April 18, 2025: Good Friday

Laura Meyers

Readings: Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Psalm 22, John 18:1–19:42

As we gather in the stillness and weight of this Good Friday, I begin with a question:
What would you do if you knew you had only one week to live?

It’s not just a rhetorical question. It’s an invitation into the heart of Holy Week. The question doesn’t ask for a bucket list—it asks for meaning. For clarity of purpose. For truth. If you had just seven days left, what would matter most?

Jesus knew.

And John’s Gospel tells us that it all began in a garden—just as it will end in one.

The first garden we remember is Eden—not as a place of failure, but of beginnings. A space where we stepped into the work of becoming partners with God. The real rupture—the first true wound of sin—came not with Eve and Adam, but with Cain and Abel, when violence entered the human story and sibling rose up against sibling.

In Eden though, something shifted. After that first taste of knowledge, we started hiding from God. And maybe that’s one way to understand sin—not simply as breaking rules, but as hiding from relationship. Forgetting that we are beloved. Turning inward in fear instead of outward in trust.

We see this pattern echoed in the Passion story—how Judas, in betrayal, and Peter, in denial, both turned away from relationship. Their actions didn’t sever God’s love, but they fractured connection. That’s the nature of sin: it isolates us—from each other, from God, and from ourselves.

Sin is disconnection: from justice, from truth, from love. It shows up in fear that isolates, in violence that divides, and in systems that dehumanize. Yet God doesn’t abandon us. God moves toward us—again and again—inviting us to return, to heal, and to co-create a more just world.

And so we arrive at Gethsemane. A different garden. A new Adam—not one who hides, but who stands open-handed and unafraid. Jesus says to Peter, “Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” He chooses nonviolence. He chooses trust, even when it costs him everything.

In this garden, the story is reclaimed. Not through power, but through surrender. Not through domination, but through love—a love that does not hide, even in the face of betrayal, humiliation, and death.

And on this day, we remember that Jesus spent his final hours in agony—mocked, stripped, beaten, betrayed, and crucified. The fullness of human suffering bore down on the One who came only to love.

We call this day Good Friday. But how can such brutality and sorrow be called “good”?

To answer that, I invite you into your own story. Recall a time when you were confronted by suffering—yours or someone else’s. Perhaps it was the heartbreak of loss. Perhaps a moment of injustice that made your blood boil. Perhaps watching someone you love endure pain you couldn’t take away. Or the feeling of being invisible, excluded, or misunderstood.

These stories stay with us. They mark us. And it is exactly those moments that today invites us to bring into the light of Christ’s cross.

Let’s not turn away from it.
Because Jesus didn’t.

And that is the first movement of today’s mystery: God does not flee from suffering. God enters into it.

The prophet Isaiah offers us the Suffering Servant—“despised and rejected… a person of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” Crushed by injustice, the Servant bears the weight of others' wrongs and offers healing through their wounds. It’s not triumph in the worldly sense—it’s God lifting up the broken, the discarded, the vulnerable.

Our Psalm (22) echoes this pain. Jesus cries from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This isn’t abandonment—it’s solidarity. Jesus enters fully into human anguish—even despair. And in doing so, he sanctifies it.

Then we meet Pilate.

Pilate, the supposed man of power, is frozen by fear and political pressure. When the crowd says, “If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor,” he caves. His authority does not come from God, but from empire.

Violence in this story is not just personal—it is systemic. Pilate becomes a cog in a machine that perpetuates oppression, scapegoating, and sin.

We must also name a painful truth: this Gospel has been weaponized to justify antisemitism for centuries. The repeated references to “the Jews” have fueled violence and hatred. But Jesus was Jewish. So were his disciples, family, and community. The conflict we hear in this Gospel is an internal one—among Jews living under Roman occupation—not between two separate faiths. The real force driving the crucifixion is empire. And so, we must read this text not as an excuse for blame, but as a call to examine ourselves: Where are we complicit? When do we let fear or power keep us from doing what is just?

These are not ancient questions. They are urgent ones.

We don’t have to look far to see suffering today. Across this country, vulnerable communities are being targeted—especially people of other sexual orientations and gender identities, immigrants, and the poor. Laws are being passed that restrict healthcare access, criminalize identity, and silence dissent.

