Don't you skip this part. He sealed the tomb
and walked away, not knowing. The room is quieter
than usual. Like even the walls know what day
it is. Good Friday doesn't rush in, it settles.
Slow and heavy, like a storm that's already decided
to stay a while. Cross stands at the center,
not as decoration, as witness. Candles burn a
little lower. Voices come in softer. We don't
gather to celebrate, not yet. No, we gather to
remember. To sit with the weight of it. To let
the silence say what words can't quite carry.
This is the day the world held its breath. And
heaven did not intervene the way we thought it
would. Now this is a extra episode here. We don't
normally have an episode on Fridays, but it's
Good Friday. This is our Good Friday observance.
A little something extra, a little extra moment
carved out in the week. We shared a simple lunch
beforehand, potato and leek soup. Then we made
our way upstairs into the sanctuary, carrying
the quiet with us. I'll see you on the other
side. Thank you for coming. Let us begin with
an attitude prayer. Holy God, we gather now to
remember the one who's wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities. And upon him was
the punishment that made us whole. By his bruises
we are healed. Christ himself bore our sins in
the body on that tree. We might die to sin. and
live in righteousness. Amen. But I want to put
you back into the sandals of the Galilean pilgrim
because being Good Friday, you woke up outside
the walls of Jerusalem this morning. Same place
you've been sleeping all week. Bedroll on hard
ground, campfire, smoke still in your clothes,
the taste of flatbread and somebody's leftover
wine from last night. Five days ago, you laid
your cloak on a road and shouted yourself hoarse
for a man on a borrowed donkey. You meant every
word of it, and you are still glowing from Bethany.
Dead man, walk out of a tomb, and nobody has
talked you out of that yet. Sun clears the Mount
of Olives, and you break camp, and you walk through
the gates. Into that holy city. And immediately
you notice. Something is wrong. Streets don't
sound right. Not festival noise. Something harder.
Something with an edge on it. You push through
a knot of people. Near the praetorium. And you
see him. Carrying wood. Your rabbi. Your teacher.
The man whose feet you watched walk on water,
stumbling streets, the Roman crossbeam tied to
his back and blood in his eyes. Nothing, nothing
in your body was prepared for this. Because five
days ago, the road was covered with cloaks. The
air was filled with hosannas. Nobody told you
what was coming next because you were sleeping
outside the walls when it happened. The decision
was made before you ever sang. John says so.
After Lazarus, Caiaphas looked at the council
and said it plain. It is better for one man to
die for the people. That That was before Palm
Sunday. Before the donkey. Before you laid your
cloak on anything. You were shouting Hosanna
on a road while the paperwork was already filled.
In a room you were never allowed to enter. Two
cities inside of one city. Yours moved in daylight.
Singing. Following. Celebrating. Believing. Theirs
moved at night. Judas, the silver, the kiss.
The arrest in the garden while you were asleep.
Trial held before dawn. A crowd assembled at
Pilate's gate. For your camp ever stirred. Not
gathered. Assembled. Temple people. Institutional
people. People out of state. And the system survived.
People who waved palms did not scream for Barabbas.
You need to know that. The ones who loved him
on Sunday did not stop loving him on Friday.
They were just outside the walls. They didn't
even know what had happened. Until the cross
was already out. And I told you on Palm Sunday,
I'd show you what happened while you were sleeping.
And now you know. Church, I said this last night.
Through this entire season of Lent, we have been
walking. Sandals off, the Barney Bush bread we
couldn't name. A serpent. on a pole that looked
exactly like the thing that was killing us. A
man who set his face towards a city that would
cost him everything. A tomb unexpectedly opened.
A road covered in cloaks. An upper room. Somebody
knelt at our feet, broke bread with us, and said,
remember me. Now here, The hill, the wood, the
noise thinning crowd going home. It's over. Well,
almost everyone has gone home. Friends, attune
your ears to the reading of Holy Scripture. Our
portion this afternoon comes to us according
to the Gospel account of John Mark. Chapter 15,
beginning verse 42. When evening had now come,
because it was preparation day, that is, the
day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea,
a prominent council member, who also himself
was looking for God's kingdom, came. He boldly
went to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. Pilate
marveled. He were already dead and summoned the
centurion. He asked him whether he'd been long
dead. He found out from the centurion he granted
the body to Joseph. He bought a linen cloth and
taking him down, wound him in the linen cloth,
laid him in a tomb which had been cut out of
rock. He rolled a stone against the door of the
tomb and thus ends. Reading of the word this
afternoon. One man hadn't gone home. A Sanhedrin
member. He sat in the room when the vote happened.
