April 3, 2026, Year A, Lent, Good Friday

John 18:1-19:37, Hebrews 1:10-25, Psalm 69:1-21

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you, on this Good Friday, as we stand together at the foot of the cross.

Last night, we were in an upper room. The table was set. The bread was broken, the cup was poured, and he gave himself to us before the ultimate giving was complete on the cross. He looked around that circle of twelve and said, with an intensity of longing that Luke tells us had been building across the whole journey from Galilee: "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer" (Luke 22:15, ESV). He knew exactly what was coming. He went to the table anyway.

Today, we follow him out the door.

Our Gospel reading today spans John 18:1 through 19:37, found on page _________ of your pew Bibles.

John tells us that when the supper was finished and the prayers were prayed, Jesus went out across the brook Kidron to a garden. The detail matters. The Kidron was the ravine between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives—a place where, on feast days, the blood of thousands of Passover lambs was drained and carried away. Jesus crosses that stream on his way to the arrest. John, writing with the precision of a theologian and the memory of an eyewitness, wants us to feel the weight of it.

Judas knows the place. He has been there before with Jesus. He arrives now with a band of soldiers and officers, carrying lanterns and torches and weapons—all that military apparatus—to arrest one unarmed man in a garden.

Jesus steps forward—not backward, not sideways—and asks them, "Whom do you seek?" (John 18:4, ESV). They answer, "Jesus of Nazareth." And he says, "I am he" (John 18:5, ESV).

The Greek is simply ego eimi—I am. The same words John has placed on Jesus' lips throughout his Gospel: I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the door. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. And now, in the darkness of the garden, to soldiers with torches: I am.

They drew back and fell to the ground (John 18:6).

Not because of the soldiers' weakness. Because of who said it. The name by which God identified himself to Moses from the burning bush—"I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14, ESV)—echoes through the garden, and armed men fall over. He is not arrested because he is overpowered. He is arrested because he permits it. As the writer to the Hebrews will put it when describing the priestly offering, "he has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily"—he offers once, and he offers himself (Hebrews 7:27, ESV).

The Lamb of God, as John the Baptist declared at the very beginning of this Gospel, does not have the sacrifice imposed upon him. He steps forward and gives himself.

What follows in John 18 is a sequence of interrogations—before Annas, before Caiaphas, before Pilate—and John weaves through them with careful artistry. But it is the exchange with Pilate that demands our full attention.

Pilate asks in John 18:33, "Are you the King of the Jews?" And Jesus answers in a way no political prisoner ever has: "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world" (John 18:36, ESV).

Last Sunday we watched him ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, the crowd shouting “Hosanna”, waving palms, hoping he would seize the throne in the way kings seize it—by force. Last night at the table, the disciples argued about who would be greatest in his kingdom. Even now, Pilate assumes the categories of earthly power: throne, army, territory, conquest.

Jesus will have none of it. The kingdom he has come to establish does not win its victories by crushing enemies, just yet. The cross is not a defeat on the way to victory—it is the victory. It will do the crushing on the last day.

Pilate is confused and frightened. He asks, "What is truth?" (John 18:38, ESV)—and walks away before the answer can reach him. That is perhaps the saddest sentence in the Passion narrative. The Truth is standing three feet away, and Pilate turns his back.

Three times Pilate tries to release him. Three times the crowd refuses. And in one of John's most devastating ironies, when the Jewish leaders say to Pilate, "We have no king but Caesar" (John 19:15, ESV), the sons and daughters of Abraham  by birth—surrender their covenant identity to Rome in order to eliminate the one who came to fulfill it.

All of this had been seen before. Not in its details, but in its pattern. Psalm 69 is one of the most quoted psalms in the New Testament, and for good reason. David writes from the depths of an abyss that John's account makes suddenly, horribly recognizable.

"Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me” (Psalm 69:1-2, ESV).

The person who prays this psalm is not suffering for his own wrongdoing: "More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause" (Psalm 69:4, ESV). He is bearing reproach that is not his own: "The reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me" (Psalm 69:9, ESV). His companions have abandoned him: "I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none" (Psalm 69:20, ESV).

And then, in verse 21, a detail so specific it reads like a transcript of what is about to happen on Golgotha: "They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink" (Psalm 69:21, ESV).

John records it happening. When Jesus says "I thirst" (John 19:28, ESV), a jar of sour wine is there, and they lift it to his lips on a hyssop branch. Hyssop—the same plant used to apply the blood of the Passover lamb to the doorframes in Egypt (Exodus 12:22). John is not reaching for symbolism. He is reporting what he saw, and the symbolism was built into creation before he was born.

The psalmist's cry—"Save me, O God"—was always pointing here. Not to David's personal deliverance from his enemies, though that was real enough. It was pointing to the one who would pray from the cross, who would sink into the deep mire of human sin and abandonment and death, not because he had fallen, but because he was carrying us out.

At Golgotha, they crucify him. Between two others. With a sign above his head—written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek, so that absolutely no one could miss it—that reads: "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews" (John 19:19).

The chief priests protest. They want the sign to say "This man ‘claimed’ to be King of the Jews." Pilate, showing for the first and only time a moment of accidental theological clarity, says: ”What I have written I have written" (John 19:22, ESV). The inscription stands. The King of the Jews is being crucified by the Romans at the demand of his own people, and the evidence is nailed above his head in three languages.

From the cross, Jesus makes provision for his mother. He sees her standing with the beloved disciple and says to her, ”Woman, behold, your son!" and to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!” (John 19:26-27, ESV). Even here—hanging between heaven and earth, bearing the weight of the world's sin—he is attentive. He is taking care of the vulnerable. He is still, as he said at the table just hours earlier, the one who is among his people as the one who serves.

