Sermon for March 21st (Good Friday)

I would like to repeat just one verse again from the psalm we just read, “The Lord did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.” The Lord did not hide his face from me, the psalm says. And yet, hear what the prophet Isaiah wrote, a reading which is often understood to speak about Jesus’ death and crucifixion, “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.” He was as one from whom others hide their faces.

Why do we hide our faces from Jesus on the cross? Why? Because we did this to Jesus. Jesus hangs from nails because of us. It’s probably the same reason that I have more trouble looking at a dead cow carcass than a dead raccoon on the side of the road—I know that cows are killed because I really like hamburgers. I realize that I am partly responsible for cattle yards and slaughterhouses, but racoons just die sometimes, and, at most, I might just feel sorry for them . . . or pity them. It is so easy to pity Jesus on the cross and forget that we are the ones that put him there. That we are responsible.

“He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.” We do not hide our faces because Jesus looks so awful, but because he makes us look so awful. He is disgusting to us, how he hangs there on the cross like a limp noodle. The Son of God, dangling from a piece of wood with no fight left in him. You can hear the soldiers mocking him to come down, “If you’re the Son of God then come down!” We all want him to come down, to prove us wrong, to forget that we just crucified him, Jesus our Savior. It’s our last chance at vindication, as if Jesus coming down off the cross would somehow save our rear ends in the sight of God.

But as psalm 22 says, while we hide our faces from Jesus’ suffering, God does not hide his face. And so, we even use this as our defense. We are only human, of course, we do some bad things. We sin sometimes, we swear sometimes, we gossip sometimes we nail people to crosses to die sometimes. Sure, ok, so we make mistakes! That’s just who we are! Thank goodness God is still there, so that Jesus doesn’t have to suffer all alone.

But we are all wrong. All wrong. God does not hide his face from this suffering, the suffering of his Son on a cross. But, with his mouth pointed directly at Jesus Christ, looking at his beloved Son face to face, God curses Jesus. He leaves him there to die. God forsakes him there. And so Jesus screams, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me!” Jesus dies alone. Completely alone.

Christ became a curse. He was cursed by God, his Father. “Christ became a curse for us. Chapter 23 in the book of Deuteronomy says it very clearly, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” That’s the law. And Jesus is condemned by that law. Jesus did not only suffer, but he was cursed by God. So, we hide our faces not just because of what we have done, but because of what God has done because of us. He has made our sin even worse. We did not just kill Jesus, but allowed him to be cursed by his Father.

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” Paul writes in the book of Galatians. This is the final reason we hide our faces. We realize that we are no different than Jesus. We realize that we have as little hope for salvation as Jesus does, hanging dead on that wooden cross. The light of the world has gone out. Hope has become despair. Jesus’ death means that all have died.

What is there left to do then? Only wait. We wait and hide our faces. We wait with the disciples behind closed, locked doors, scared that someone will find us out. We wait in the darkness with Peter, crying at our betrayal. We wait to find out what God will do. What will God do with a dead, cursed Jesus? Because in God’s answer, you will discover what he intends on doing with a dead and cursed you. Amen.