One of the children in our parish asked me in Family Church last Sunday, as we were talking about the last week of Jesus’ life, “Why is it called “good” Friday?” I told her that what I’d learned was that in the old medieval English it was called, “God’s Friday” and that eventually that got translated into “Good Friday.” Both names attempt to describe something of the God-awful enormity of what happened to Jesus, and what God did as a result.

But I’m struck this year, like I am every year as this day comes around, that all descriptive words fail us in the end; all attempts to preach about the crucifixion of Jesus fall very short, and all our attempts to pray as we gather here are severely limited. Perhaps sitting in silence for these hours would be better, I don’t know.

But here we are and we pay God the honor to do the best we can – by gathering together, first of all, by stripping the altar and our worship space to its bare bones, remembering that Jesus himself was stripped bare, by offering what words we are able through scripture and prayers and sermon, and finally to open up our hearts, minds and imaginations to as honest a recollection of what human sin did to Jesus as we are able. We’re here to gather at the foot of the cross, in remembrance.

The truth for me, sadly, is - had I been in Jerusalem that day as a disciple of Jesus, I’m sure I would have gone into hiding. I’m sure I would have run scared, not wanting to get into trouble, willing to let Jesus hang there alone rather than to risk my own skin. I don’t think I would have had the stomach to stay there, as John the beloved disciple and the women did, keeping Jesus company during those agonized hours, staying faithful to him to the bitter end. That admission is painful to me, but honest.

In fact, it’s easier for me to think about Jesus dying for the sins of the whole world than to think about Jesus dying for my sin, for my falseness, for my transgressions, for my half-heartedness. It’s easier for me to think globally than to think personally; it’s easier for me to hide my own sinfulness somewhere inside the huge corporate sinfulness of all humanity.

But I can’t hide forever, and neither can you. All of us at some point, and probably over and over again, have to come out from our hiding and finally, personally, one by one – stand at the foot of the cross and see Jesus suffering for us and dying for us. I can understand why people come to church on Palm Sunday and don’t come again until Easter Sunday, thereby skipping the pain and difficulty of Good Friday. Skipping church today is not unlike the disciples skipping town, once Jesus was arrested.

So, here we are – willingly or unwillingly – but we’re here.

Virginia Stem Owens writes, “Good Friday is the day when you can do nothing. Bewailing and lamenting your manifold sins does not in itself make up for them. Scouring your soul in a frenzy of spring cleaning only sterilizes it; it does not give it life. On Good Friday, finally, we are all, mourners and mockers alike, reduced to the same impotence. Someone else is doing the terrible work that gives life to the world.”

As I understand all that Jesus was attempting to teach, to preach and to do in his short years of ministry was to call people out of hiding, out of fear, and out of a false understanding of who God is and into true knowledge and understanding and thus into new life. Jesus came to say and to show us that God really, truly and honestly LOVES us. We don’t have to prove anything to God, we don’t have to be perfect, and we don’t have to try and get God to love us – God just does.

It’s such good news, this love of God for us in the midst of our sinfulness, unworthiness and imperfection, that we have a hard time receiving it. Perhaps that’s why the religious leaders, the scribes and Pharisees fought Jesus at every turn, and why the outcasts and sinners – those rejected by religious people – received Jesus’ news as good. Somewhere I read that it’s not the moral majority who receive so thankfully the good news; but the immoral minority.

Jesus came to show people that the old system of sacrifice, whereby God needed a tangible sign – a scapegoat – to take on human sin and be killed, was obsolete. The only sacrifice God really wanted was a sacrifice of our hearts; a giving over of our lives to God – summed up in the invitation Jesus extended over and over again – “Follow me.”

But Jesus experienced firsthand how difficult it is for people to grasp that – we as human beings have a hard time trusting that God doesn’t require appeasing in some way – that God is a God who loves us in our imperfection, in our mistrust, in our unworthiness, in our sinfulness.

Jesus took on himself all the abuse and violence and misunderstanding and hatred that human beings could project onto him, and then nailed it all to the cross within his own body. He holds it all there as he hangs there. From this time forward, no one can ever say that God doesn’t understand pain, that God doesn’t understand suffering and that God is beyond understanding the human experience. In Christ, God suffered with us, he suffered for us, and he suffered on behalf of us.

On this Good Friday, as we come face to face with this amazing love, God in Christ willing to lay down his life for us, I pray that we will leave the foot of the cross chastened, but also strengthened. In our personal lives, in the life of this parish family, in the community that makes up the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Community and indeed with billions of Christians around the globe – I hope our observance of this day will leave us re-committed to follow Jesus.

I pray that in our observance of Good Friday, in our prayers and reflections, we’ll be reminded of our high calling to love and serve others. As we know all too well, it’s very easy to slide into becoming scribes and Pharisees; it’s very easy to for us to turn people into lepers and sinners and outcasts. And it is far too easy to become smug and self-satisfied, to rest in our “saved” status.

We are reminded today that we worship not a church or a set of doctrines or the Bible, but Jesus Christ. May we stand at the foot of his cross on this day, see his arms embrace us and all humanity with total forgiveness and with undying love, and may we be do far more than be grateful; may we do likewise.

Amen.