and offers you a home with Him. A place of wholeness and safety, a refuge in times of trouble. He gives you a family – a room in His house.
Coming near the end, Jesus fully in the moment realizes He is thirsty. The irony of this statements is that Jesus had been drinking. He had been drinking of the cup of judgment prophesied by Jeremiah and Isaiah, a cup we had been destined to drink except for Christ’s love for us. Christ’s love is the cup we now drink from and symbolically drank from earlier in this service. It is a foretaste of the living water which will never run out and never run dry welling up inside of our souls for eternity.
Jesus’ thirst is another illusion to a lament psalm – Psalm 69. In that Psalm, which we read earlier water was all around, but the Psalmist was in too much pain, too much agony, too much shame to take a drink. All the Psalmist wanted was to drink in God’s faithful, neverending love. The faithful, never giving up, unending love was what Jesus was displaying to the glory of God on the cross. Jesus became thirsty and drank the bitter cup of judgment so that we can drink in the love of God.
You may be here today and you are thirsty. Maybe you are like the Psalmist and the tears have parched your throat. Your shame, your oppression, or depression tells you, you are not loved. Your sin keeps popping up and you tell yourself you cannot be forgiven. Behold the cross tonight. Take a deep drink of God’s love.
After Jesus took a drink of this bitter wine, he looked up and said, “It is finished.” Then Jesus in another handing over, handed over his life. Jesus’ words here are another allusion to a Psalm – Psalm 22. The very end of it is translated in our Bibles, “He has done it.” You can also translate it, “It is finished, completed.” What was finished and completed. I am indebted to Dale Bruner for this image. Here we have a cross, and let’s start with the vertical beams. At the bottom of the cross is the Great Revelation – For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. How do we know God loves us? Because God sufffered and died for us? What God suffers for the people? Jesus does. Through God’s love, the world has a “Great Reconciliation” with God. We were once far from God, but God came to us. The Word became Flesh and dwelled among us. Or as Uncle Eugene translates it in the Message, “Jesus took on flesh and moved into the neighborhood.” The horizontal beams of the cross. There is the Great Reality. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. While that is an exclusive statement, Jesus was and is the most inclusive person to ever have walked the earth. Jesus kept showing up where people were hurting and in trouble and brought His truth and healing there. Our world is in desperate need of truth, and so many people are seeking what is truth, just like Pilate was. Here is the truth – Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Then there is the Great Rout. The rout of Sin. The rout of the Devil. The rout of the powers of this world, and the voices in your head. Your shame, your pain, your sin, are all routed at the cross. They are hung there with Jesus.
John’s Gospel starts out with Jesus being the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John’s Gospel at its climax at the cross has Jesus dying as the lambs for the Passover meal were being sacrificed. The Passover of course was God’s intervention and liberation of His people long ago from Egypt. John’s Gospel has proclaimed in words and deeds that God has come among His people again and brought a new kind of liberation. A liberation of love, of loving sacrifice that routs your Sin and Shame, that gives you truth to live by, that reveals God’s love for you, and reconciles you back to God.