This sermon discusses the themes of Good Friday and the meaning of taking up one's cross. It notes that through the Lenten season, the Gospels have focused on the themes of life, death, and rebirth, and that there can be no resurrection without first experiencing death. The sermon encourages parishioners to reflect not just on Christ's death on the cross for our sins, but also on the daily "deaths" we must experience by denying our egos and following Christ. It suggests we will find meaning in our own suffering by embracing this paradox and joining in God's solidarity with all people.

1. 07 April 2023 Good Friday Services Princeton, NJ
Page | 1 Deacon Jim Knipper
During these past weeks of Lent, our Gospels have focused on the quintessential theme of life, death and
rebirth – or what some call order, disorder, and reorder. However you look at this universal pattern, one thing is
for sure – there is no skipping the process. There is no reorder without disorder…there is no rebirth or
resurrection without death. And so this afternoon we come face-to-face with death as we gaze upon the cross of
Christ.
For the first time since COVID, once again, each of us will be able during this liturgy, to come forward in order to
reverence the cross by bowing, kneeling or touching the wood. For me, I think it is the most grace-filled
procession we have each year in the Church. For there are no conditions or restrictions or rules and regulations
as to who can come forward - as we witness people from all walks of life – often in tears – giving thanks to
Christ for dying for us. And as we come out of this pandemic and return to some form of personal reverence for
the cross, perhaps all that we have each endured these past years gives us an opportunity to look at the cross
differently.
So instead of the focus just being on the cross that Christ died on…and on his death some two millennium ago –
a death that was for us…what if we spent some time this afternoon on the deaths that happen to us…to focus
on our crosses and on our dying that needs to occur each day? It was St. Paul who wrote to the Corinthians, “I
die daily.” Which echoes the words of Christ when he said, “If anyone would come after me let him deny himself,
take up his cross daily, and follow me.”
I wonder what the disciples thought when they heard that? Some few years earlier they had already walked
away from their family and friends and jobs and everything in their life just to follow Jesus – what more could
Christ be asking for? How many of us, who have faced so much loss and hardship this past year, are asking
the same question. “God – what more are you asking of me?”
To answer that – and to look at the cross differently – it requires a deeper look into that line: “Take up your
cross.” For when we hear that directive, we most often interpret it as the absolute need to shoulder alone the
burdens of our lives: the deaths, the losses, the illnesses, the addictions – as simply crosses we are called to
bear. But if we stop there, we totally miss the point Christ was making. For when Jesus said those words, he
meant that each day we must die to ourselves in order to follow Christ. For his follow up line is, “Whoever wants
to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for me, will save it.” And while over the centuries many
people have been martyred for Christ – he was speaking more about the need for each of us to die to ourselves
– in other words of the need to die to our egos, our strategies, our politics, and our prejudices – for such actions
need to be crucified and buried and we have to die a similar death.
Following Jesus may seem easy when life runs smoothly – but when the crosses appear in our lives – when we
come across something or someone or some event in our own life that requires some form of personal “dying” –
then our world is turned upside down. And how often, instead of facing this daily death, do we just push God
away and dig in deeper by building up our false selves? We default to pointing to the Cross as something Christ
did for us…while missing the point that in our daily lives we are called to do the same. For until “we find the
communal meaning and significance of the suffering of all life, we will continue to retreat into our individual,
small worlds in our misguided quest for personal safety and sanity.” For the crucified Christ is the dramatic
reminder that God fully enters into our suffering with us—not just for us, but in solidarity with us. The Good
News is we do not have to hold that suffering alone. In fact, we can’t.

2. 07 April 2023 Good Friday Services Princeton, NJ
Page | 2 Deacon Jim Knipper
So rather than only focusing on how Jesus died for our sins – I invite you to take some time and to go a bit
deeper in your prayer about the Cross. To keep in mind that Jesus showed us that death – daily death – is part
of life. For there is no resurrection without death...there is no love without loss. Good Friday and all of Christian
life is about embracing this paradox. Thus, every day we are faced with crosses…crosses that allow us to see
and feel the ashes of our lives…crosses that make it hard for us to always shine light into the
darkness…crosses that lead us to weep. But as Saint Oscar Romero once said, “There are many things that
can only be seen through the eyes that have wept.”
So, as we once again come forward shortly to bend our knee at the cross what if we also took the time to bend
our hearts…to bend our souls…to bend our very own lives in order to echo the radical love of Christ? And in
doing so - what will our tearful eyes then see? And how better will we be in holding onto the hope and the
promise that out of the crosses and ashes of our lives, that one day we will all dance in their ruins and discover
a sweet consolation of beauty that can and will rise from our broken hearts?
For you see, suffering has this strange and marvelous equalizing ability to pull us into oneness. It is a path,
which we are reminded of every Tridium, which allows us to actively join God’s loving solidarity with all people. It
is then, when we embrace Jesus’ essential paradox that to die is to live, we are able to come to God – the one
who gathers up the fractured pieces of the world and makes them more whole complete and magnificent than
they were before they broke. For all of reality is moving toward resurrection. This is the great hope of our
tradition and one that is clearly becoming more and more necessary for our broken world to hear.