Good Friday (2007): "When the Stones Cried Out"

Good Friday (2007): "When the Stones Cried Out"
Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42
Preached by the Rev. Preston Parsons, April 6th, 2007

When Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, Luke writes that “some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to [Jesus], ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’” Jesus answered them by saying that if his disciples were silent, “the stones would shout out.”

Now imagine, when Jesus said that the stones would should out, that Jesus was pointing to people. The rocks that would shout out if the disciples went silent, the stones that would shout out with praise, were the unbelievers, the politicians, and the scoffers.

***

Now turn a few days ahead, to what is at hand for us, the task of remembering the event that follows Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. Today we are called to remember the trial and crucifixion of our Lord and Saviour. And on this day, the disciples that the Pharisees wanted Jesus to stop, the disciples who praised their teacher and their master on another day with great cries of jubilation: on this day, these very disciples, as it turns out, go silent.

***

The disciples were there, in the garden, when they came to take Jesus away. They came for him, over 600 soldiers and policemen, according to John. They came with weapons and clubs, hoping to defend themselves; they came with lanterns, in an attempt to pierce the darkness.

They called out for Jesus of Nazareth, and Jesus replies, claiming the divine name revealed to Moses at the burning bush, Jesus says: "I am." Jesus claims the divine name, the very name of God, the name of the source of all being, the very one who is. In Jesus of Nazareth, our very God is there in the garden.

Jesus has claimed the divine name before, when he was questioned, he said that "when you have lifted me up, then you will realize that I am." Jesus says that the day he is lifted up, the day he is lifted up on the cross, this is the day that the fullness of the glory of God is strangely revealed.

So when Jesus replies to the question, “are you Jesus of Nazareth?”, and Jesus says "I am," over six hundred soldiers and policemen step back and fall to the ground. In the silence of the disciples, the men who come to bind up this man, the man who is God, the stones fall down and reveal the glory of God.

***

It is no small irony that the disciple that does speak is Peter, the rock. But this disciple does far less than praise his master. While Jesus is telling us that one of his natures is the very source of our being, saying "I am," Peter is saying "I am not." Jesus is the one who is; Peter, when he denies Jesus and says "I am not," Peter becomes the one without Jesus, Peter becomes the one without being, the one who is not. Without Jesus Peter fades into nothingness by his own admission of being apart from our Lord. This disciple is more than silent. He is nothing at all.

***

Pilate, the man great only in his indecisiveness, his vacillation and his uncertainty, even Pilate cries out announcing the glory of God. This stone, this Pilate, cries out the glory of God and announces his innocence, making it known that this is the silent lamb sent to the slaughter. Pilate oversees the soldiers, more stones that cry out to the glory of God. They weave for Jesus a crown and dress him in the robes of a King. They cry out the glory of God, a glory strangely revealed in the suffering of an innocent man.

And again Pilate, while the disciples are silent, cries out from the Stone Pavement that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, this man who is God, Pilate tells us, "Here is your King!" The stones cry out and reveal the glory of God.

And the sign on the cross says, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." He is being lifted up, and his glory is being revealed in a hidden way, in a strange and disorienting and unsettling way. God’s glory is being revealed in the death of a man on the cross.

Yet even the disciples at the foot of the cross look up in silence, while others, according to Luke, are looking from afar off. In silence.

And when it is finished, this man, our King and our God, is carried away in silence, and placed in the tomb; we watch in silence and see our cruelty to the innocent, we see our complicity in the suffering of those who don't deserve it.

As we see our cruelty and our complicity, we are unsettled, disoriented, and a strangeness overcomes us. In a world where no one is innocent, this man was; in a world where divinity escapes us, he is God; in a world where suffering is shameful, it was through this
suffering that the glory of God was revealed.

Look here; look upon the cross. It is here where we find ourselves, at the foot of the cross, looking in silence; and the stones shout out, “Here is your King,” here is our King. Here upon the cross salvation is won by our God and our King. Look upon the cross because it is here where the glory of God made man is strangely, and silently, and fully revealed.