Preached on Good Friday, April 18, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Samuel Torvend.
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22
Crucifixion III, © 2013 by John August Swanson Studio, used with permission
In the fourth century, a Spanish nun named Egeria traveled to Israel and recorded her presence at the Good Friday liturgy in Jerusalem. In the church built over the sites of Jesus’s death and resurrection, Egeria joined thousands of Christians in venerating the Cross. She notes that the people bow before the cross and then kiss its wood. Some prostrate themselves before it while others touch it gently, first with their foreheads and then with their eyes. All this is done barefoot as a sign of the people’s solidarity with the Lord Jesus who was barefoot in his suffering. “By the looks on their faces,” she writes, “the people lament that the Lord Christ suffered so greatly, so greatly out of love for each of us.”
If anything, the cross is the sign of innocent suffering at the hands of unjust and merciless forces. It is the tangible, touchable sign of the One who, during his public life, welcomed and loved social outcasts, healed those thought to be contagious with disease, ate meals and thus shared life with well-known sinners, called out religious hypocrisy, and rejected retribution, forgiving his critics. For all this, he was arrested, tried on trumped up charges, and put to death by a colonizing power that believed empathy for those who suffer in life was a character defect.
At the same time, Egeria reminds us that the cross was and is formed from the wood of a tree and that to venerate, to bow before, to kiss, to place one’s forehead on the cross is to touch the tree of life, the tree of healing for our woe. Of this wondrous tree, the Hungarian author, Pesceli Imre, wrote this:
“See how its branches reach to us in welcome; hear what [its] voice says, ‘Come to me, you weary! Give me your sickness, give me all your sorrow. I will give [you] blessing.’”
Dear friends, what we do in this liturgy – offering our reverence for a cross – must seem odd in the eyes of the world. Why, asks the skeptical observer, would you bow, kiss, or touch this mute wood? And yet, and yet we know that the One who was crucified and raised to life is with us, inviting us to bring any suffering of body, mind, or spirit, inviting us to bring any sickness or sorrow, inviting us with open hearts and minds to receive forgiveness, healing, and blessing from the life-giving tree and in the reception of his life-giving Body and Blood.
The only question is this: Will our encounter with the wood of the cross inspire within us a greater empathy for our neighbors, for friends and strangers alike, and lead them to say of us: “You are a blessing”?