The writer to the Hebrews sees the whole of the Passion through the lens of the high priest entering the Most Holy Place. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest entered alone, with blood not his own, making atonement for sins committed in ignorance. Year after year. The same sacrifice. The same veil. The same cycle of sin and offering, sin and offering. And the writer asks the unavoidable question: if the sacrifices truly dealt with sin, why would they need to keep being repeated? "But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26, ESV).

Once for all. That phrase lands differently when you have just watched him cross the Kidron and enter the garden.

Hebrews continues: "And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him" (Hebrews 9:27-28, ESV). The offering is complete. It does not need to be repeated. It will not be improved upon. What he does today, he does once, and it is enough.

And then—the three words that reorder everything. "It is finished" (John 19:30, ESV).

In Greek, a single word: tetelestai. It was a word used in the ancient world to stamp across a bill of debt when the final payment had been made: paid in full. It was used by an artist standing back from a completed work. It was used at the close of a legal transaction—nothing more to be done, nothing more to be owed, the matter settled in full.

Jesus does not say "I am finished." He says "It is finished." There is a world of difference. “I am finished” is the gasp of a man who has run out. “It is finished” is the declaration of a priest who has completed the offering, a king who has won the battle, a Son who has accomplished everything the Father sent him to do.

He bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Gave it up. Not had it taken. John uses language of agency: Jesus died as he had lived—doing nothing apart from the Father's will, offering everything by deliberate and sovereign choice. "No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:18, ESV). This is the gift spoken of last night at the table. "My body, which is given for you"—and now the giving is complete.

After the death, the soldiers come to break the legs of those crucified, to hasten death before the Sabbath. When they come to Jesus, he is already dead. So instead of breaking his legs, one of the soldiers pierces his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water flow out (John 19:34).

John, who is standing there watching, inserts himself into the narrative at this point with unusual personal urgency: "He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe" (John 19:35, ESV). He is not decorating the account. He is swearing an oath. He was there. He saw it. It happened.

And it fulfills Scripture in two directions at once: "Not one of his bones will be broken” (John 19:36, ESV)—the requirement for the Passover lamb (Exodus 12:46)—and "They will look on him whom they have pierced" (John 19:37, ESV), quoting Zechariah 12:10, a prophecy of the day when God's people would mourn and receive the spirit of grace and supplication.

The Lamb of God: bones unbroken, side pierced, blood poured out. The Passover that the first Passover was always pointing toward. The bread and cup we received last night—the body given and the blood of the new covenant—find their source in this moment, this soldier, this spear, this hillside outside Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon that the whole of creation had been moving toward since the garden where the first man and woman hid in shame.

We come now to the question Good Friday always forces us to face. Not an intellectual question. A personal one.

Why did he do this? The answer is not primarily in a theory of atonement, though the theology matters. The answer is in a garden at the beginning of the night, where he stepped forward rather than back, said “I am”, and let them bind his hands. It is in an upper room the night before, where he looked around at the people who were about to betray him, deny him, and flee from him—and broke bread for them anyway, washed their feet anyway, prayed for them anyway. It is on the cross where, in his final hours, he made sure his mother was cared for.

The answer is love. Not a sentimental love. Not a love that avoids cost. The love described in John 3:16—"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son" (ESV)—and unpacked across the entire narrative of salvation: the love that enters the miry bog of Psalm 69 not to observe it from a safe distance but to sink into it, to stand where we stand, to cry out with our cry, to drink the cup we had earned.

Hebrews tells us that Jesus is not a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who "in every respect has been tempted as we are" (Hebrews 4:15, ESV). The wilderness we explored at the beginning of Lent—the forty days, the hunger, the temptation to shortcut the cost of love—all of it was preparation for this: a high priest who entered the Holy of Holies not with the blood of bulls and goats but with his own blood, "thus securing an eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12, ESV).

Eternal. Not seasonal. Not conditional on our performance. Not subject to renewal. Secured. Done. Finished.

Good Friday is not a day for ten practical steps. The liturgy of this day is deliberately sparse for a reason. After the service, there will be no blessing, no dismissal. The altar is bare. The candles are out. We left it that way last night, and we leave it that way today.

Because some things need to be felt before they can be applied. Some truths need to be received in silence before we reach for conclusions.

But let me offer this. Last night the Maundy Thursday sermon closed with an invitation: come to the table, receive what is given, and go and do likewise. Today we see the cost of what was given. The table last night was the preview; the cross today is the price. He gave us bread and cup, and then he went and made good on every word of it.

If you have been carrying a debt you cannot pay—a moral account you know will never balance—hear the word tetelestai. Paid in full. The ledger is not just forgiven; it is stamped and closed. That is not cheap grace. It cost him everything. But it is free grace—freely given, freely received, requiring nothing from us except the outstretched hand of faith.

If you have been sinking in the deep mire of Psalm 69—overwhelmed, abandoned, crying out and hearing only silence—know that the one who prays that psalm from the cross has been there before you. Further in than you. He knows the waters. He knows the mud. And he came up.

And if the dispute about greatness from last night still lives anywhere in you—the quiet ranking of who matters, the pride that thinks it deserves a better seat — look at the sign nailed above his head. “The King of the Jews.” Written in three languages so no one could miss it. This is what the king looks like. This is what love looks like when it has nowhere left to hide.

We will gather again on Sunday. The story is not finished. We know that. But we are not there yet.

Today we stay here on Golgatha, at the foot of the cross, with John and the women who did not run. We look on him whom they pierced. We hear the word that is both an ending and a beginning.

“It is finished.”

Let us pray…