The Good Friday sermon, on the other hand, is about violence. And because it's about violence, most sermons I've encountered on the topic have tended to take somewhat safe approaches. In fact, while trying to decide what kind of Good Friday premiere I wanted to make, I made a list of the five basic types of Good Friday sermons I've heard over the years.

The first and most common of these sermons pretty much avoids dwelling too much on the crucifixion itself. It runs along the lines of, "Wasn't what the folks who crucified Jesus terrible? But thank God, Jesus loves us, and was willing to die for us. So we can be thankful as we look forward to celebrating Easter." These sermons are usually entitled "What makes Good Friday Good?" They are solid sermons, most of them, but I always come away from them feeling that something's missing.

And then there is the opposite end of the spectrum, the homily that seems to revel in the gory details of the crucifixion. The best example of this type of sermon I can think of isn't actually a sermon, but a movie: Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The problem with this type of sermon is that there doesn't seem to be any real point to it. Any rhyme or reason is drowned in the pool of blood at Jesus' feet. On second thought, perhaps that is the point: that the violence was senseless, and all we can do is look on in horror.

Related to the Bloodbath homily is the Guilt Trip homily. This sermon essentially posits that we killed Jesus. Our sin nailed him to the cross. It is our fault Jesus died, and the only thing we can do to make up for this injustice is to repent. There's some truth in this approach: our sin is inextricably bound up in Christ's death. But the response called for is more than a sort of self-flagellating repentance.

The fourth kind of Good Friday sermon I grew up hearing isn't quite the Guilt Trip sermon, but its "kinder, gentler" version: the Sentimental Tear-jerker. This type of sermon is the most cathartic, as it dwells tenderly upon the image of Christ on the cross, until we are moved to tears by the contemplation of Jesus' compassion. I find this sermon deeply satisfying, as it puts me in touch with the emotional rollercoaster of Holy Week, and gives me permission to mourn. It also embarrasses me, because I'm left not knowing what to do with my grief. But perhaps that, too, is the whole point of this type of sermon: like the Bloodbath sermon, which leaves us in horror, the Tear-jerker sermon leaves us in desolation.

Finally, there's the fifth kind of Good Friday sermon: the Head Trip. Instead of avoiding the crucifixion, or reveling in it, or using the crucifixion as a guilt-inducing indictment, or giving us a good cry, the Head Trip is a cerebral, theologizing sermon, carefully researched and meticulously presented. It draws upon the latest in Biblical scholarship and archaeology, presents fascinating historical details, and leaves us with a better understanding of the socio-political context that gave rise to the crucifixion. This sermon may enumerate the various theories of the Atonement, summarize the theological debates over the meaning of the cross, and make suggestions as to how we ought to understand it in our own day. I enjoy this type of sermon. I've often preached this type of sermon. But like the first type that avoids the crucifixion by looking eagerly toward the empty tomb, this type avoids the crucifixion by talking around it.

So, there: I've just spent several minutes talking around the crucifixion myself, by outlining the five types of sermons you are likely to hear throughout your lifetime on Good Friday. There are many fine examples of each available on the Internet, and I'd be happy to assist you in locating them using a few keywords in a Google search.

Unfortunately, my homiletical duty has not yet been discharged. I must still say something that we might be able to take away with us, that will allow us not just to think or to feel something profound about the cross of Christ, but something that will draw our hearts and minds nearer to it, that we might be found close enough to be enfolded in Christ's saving embrace. For only when we draw near the cross of Christ can we stop avoiding what it has to say to each of us individually and collectively. Only then can we begin to participate in the mystery of God's love for us.

And so, let me make this simple but unusual observation: When Jesus was nailed to the cross, those who crucified him, both Roman and Jewish, believed that what they were doing was a righteous act, pleasing both to the Roman gods and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was pleasing to the Roman gods because Jesus, in claiming to be a king, set himself above Caesar, who was himself a god and worshipped by the Romans as a god. To kill this interloper, this peasant, who had no right to claim god-like status, as the Emperor did, was not just a politically just act, but a profoundly righteous act on behalf of pagans and Gentiles the world over. For the Jews, putting this Jesus to death was the prescribed punishment for blasphemers. He claimed equality with the one and only God, and the Law was unambiguous in its decree of death for such a one. To despise, curse, cut off, and kill a blasphemer, an idolater, an unrighteous and sinful man is the highest form of worship one can offer God.

Contrary to centuries of Christian scholarship and apologetics, I do not believe that Jesus was unjustly killed. He was not an innocent victim. No, Jesus was profoundly guilty of every charge laid against him. In the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, "false witnesses" are brought in to rig the case, but in John's account, there is no need for outside witnesses. Jesus seals his own fate by saying, "My kingdom is not from this world" and "For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."

