April 3, 2026
Good Friday
I have spent a professional lifetime, in a love-hate relationship with the writer of the Gospel of John. The first words I memorized as a young Greek scholar, were the first words of the Gospel of John.
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
en arché én ho logos / kai ho logos pros ton theos / kai theos én ho logos.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
I have loved those words and whenever you hear a“God, Most Ancient of Days” in the Prayers of the People, the writer is reaching into those words.
In today’s, great, long and beautifully proclaimedreading, Jesus’ last wish is that Jesus’ mother would take care of the beloved disciple, and that the disciple would take care of Mary. I think there is something more extraordinarily human and important there than in the simple and awful truth of Jesus mortality and death.
In my mind I picture John as an old man. He’s been around. He’s several generations — generations were much shorter in Jesus’ time as women bore children in their early teens — several generations down the linefrom the events he relates. He’s a poet who uses the sometimes-slippery language of a wordsmith. Does he mean this or does he mean that? And he can be both wonderfully evocative and incredibly opaque. He loves the flourishes of detail of a good storyteller, however long ago it happened: “There was a boy here with fiveloaves of bread, barley loaves, and two fishes…”
I also think he’s writing at the time or in a place where the church — which had emerged from within the Jewish faith and which was born as a small following of Jewish women and men — who gathered around this charismatic teacher / rabbi / Jesus. This following —called “People of the Way” elsewhere — was likely seen as a community within the Jewish community for several decades, but was now, in John’s time and place, experienced as a thing apart. The church was becoming or had become, its own thing. So much so that John could use the term “The Jews” with a kind of disregard.
I think John is unhappy that the Christian enterprise has not gone well in its community of origin and so various people are simply written off as “The Jews” as if somehow that accounted for them. Moreover, John knows that his use of the term “The Jews” is not unacceptable to the people to whom he is writing so distant or disconnected are they from the Jewish roots of the faith they profess. So, our Gospel of John and the Good Friday Passion are complicated and controverted.
I’m a Lutheran by virtue of a Norwegian grandfather; afriend … a guest in this community of adoption. One of the important Lutheran bits of theology, in my kit, is how Lutherans think about the Scriptures — stuff like the Gospel of John or the Passion of John. Martin Luther: “The Scriptures form a manger for the Gospel”.
This morning’s Passion forms the manger for the Gospel, but the Gospel, itself, lies within. The Gospel is there — this swaddled babe of our devotion — but it is our job as Christians to tease that Gospel out of the manger, gingerly, and to take that Gospel to our breast.
To be clear. “Mary, take care of my beloved” is Gospel. “Behold your son.” says the poet. Those words arehealing. “My beloved, take care of Mary” is Gospel. “Behold your mother.” says the poet. Those words are salvific. Writing off a people … the Jews .. the Jews … the Jews … as villains, when Rome stands in the frame,is something less than Gospel especially given Jesus’ word that salvation was of the Jews. It’s hard to reconcile.
You folks know that I love language. I think about language. I contemplate language. So, one of the recent bits of language to prompt reflection is the word “other.”As in the other sock. The other side. The other woman.“Other” has had a long journey as an adjective andadverb. But there is this recent use of the word “other”as a verb. To other is to relativize, to marginalize, toreject, to dismiss. The othered black. The otheredIndigenous. The othered refugee. The othered seasonal worker. And that’s what John does with “The Jews”. He others them. And with the pen of a poet, and the lines of a storyteller, he writes them off and disposes of them.Not so among us.
Now, make no mistake, today’s violent, awful Gospel story —in which the central act is the murder of an innocent man with all of the attendant intrigue— that was a Roman thing. The Romans —the Roman occupying army—did that sort of thing. They crucified people in the threes, the tens and the hundreds. It was not unusual. The thing about crucifixion is that it was flagrantly ordinary.
What it was not, was a Jewish thing. Oh, I’m sure that there were complicit Jews. Complicity has always been a human failing. But it was as much Peter’s failing, for example, as that of anyone else. “I did not know this man.” Peter was complicit. Peter, on whom Jesus built his church. And of course, he, like Jesus, was Jewish.
On Maudy Thursday, Jesus told his followers to love one another. Not “to love their neighbours”. But to love one another. He was concerned about the internal cohesion of his own community. So, love one another. On Good Friday, he reiterates that concern. Mom, take care of my friend. My friend, take care of my mother. There is a sense in which these Great Three Days, are about us reminding ourselves to take care of one another so that when Easter comes, we’ll be ready to help take care of that world out there — a world in desperate shape. Aworld in desperate need. The world our God has loved so much.
The tender foot washing of last night … a supreme and exquisite sort of loving one another. Making a home for the bereaved, the desolate … another sort of loving one another. So, this morning, we pledge, we do, that we will not other within our community. And neither will we other the bruised and broken world which knocks at our doors and which prevails upon us for ministry. For healing. For salvation.
Jesus was consistent in this regard through all of the portraits of him in the various Gospels. He talked to anyone who would listen, women at wells included. He went out of his way to embrace the crazy man in thecemetery. He welcomed the ministry of a child whose gift would feed the thousands. He made himself unclean with the sick who sought kinship and mercy outside thecity gate. He preached “feed the hungry; clothe the naked; visit the prisoner. And “blessed is the one who takes no offence at me.” Jesus did not mean to offend.
Jesus was a respecter of dignity which sometimes eludes God’s people. And he sought the kingdom of God — a place where all dignity is respected — in the here and now, and in the very fabric of life as he encountered it,on a journey in which his ministry would participate in God’s mission of healing and salvation to the point of giving his life for the sake of this world.
The Romans killed Jesus as they did countless thousands of others. They were a murderous machine in an outpost of empire. Not the first. Not the last. And the locals probably had a hand. John understands that a crowdenjoys a good lynching. But to other people as John does — this poet, this wordsmith — is unworthy. Not so among us.
Love one another. Take care of one another. And, come Easter, do the same for the people out there.
Silence for reflection.
May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to the Holy One, blessed be he. Andmay the church say “Amen”. Amen.
André Lavergne CWA (Pastor)
Honourary Assistant,
Church of St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.