Hard Working Hands

Today is Good Friday. It may seem weird to call the day that we remember Jesus Christ's death good, but it is a good day, for if it wasn't for Jesus' death, Easter would not happen.

A pastor I knew growing up would often say: "It may be Friday now, but Sunday is coming." He meant that good follows bad, and often when we look back on the bad we realize how much we grew as a result of that experiences, and really those bad things were good for us in terms of growth.

And it was a Good Friday here is Connecticut. The weather was gorgeous - high 60s/low 70's. The sun was shining, bird singing and flowers that have been peaking out of the ground for weeks have come into full bloom.

But yet among all the sunshine, today is also a day of mourning. Now I personally have never felt that mid-day Good Friday services are all that meaningful, especially on days like today. So luckily we only have an evening service. Now I can't tell you if everything went smoothly since I'm writing this before worship, but to mean there is something about hearing of Jesus' trial, crucifixion, death and burial in a sanctuary that is slowly getting darker and darker that is extremely meaningful and powerful to the senses. Today I will read John 18:1-19:42 in five parts with verses from Ah Holy Jesus in between each section.

Then I will preach, we will have a long time for prayer and then the cross will be brought forward so that people can light a votive candle and have a moment of silent personal prayer at the foot of the cross. We will also be able to have our hands blessed, much like yesterday we had our feet blessed.

Here is my sermon for tonight. I hope it captures even half of the emotions that will be part of tonight's worship.

Hands are important. They are very important features of our body. We do a lot with our hands. Type, write, brush our teeth and hair, sew, eat, button, open doors, drive.

Hands are important. One small cut can make any of the thousand of things that we do with our hands every day difficult to do.

Hands are important. We shake hands. We communicate through hand gestures. We know people like the back of our hands. We hold hands, we wear rings to symbolize our love.

Hands are important, even God’s hands. Many of us grew up learning the words to the song: He’s got the whole world in his hands. The ELCA’s tagline is “God’s work, our hands.” We are God’s hands in this world, we do God’s work.

But our hands do not always do good. With our hands we can hit, slap, beat, give inappropriate hand gestures, cut, stab, let go and hand over. Five times in today’s gospel it talks about Jesus being handed over to various authorities. Five times Jesus is delivered from one group who wants to kill him but feels powerless to do so to another group who has the power to kill him but does not want to do so. We so often want to say that it was the Romans or the Jews who killed Jesus and not us, followers of Christ. But our hands were involved in Jesus’ death.

We unfairly villain-ize Jews and Romans saying that we would not have been in that crowd crying for Jesus to be crucified. But yet Jesus died for our sins. Jesus died for us. It doesn’t matter if we were in that crowd or not, if we would have yelled “crucify him, crucify him,” or have silently stood on the sidelines watching the entire spectacle take place. Our hands were involved. We were part of the crowd that killed Jesus even if we were not physically there, even if we think that we would never have joined in with the crowd.

We are part of the crowd that killed Jesus because Jesus died for us. We were part of the crowd that killed Jesus because God gave his only son for us. Our hands are bloody, our hands are covered in Jesus’ blood because we killed Jesus.

But our hands are washed clean. They are washed clean because of God. They are washed clean because Jesus died for us, for our sins. They are washed clean because God gave his only son for us.

God’s work was done through our hands and God’s work continues to be done through our hands. Through the joy that comes in this congregation, through the work that we do in this community, through the support that we give to missionaries and relief agencies throughout the world.

Our hands our important. They do both good and bad. On this Good Friday, we can sit here and think only about the bad things, the sins that we have committed, the despair and sorrow that we have caused, the reasons why Jesus had to die for us. Or we can realize that this is Good Friday, and through Jesus’ death, through this overwhelming act of love, through this ultimate display of passion and grace, God has allowed us to do God’s work with our hands. And our hands are important and do important things.