Sin.
A day of sin.
On Good Friday every year we always hear the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to John. The customary responses before and after are omitted.
The Sunday before, Palm Sunday, we always hear one of the other three Gospels, Matthew, Mark or Luke. This year we heard Luke.
Today, we always hear John, Good Friday.
And today is a day of sin.
Sin for John is really simple.
It isn’t about morality or law, it isn’t about breaking the rules, or about a dark power corroding creation.
For John sin is one thing, not believing in Jesus.
Rejecting Jesus is sin.
John is preoccupied by this.
To reject Jesus is to reject light and life and God.
Sin is the rejection of God.
And without God, life loses all breath, all direction, all purpose, all meaning.
In John, Jesus is God’s judgement on the world, and today the world rejects Jesus. The world judges itself in so doing.
John is an ironic and tragic gospel.
There are two main themes all through it.
The first is that whatever touches Jesus touches the stuff of God, the life force of God, the creative, generative, dynamo of God, and everything that touches God is born again, a super abundance springs forth and there is flourishing, overwhelming flourishing.
The stuff of God.
The other theme is rejection.
John is filled with sadness, confusion and consternation over the life restoring presence of God being rejected.
The vivifying glory of God is too much.
The beauty awakens a primal rage and urge to destroy what is wonderful and awe filled.
Our darkness is exposed. We do not appreciate it.
John is preoccupied, grieved, traumatized by this rejection.
The short version:
God came to visit. It didn’t turn out so well.
So today is a day of sin and tragedy.
The theme of rejection is played out to completion, the totality and perfection of rejection.
Water and blood pour from him, from the wounds blood and water pour forth and water the earth.
He is buried with a lavish overabundance of aromatic spices.
Like Mary anointing Jesus feet with an overabundance of perfume, Joseph and Nicodemus bury Jesus with an overabundance of spices.
The tomb would have been overwhelmed by the aroma, the scent would have poured forth, rising like incense, like an offering, like prayer watering the earth, reeking of life.
In death, in the sin of rejecting the one who is life itself, the stuff of life itself pours out into the world. The stuff of God anoints, reeking of the holy.
Our sin, our judgment, our abusive rejection of all that is beautiful and good, it is being touched by the stuff of God, anointed.
Our rejection of God is being changed in the darkness of this day, changed into something strange and unexpected.
Sin is changing.
Death is changing.
Rejection is changing.
Everything is being born again as the water, the blood, the aroma pours forth, anointing all, like the morning dew.
How do I reject God?
How do I reject the beauty and the goodness of Jesus?
Do I live like I really believe that Jesus is life itself?
What darkness within me do I violently hide from exposure?
Do I dare be born again? Do I even have a choice?
This is the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John.
The customary responses before and after are omitted.