To Gentile and Jew alike, these statements, from this guy, just don't fit with the traditional notions of what a god, or God is. If I had lived in Jesus' day, being zealous as I am to please God, I would have been deeply insulted by Jesus, and would have gladly taken part in killing him. And afterwards, I would have felt smugly justified. I'd have no regrets, no pity, no compassion. The guy just plain deserved to die.

John backs me up on this one. In the other gospels, the curtain of the temple is torn in two, an earthquake signals God's displeasure, the onlookers leave the scene of the crime "beating their breasts," a centurion proclaims, "Truly, this was God's son!" -or even more explicitly: "Certainly this man was innocent." Not so in John. In John, the sun is about to set on the Passover, and so the Jewish religious authorities ask for the criminals' legs to be broken, as it would be against their Law to keep dead bodies out in the open like that. So the soldiers come to Jesus and they say, "Hmmm, whatdayaknow? He's dead," and they poke him with a spear just to be on the safe side.

In John, Jesus' case is pretty straightforward. He is guilty and justly executed, and more than that, his killing is a righteous act. But here's the catch: this is only true viewed through the eyes of the world, a world ruled by the powers of darkness and evil. The world in which Christ was crucified is a shadowland: things are not as they really seem. Or rather, they are as they seem if you are looking with worldly eyes, but if you are looking with the vision that is given to us "from above," an entirely different world emerges:

In John's gospel, Jesus is both the guilty blasphemer (in the eyes of the world) and the innocent Lamb of God (in the eyes of the Father). He is a sinner in the eyes of the world, and the one who takes away the sins of the world in the eyes of the Father. In John, Jesus is hung up and killed at the very moment when the High Priests are hanging up and slicing open the Passover lambs in the Temple. (That's what "Day of Preparation" means, by the way: the day on which the Passover lambs are killed.) The world's human violence puts Jesus to death, thinking that they are doing a righteous deed. But, in fact, Jesus is handing himself over to a violent death only to show that violence is never righteous.

So, here's the paradox of Good Friday: if you dwell in the shadowlands of the world, you have every reason to reject Jesus. He was an ordinary human being who said some stupid things and got what was coming to him. However, if you are able to see with the light that comes from above, he is the most extraordinary human being who ever lived. He and the Father are One. He is God's Son. He only ever told the truth, and the truth was pretty stupid from the world's point of view. Why? Because if Jesus is who we claim he is, then there's no need for righteous indignation, for sacrificial victims, whether guilty or innocent. Christ is the final, perfect, and complete sacrifice for our sins not because God demanded sacrifice, but because God never did demand it. God never wanted lamb's blood, and God never wanted the Lamb of God's blood.

Why, then, was the Lamb of God's blood shed for us and for our salvation?

Because we demanded it.

Whoops! Did I just end up going from a Head Trip to a Guilt Trip? No. There's nothing to feel guilty about. John 3:16-17 puts it well: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." The key to understanding the crucifixion, to being moved to joyful tears and sorrowful thanksgiving, is to realize that though we demanded sacrifice, and demanded it until we tried to kill God's own Son, God never abandons us. God never takes revenge on us. God never scapegoats us like we scapegoat God.

Think about it! To the truly religious person, it's not a very comfortable idea, because it is all too comforting. If we follow it out to its logical conclusion, it means that God loves us so much that all the pain in the universe that we inflict on each other and on God cannot separate us, or anyone else, from God's love. The truly religious person doesn't want that. The truly religious person wants to be in the in crowd, the justified, the righteous, with everyone who disagrees with the religious person in the out crowd, the unjustified, the damned. And this is as true of nice, mainstream Christians as it is of fundamentalists, because in the final analysis nice, mainstream Christians are only nice to other nice, mainstream Christians. It's those nasty fundies we can comfortably condemn.

There is good news for the truly religious person in John's gospel, however, and that comes after verse seventeen in John chapter three: "Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."

What most people don't get, however, is the paradox implicit in John's proclamation: that those who love darkness more than light are not condemned by God, but by themselves, precisely because they condemn each other and accuse those who refuse to accuse them. The only us-them rivalry, then, has nothing to do with God's infinite love for us, but everything to do with our infinite hatred of each other.

Into this melee came Jesus, to show us there is another way: the way of the cross, to be sure, but the way of forgiveness, grace, and death-defying love. That's neither something to feel guilty about or to revel in, for the bloodbath was terrible and horrifying, and the resurrection does not justify our demand for sacrifice. It only points to one eternal fact: that God doesn't want our so-called "sacrifices," which are really just acts of terrorism dressed up in priestly garb. No, the only sacrifice God wants is for us to be willing to love each other and God with the same love that Christ had for us, which may indeed lead us down the way of the cross, but which ends in eternal life. In short, God wants us, my friends, and the cross is the proof of it. God wants us.