Luke tells you, carefully, specifically, Joseph
did not consent. cast his no into a room that
had already decided, and the room just kept on
moving. The institution got what it had came
for. The soldiers are finishing. Pilgrims are
wandering the streets trying to make sense as
to what they have woke up to. And Joseph is still
looking. You know what kept him there? I think
you do. You may not have words for it, but your
chest knows. You stood somewhere you should have
left. Not because you were brave, because something
in you wouldn't let your feet move. Something
heavier than courage. Something that felt less
like conviction and more like recognition. Like
you're looking at something you've been carrying
around for a long time and you are finally, maybe
for the first time, being able to see it from
the outside. Joseph had spent 30 years inside
of a story about God. A God that needs protecting.
Because holiness needs walls. Access to the Almighty
runs through proper channels. Proper credentials.
Proper men in the proper seats. And when somebody
out of the blue shows up saying God eats with
sinners and touches lepers and lets the wrong
people touch the hem of his garment, when the
bread of heaven shows up and doesn't come through
your system, well, you know what the system does.
It's on the wood right now. Cross isn't a corruption
of an institution. It's the institution's finest
product, followed to the end of its own road.
And Joseph is looking at it. Something's been
stirring in his chest for 50 years, a song he
learned before. He knew he was learning it. A
verse from a prophet who saw this coming seven
centuries earlier. Something is rising like groundwater
nobody pumped for. Because the man who spent
all these years staying quiet inside that building
helped build crosses just like this. Watching
the building's best. die on a Roman wooden cross.
And for some reason, Joseph now can't unsee it.
And maybe you know what that's like. You've been
inside of something, a system, a story, a version
of God somebody handed to you when you were a
child. And one day, you looked at what it produced,
and it didn't fit the God you'd actually met.
And you couldn't go back. Not because you decided
not to, because your eyes wouldn't let you. In
the wilderness, Israel died because they believed
lies about God and refused to look at the truth
lifted right up in front of them. In Jerusalem,
the same lie took flesh. and we nailed it to
a cross. And one man, standing there with everything
to lose, looked at what we had all done, and
maybe for the first time in his life, refused
to live like that lie was the truth. Mark says
he boldly went to Pilate. The Greek word is tomosos,
he dared. Not the language of a man settling
accounts. That's a man whose body started moving
before his theology had finished catching up
with him. He bought linen. He took the body down
with his own hands. He wound it in cloth and
he laid it in his family's tomb. The place carved
for his own bones. The place. That said in limestone
what his mouth hadn't learned to say yet. You
are mine. And Joseph didn't know what resurrection
meant yet. But he knew enough to stop calling
death the truth. You look at Friday night. We
always have. And all we see is dark. No. But
you've tended a fire before. You know not to
trust the gray ash. You get down on your knees.
You blow soft, not hard. Hard kills it. Soft.
The way you whisper to something you're not sure
is still alive, but you're not willing to walk
away from it just yet. And if there's a coal
under there, just one buried in the ash, glowing
so faintly, you've got to put your face close
to feel the heat. Then the fire wasn't out. It's
just waiting for someone to get low enough. And
Joseph got low on his knees. Wrapped a body close
enough to the ash. Feel the heat on its face.
And friend, you can't have shade without the
sun. Shade and darkness feel the same on your
skin. But shade has edges. Shade has a shape.
Follow those edges back and they'll point you
to a light that never went out. Joseph's act.
The linen, the tomb, the body laid in a rich
man's grave, that's shade on the ground of Good
Friday. And the edges actually point to a light
still shining when every eye in that holy city
says otherwise. The light shines into the darkness,
and the darkness hasn't overcome it. Not even
on Friday night. So, if you're sitting here without
certainty, if resurrection sounds more like doctrine
than a dawn, but something in you, something
you can't name and can't quite kill won't let
you call this the last word, friends, you are
exactly in right company. So, Joseph rolls the
limestone against rock. That's the last sound
you get this afternoon. He stands there just
for a moment. Two sealed Saturday ahead of him
like a field with no fence. He doesn't know what
morning looks like. He doesn't know if the bread
will be on the ground when the sun comes up.
But he does know he's done calling death the
truth. He walks home in the twilight, carrying
the smallest, most possible number of a fire
that will not go out. I'm not taking you to Sunday
this afternoon, but it's coming. Not yet. Go
in silence. Carry what you carry. And come back
Sunday morning. We'll see what the morning knows
that the night didn't quite. Amen? Amen. If you've
made it this far, just sit with it one moment
longer. No rush. No need to tie it up clean.
This is the day that asks you to stay. If this
found you where you are, somewhere between hope
and silence, let that be enough. And if you want
to walk with us through the rest of the story,
you're always welcome here. Like, subscribe,
come back. Not out of obligation, just to keep
the porch light on. We'll be here when Sunday
comes. Be blessed.