8^th April 2013

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Good Friday 29 March 2013

Lessons - Jeremiah 31:15-17; Luke 19:41,42; 23:26-49

'And when Jesus drew near and saw the city (Jerusalem) he wept over
it, saying: 'Would that even today you knew the things that make for
peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.' (Luke19:41) 'But (later)
turning to the grieving women he said, 'Daughters of Jerusalem, do
not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children'. (23:28)

There is much weeping in Scripture - and a time for it, as the preacher in Ecclesiastes says (3:4). An illustration of such a time is when Job's 'face was red with weeping' (Job 16:16).

Sometimes it is in the context of national disasters: 'By the waters of Babylon' (Psalm 137:1) or when the prophet Nehemiah sees Jerusalem in ruins (Nehemiah 1:4). At other times it is prophetic, as when Jeremiah sees terrible persecution through the eyes of 'Rachel weeping for her children' (Jeremiah 31:15), a prophecy that Matthew sees fulfilled in the massacre of the innocents (Matthew 2:18).

In his teaching Jesus says that it is appropriate for those to weep who mock the Gospel (Matthew 8:12, 24:51). For both him (in Matthew 5:4) and Paul (in Romans 12:15), mourning and weeping are also appropriate responses with those who mourn and weep. Jesus illustrates this as he weeps with his friends on seeing the comatose Lazarus (John 11:35).

The betrayal of Jesus by Judas (Matthew 26:75) and the denial by Peter (Luke 22:62) are both cause for bitter weeping, as is his death for Mary who 'stood weeping outside the tomb' (John 20:11-13).

In this episode, Jesus weeps over the city's failure to see God's presence in him. But then he stops others weeping for him as he goes to the Cross!
We see here the grief-stricken love of God for an inhuman world and a faithless Church. And we receive a summons to share God's suffering love for humanity.

We might have expected Jesus to be overjoyed at the reception he received on entering Jerusalem. But, no - he weeps! Not 'tears of joy' but 'tears of sorrow'. He weeps at the blindness and hostility of the 'people of God'
to God's mercy in his ministry. He stands in the line of prophets who, like Jeremiah, are distressed by the presence of evils within and beyond their faith-communities: false teaching, nature worship, immorality, injustice and self-pity!

Jesus wept because, despite their enthusiasm, these folk too were blind to the reality of God!

These are not tears of self-pity! 'Do not weep for me,' he says to the distraught women who were with him on the way to the Cross, 'weep for yourselves and for your children!' (Luke 23:28)

At Easter we often feel sorry for Jesus because he is the tragic victim of hard-hearted priests, politicians and people. Such feelings are natural in a society where claiming the status of a victim and appealing to our feelings are sure ways to elicit sympathy and obtain power. Jesus becomes one of many people to have suffered unjustly and for whom we should feel sorry.

There is tendency in contemporary liturgies for Good Friday to focus on his suffering and to identify his suffering with ours. 'Poor Jesus,' we say, 'it must have been dreadful!' Hymns often play on our sympathy for Jesus. Mary is often portrayed as anguished and grief-stricken. Films like The Passion of the Christ appeal to our sympathy for him.

There is a place to face the awfulness of the Cross. The readings for Tenebrae highlight the suffering of Christ. Avoiding its barbarity undermines the reality and extent of God's costly love for the world. A squeamish faith does not breed courage and hope.

Why, then, does Jesus say 'Do not weep for me; weep for yourselves'?

In Death on a Friday Afternoon, Richard Neuhaus (2000) says that we should weep for our lost innocence so starkly displayed in Jesus' crucifixion. We should weep at the way in which we have lost the vision of what is Absolute, Good, True and Beautiful and turned on the One in whom they were perfectly embodied (p40).

