A Reflection on Good Friday

By The Rt. Rev. Dr. George Sumner, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas

Ps. 22:1-21; Isa. 52:13-53:12 or Gen. 22:1-18; Heb. 10:1-25; John 18:1-19:37

‘Then He bowed His head and gave up His spirit’ (John 19:30)

“God is dead.” So shouted the cover of Time magazine half a century ago, as it heralded the advent of a new movement of radically secular theologians. They were not as new as supposed, quoting as they did that great enemy of the faith, Friedrich Nietzsche, yet another half a century earlier. They meant to shock, although by now this has worn off for us who are more immune to shock. The social critic Allan Bloom said in his The Closing of the American Mind that only Americans could turn nihilism into something upbeat. We are about the Nietzschean business of making our own religions and deities more than we know.

“God is dead”: it is actually a quotation from a Lutheran hymn for Good Friday, as Nietzsche, the pastor’s son, would have known. But this shock, this earthquake, is far deeper. We are the ground it splits. The claim from within Christian faith (though we sometimes would pass it by ourselves) is that the Son of God, the almighty Creator of all, has died. And yet more rending, the dying One, who knew no sin, had been made to be sin, words to be taken in mind-splitting literalness. Nor are we to hedge the affront with a lesser doctrine of God: the friend who cares, a dimension of spirituality, or a projection of the best in us. The full traditional claim about God collides with the alienated and gruesome death of this man.  

In our gospel reading from John, we hear Jesus’ words “I am He” echoing the voice of God in Isaiah 43:13, and then we hear how his corpse was taken down from the instrument of torture.  Jesus cries, “It is finished.” Dead and done, but also accomplished: perfect (19:30).

There is no framework, however pious, that accommodates this truth. But it is the starting point of the framework within which we are given to understand who God really is, what He has decisively done for us, and, therefore, what living and dying toward Him mean. Under the conditions of this estranged world, that self-giving love which is the being of the triune God - the life which moves between Father, Son, and Spirit - is here revealed. And, if we narrow the lens more tightly, we see that wonderful exchange of death for life, sin for grace, which we call the atonement. It alone is the rock on which we guilty and dying creatures can live, in Him who “was dead, and now look, [is] alive for ever and ever!” (Rev. 1:18).

A post-script is in order. What an irony that we professors offer a “Master of Divinity,” and we priests receive them! It is well that today the hoods and vestments are gone, the aumbry empty.  Good Friday is the real shock, not for superficial effect, but to lasting effect. It is the great leveler, at the foot of the cross, repair where all our thinking ends and commences.

The Rt. Rev. George Sumner was elected as the Seventh bishop for the Diocese of Dallas during a Special Convention in May 2015. His consecration was Nov. 14, 2015. As bishop he oversees the administrative needs throughout the diocese and is chief pastor for more than 31,000 Episcopalians, 200 clergy and 100 congregations. Prior to his election, Sumner served as principal of Wycliffe College in Toronto, Canada. He was the dean of a growing seminary and was the chief administrator responsible for strategic planning; encouraging young, future priests; stewardship; building relations with bishops; and overseeing clergy's continuing education. Ordained as an Episcopal priest in western Massachusetts in 1981, Sumner served in a variety of capacities: youth minister, missionary teacher in east Africa, curate in an inner-city Anglo-Catholic parish, vicar on a native American reservation in New Mexico and Arizona, and rector in a small town. Sumner has a Ph.D. in theology from Yale, and has written a book about priestly calling and a commentary on Daniel. He also has an M.Div. from Yale Divinity School and a B.A. from Harvard College. Sumner and his wife, Stephanie, have two adult children.