- Psalmody: Psalms 22, 2, 27, 51
- Lection: John 18:1—19:42
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Unlike the Passion accounts historically read this week from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, St. John doesn’t begin with the events in the Upper Room, but injects us directly into a garden, the garden over the Brook Kidron, the garden of Gethsemane. In the beginning, of the end, God the Light walked in the cool of the day among those who rebelled against Him, hiding neither themselves nor their sins, but carrying lanterns, torches, and weapons. They came in the darkness bearing created light so that they may take the true Light by force and not by faith.
The light shined in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. The Light was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. In coming with great intent, generosity, love, and charity, any such cold a reception would cause us to say, “fine, I have better things to do, more important things to worry about,” and go about our business. Yet, the Light came. The Light stayed even in the face of hostile rejection. And more than that, the course that must be run, He ran. He submitted not only to the vile treatment of years of unbelief throughout His Ministry, but on this night and the day following, its hyper focused blood-thirsty rage. Just how lowly He came, we cannot comprehend. The Infinite and Eternal God first submitted to the finite at that March 25th Annunciation 33 years prior in complete omniscient awareness of what lay at the end of that Life conceived. O such great humiliation for our sake! And the One through Whom the world was made, continued His Servant’s life from that holy conception, submitting willingly to time, as it crept day-by-day toward this dark garden, submitting to hunger, to thirst, to hate, to envy, to betrayal, to unbelief, to shame and spitting; all things He needed not do. What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? Do you think that He cannot pray to His Father, and He will provide Him with more than twelve legions of angels? But shall He not drink the cup which His Father has given Him? O darkest woe cometh quickly!
The darkness of Gethsemane was thick, yet still teemed with life, with both the Source of all and with those misusing their own, yet life still teemed, as this Mighty One allowed. He allowed wretched lives to bind Him like unrepentant sin and lead Him away to further darkness; darkness that grew though the Friday sun dawned. The great light of day was raised high into the sky just as the soldiers raised high the cross with eternal Fruit hanging from its boughs.
Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. This was no mere eclipse of minutes’ time, but a deep wound unto creation as its Creator hung unto death. Johann Sebastien Bach’s St. John Passion paints the midday darkness and other events like this: My heart, while the whole world suffers as Jesus suffers, the sun is clothed in mourning, the veil is torn, the rocks split, the earth quakes, graves gape open, because they behold the creator grow cold in death, for your part, what will you do?
Jesus said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit. More darkness awaited, O sorrow dread! Our God is dead. He is the God of the living and gave grace to Joseph of Arimathea and his companion Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus by night. God gave them grace in the midst of tears and sadness to give our dear Lord an honorable burial. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So there they laid Jesus, because of the Jews’ Preparation Day, for the tomb was nearby. It was a new tomb hewn out of rock to form a cave; cold, dark, stony as death, and hard as the Law upon our sin, for there they laid the lifeless Savior, dead on account of all our iniquity. If you’ve ever been deep into a cave and clicked off your light, you know how thick the darkness can get. You can almost feel it on your skin. There, in that garden was laid the Seed of the Woman, the Seed of our Salvation. There, in cold, dark death did friends lay the extinguished Light and rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.
The darkness was complete. With evening giving way to night, the small cracks around the great stone refused to give way to any more light. Darkness had fully enveloped our Savior. He was laid in the place reserved for us all; the grave, where comes the reality of ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This was by His bidding; to die our death. He laid down His life of His own accord. He gave up His Spirit. He handed Himself over to sinners that for sinners He might die. And dying He did.
His work done, He lay down to rest. Our dear Lord rested on the seventh day of Holy Week, which began at sundown. The redemption of the Sons of God and of all Creation was drawing to a glorious close. The price of redemption placed on Him had been fully paid; only the victory left to be proclaimed. O what wondrous Love is this! Behold all that the Lord your God has done for you! And every bit of what we heard from St. John wasn’t done through divine Power and might, but through the bitter suffering and death of a Man. This Jesus defeated death by giving Himself over to it in full submission as a Man. He did not cease to be God at any moment, but faithfully looked to and trusted His Father in heaven while suffering every ounce of righteous wrath for our sins, as a Man. This does not show the might of God’s power, but the might of His love to purchase you at all cost, suffering as you suffer, bleeding as you bleed, weeping as you weep, dying as you die.
But His death wasn’t His defeat. By death, He defeated death and by dying as the pure eternal Son from heaven made Man, His death is the greatest to which you now look, to which you now trust. He died the greater so that only the lesser is left for you before you enter into His eternal rest. Your great death is no more. It is dead. Yea, it is dark what our precious Savior endured and entered into on this night. It is dark death into which you were baptized into in Him. But now, it is finished. We were therefore buried with Him by baptism into death in order that the darkness does not abide, but Christ does; in order that just as He was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we, too, may walk in the newness of life. Yes, sometimes the darkness engulfs us. Sometimes we can feel it. But Jesus isn’t finished. His submission is over, His victory sure. Tonight and tomorrow, we rest as our dear Lord did on the Sabbath. We rest in the darkness of His death pondering its significance for all who enter it by baptism, because we know the darkness is short-lived. The Father did not allow the Holy One to see corruption. Just as we will experience tomorrow night, gathered in the darkness, as the Third Day begins, the Light will be rekindled and it will grow and grow into a majestic explosion of eternal joy that this same Jesus is no longer dead, for death cannot not hold the Creator and Light of Life.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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