In Meditations on the Cross and the Resurrection, Bishop John V Taylor
(1985) goes further: Jesus rejects 'easy spontaneous emotion - the quick release of tension - because it is misdirected and dangerous. Tears for the physical suffering of the Crucified . . . are too shallow; it focuses attention on the wrong things (p2ff).' We must guard against this, especially because 'we are accustomed to watching the misery of others on our TV or cinema screens without ever having to do anything about it. . .
. But it is very rarely that we weep for truth. It is very rarely that we weep for our sins or for the love of God. Pity is too cheap. We need the bracing realism of Jesus who turned out the professional mourners - Why this crying and commotion? (p3).'

Until we learn to weep with Jesus at the evils which afflict the world and Church, our pity will be merely an excuse to avoid involvement with the suffering love of God. 'Weep for yourselves,' says Jesus, not from self- pity, but because you are in danger of evading the demands of discipleship.

We are not called to feel sorry for Christ, but to recognise that this victim of inhumanity is the victorious Son of God who gives his Church courage to withstand evil. As Neuhaus puts it, the cross of Jesus should cause us to have a deep sense of 'holy dissatisfaction' with ourselves, the Church and the world which is not introspective pity but rejoices in the restoration of our humanity in Christ and enables us to preach the word of hope in the midst of our grieving world.

Thus we are summoned to resist inhuman, unrighteous, self-righteous or self-indulgent actions which scar the minds and bodies of so many of our fellows. We cannot hear these words today without thinking of violence in Syria, Myanmar, North Korea, Iraq and the Sudan, forced abortions in China and India, trafficking in the sex-trade, the abuse of children in religious and secular institutions, the neglect or exploitation of refugees, and more. In so many places where people cry out for justice and dignity the 'tears of God' are being shed where 'tears of shame' should be shed!

We only begin to see the victorious suffering love of God in Christ when, at his calling, we become more deeply involved in the world! This is not done by throwing ourselves into causes to justify our existence, but by seeing real sin, evil and death in the light of the Cross.

On Good Friday we are faced with the mystery of God's suffering love. Here 'every human suffering, agony and grief and every human evil, wrong and injustice is focused into a single event - the dying of the Son of God'
(Taylor, p3ff). Here is the One who, embodying the compassion and mercy of God, bears the suffering of humanity. Here is hope for our scarred world!

Remarkably too there is hope for a faithless Church! When Jesus says, 'Do not weep for me but weep for yourselves and your children,' he has in mind Jewish and Christian communities that have rejected the reconciling love of God in him or forgotten their responsibility in and for the sake of the world.

This is a wake-up call - not an excuse to indulge in pitying Jesus or self- pity. Thus we are summoned to:

* Weep for ourselves when we tolerate the depiction of the Cross as 'divine child abuse'.

* Weep for ourselves when we tolerate politicians, church leaders and citizens who trivialise sexual relations and demean the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.

* Weep for ourselves when we tolerate abuse of children (unborn and living), girls and women, frail old people, the disabled, refugees, migrants and Aborigines.

* Weep for ourselves when we begrudge forgiveness to those who have wronged us or fail to stand beside those faced with unbearable temptations.

* Weep for ourselves when we tolerate contempt for God and are embarrassed to confess 'Jesus as Lord over all things' (The UCA Basis of Union,
paragraph 3).

Luke invites us to 'weep' with Jesus for the plight of the world and the Church by entering more fully into our responsibilities in and for the world! We are called to 'weep' for the world and the Church - in the manner of Christ's love for us and for our broken world. Then we shall see in him the Son of God who reconciles the world to 'the Father' and be empowered to commit ourselves to share in his costly love for our grieving world.

If we see in the crucified Christ, not a victim for whom to feel sorry, but the One who restores our broken humanity, then we will be prepared gladly and firmly to resist powerful forces in Church and community that are contemptuous of what God has done in him for us / humanity and that mock the unique dignity for which we have been created and redeemed.

May our 'tears of shame' also be 'tears of joy' at the restoration of our humanity that has been effected in the crucified Christ!

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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.