For transgender, nonbinary, and Two-Spirit people—especially youth—the message has been chilling: your identity is up for debate. Your existence is conditional. Your safety is expendable. From gender-affirming care bans to book censorship and public erasure, we are witnessing the cross reenacted through systemic cruelty.

We also see it in the story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man unlawfully deported to El Salvador despite court orders. Detained without due process in a notorious prison, Garcia’s and the many others being deported….their stories chillingly mirror the middle-of-the-night puppet court Jesus endured—where the outcome was predetermined and truth was no defense.

Whenever people are scapegoated, erased, or crucified by unjust systems, we are witnessing the cross. Jesus, too, was targeted by empire, silenced by the state, and abandoned by many.

But even in the shadow of suffering, the story does not end with death. It calls us to see, to stand, and to speak. To be witnesses of resurrection hope in a world still marked by crucifixion.

Because here’s the truth we proclaim today: The cross is not just a place of death. It is a place of radical revelation.

Richard Rohr reminds us: “The cross is not a transactional moment—it is a transformational one.” Jesus does not hang there to satisfy divine wrath. He hangs there to reveal divine mercy. He refuses to retaliate. He absorbs the violence—and still loves.

Even still, the cross is not easy. It never was.

We are invited to place ourselves in the story—not just at the foot of the cross, but with those who stayed when others fled. The women were there. Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary Magdalene. Mary, the wife of Clopas.  They did not turn away. They bore witness. They stood in the silence, in the horror, in the love. When so much had been lost, they remained.

And after his death, they returned again. While it was still dark, they came to the tomb with spices, ready to tend to Jesus' body. They weren’t expecting resurrection. They came in grief and in love—to do the next faithful thing.

We remember them. And we remember Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who stepped forward with tenderness and reverence. They brought spices and linens. They made sure Jesus’ body was not discarded but honored. Together, they teach us how to respond to suffering: not with apathy, but with devotion.

That’s the second movement of today’s mystery: the cross does not only call us to see. It calls us to respond.

Even when we feel powerless, we can choose compassion. We can carry the linens. We can stand in witness. We can show up in the quiet, broken places and declare that dignity still matters.

What makes this Friday “good” is not the suffering. We do not glorify pain. We mourn it.

We say: This should not be.
And we say: And God is still here.

Jesus didn’t go to the cross to convince God to love us.
He went to show us that God already does.

Even from the cross, Jesus is teaching us how to live. He makes sure his mother is cared for. He extends mercy to the one crucified beside him. He forgives his executioners.

With every breath, he reveals the heart of God.

And John’s Gospel ends where it began: in a garden.

They laid Jesus in a new tomb, in a garden.[1] And we know what’s coming. From that garden will rise not death, but life. Not silence, but song. Not despair, but hope.

Maybe that’s where we find ourselves—not the heroes, not the saints, but the ones who come quietly in grief, to do the next loving thing.

And maybe that’s the final movement of today’s mystery: There is more to come.

Today is not the end of the story.
And neither is the suffering you carry.

Because the grave is not the end.
The cross is not the end.
Not even death is the end.

God has written more.

So we wait—in silence, in sorrow, in radical hope that love cannot be buried forever.

That’s why we call this day good.
Not because of what was done to Jesus.
But because of what Jesus chose to do—and is still doing now.

So here we are, standing at the foot of the cross. Not as spectators, but as those who have been claimed by love—raw, poured-out, suffering love. The kind that refuses to let death have the last word. The kind that meets us in our grief, our silence, our questions, and stays.

We began tonight with a question: What would you do if you had one week to live?

Maybe now, after walking through the story, we hear it differently.

Maybe the better question is: What will you do, knowing what Jesus did?

He chose love. He chose presence. He chose to stay with the suffering. He chose to speak truth to power, to forgive, to feed, to wash feet, to break bread, to entrust his beloved community to each other.

He chose us.  And because of that—nothing can ever separate us from the love of God.

So as we leave this place—still within the shadow of the cross—may we walk into the rest of this Holy Week not with answers, but with courage. Courage to stay awake. To stay tender. To show up for each other. To speak truth. To love with abandon.

Come, beloved. Bring your whole self to the foot of the cross.
Not to be condemned—but to be seen.
To be held.
To be transformed.

And may you leave here ready to carry that love into a broken and beautiful world.

Amen.

[1] John 19: 41