This video is the result of a collaborative worship project. Four classmates and I crafted this service together and were asked to share it for Columbia Theological Seminary’s Good Friday service. My sermon begins at 25:30, though I encourage you to engage in the full service if you have the time.
I come from a tradition that proclaims the good news each week. We confess our corporate and individual sin but promptly receive words of assurance and stand joyfully to sing a doxology. We mention our brokenness and depravity, but rush to the ultimate truth of God’s deep love for us. It’s so difficult as Easter people, to sit in the betrayal; the denial; the horror; the doubt; the blood and tears of Good Friday.
In October of 2019, a white woman and former Dallas police officer, Amber Guyger, was convicted of murder after fatally shooting her neighbor, a black man, Both-am Jean, upon entering his apartment saying she mistook it for her own. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison. I remember watching the news play out on my Twitter feed and people were understandably outraged by the short prison sentence. However, I checked back a few hours later to see that the latest headlines were about Botham Jean’s brother, Brandt, who addressed Amber Guyger in the courtroom saying, “If you truly are sorry, I know I can speak for myself; I forgive you. And I know if you to God and ask him, he will forgive you.”
This wasn’t the first story of shocking forgiveness we’ve had in our country’s headlines. We heard about members of Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church forgiving Dylann Roof after he murdered their loved ones. We heard about the Amish in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, financially supporting the family of a man who shot and killed children in their schoolhouse.
These displays of forgiveness are simultaneously admired for their deep act of grace and criticized for letting evil go free. These hugs and speeches leave some in tears and some shaking their heads. They spark debate over what forgiveness is and who it is for; debate over where justice and mercy can exist.
On the cross, while next to confessional and criticizing criminals, mocking soldiers, taunting leaders, silent and weeping bystanders, Christ calls on God to forgive them. Luke does not explain who “them” is. Is Jesus seeking forgiveness for Pilate and Herod? Or the soldiers? Or the crowd? I believe the answer is all of the above. And it extends to us here today.
Rev. Ed McLeod writes, “Jesus petitions for divine forgiveness for a people who are still hopelessly entangled in a great conspiracy of evil.”[1] It is clear to me that we continue to be caught in that same “great conspiracy of evil” and God offers forgiveness whether we believe we are worthy or not.
And I wonder what it would have been like to hear Jesus on the cross. I usually sing “Were You There” while imagining the horror of seeing Christ’s crucifixion from the perspective of a faithful friend of his. But what if the trembling we sing about is in response to knowing that we are a part of the same conspiracy of evil that crucified Christ?
Following Brandt’s courtroom forgiveness, the Today Show interviewed his mother, Allison. She said, “I think what Brandt did this afternoon was to heal himself, and to free himself from what has been wrapped up within him for the last year … And so, we forgive. But I don’t want forgiveness to be mistaken with a total relinquishing of responsibility.”[2]
The good news of God’s forgiveness for us is always here. But today, of all days, we are faced with the reality of crucifixion. We are living in a Good Friday world. We cannot turn away from our responsibility in the narrative of God’s people. Forgive us God. We do not know what we are doing. O Lord, have mercy.
[1] Feasting on the Gospels, Vol. 2. 330.
[2] https://www.today.com/news/amber-guyger-hugged-botham-jean-s-brother-emotional-court-moment-t163842
Rev. Natalie Wolf 