Sermon: "If You Love Somebody Enough" April 2, 2021 (Good Friday)
Today’s Good Friday. It’s not the most popular worship service out there, even with livestreaming as an option. Christmas features a newborn baby and well-known carols, Easter features flowers and an empty tomb. Good Friday, though, has as its centerpiece the wounded, broken body nailed to a cross. It’s tough to capture this one in a compelling Facebook ad.
It’s not as popular as Christmas or Easter, but it’s equal in its importance. On one hand, it says something about us—it exposes us to the darker side of ourselves. Human cruelty, violence, hatred. Sin with a capital “S” are all in laser focus. It’s something we’d prefer to hide.
On the other hand, though, it’s also important because it says something about God. About our Creator, the Source of all life. And to tell you about this something, I’d like to share with you something a bit unconventional for a Good Friday sermon. What I’d like to share are the words from an old country love song by well-known Nashville songwriter Tom T. Hall. The words are from his 1969 hit “How I Got to Memphis.” Gregor’s gonna share a couple verses right now. Bear with me—I promise it’ll make sense.
If you love somebody enough,
you’ll follow wherever they go,
it’s how I got to Memphis,
it’s how I got to Memphis.[i]
This man’s in love with a woman who’s lived a tumultuous life. Could be drinking, could be drugs, the issue’s left open to our imagination. Eventually, she leaves him. And figuring she’s herself into trouble again, goes after her. He’ll go wherever he needs to go to save her. If you love somebody enough, you’ll follow wherever they go. It’s how he got to Memphis, the big city. It’s a beautiful, though tragic and melancholy story of love and devotion that knows no limits.
Now, what does this have to do with God, or Good Friday?
In the cross, we have the human condition blown up and magnified for us. When presented with God, with pure goodness in human form, our response wasn’t to return her loving embrace. Our response was betrayal. It was arrest, it was accusation, condemnation, and false testimony. It was denial, it was mockery, and humiliation. It was a whip to the back, a crown of thorns on the head, a nail each hand, and a spear in the side.
You see, the human race has—since any kind of living memory—wandered away from God’s good purposes for creation. From our primordial ancestors, Adam and Eve, who stretched their arms out for the knowledge of good and evil, to Cain the first murderer, and every generation to Good Friday on down, we’ve been trapped in a cycle of Sin and self-interest. Vengeance, bloodshed and hatred. Violence, envy, war, manipulation, and selfishness. Racism, sexism, greed. Abuse, addiction, poverty, oppression and the plundering of Creation.
You see, we’re the troubled woman in this country song. The one who’s wandered away from the most devoted person in her life. Lost… always teetering on a cliff of self destruction. Jesus on the cross is the magnification, the ultimate intensification, of our prodigality. Nothing within our own strength has remedied this or brought us back home.
Of course, the beauty in this tune is that none of it erases the singer’s love for this woman. She’s left. He knew she would, too. And not only, that, but the singer leaves home, leaves the comfort of his life to go looking, wandering this strange Tennessee city, searching, out of this singular love and devotion for this woman. I mean, you can picture him combing dirty alleys, scouring crackhouses, confronting pimps and petty criminals for some kind of a lead. The search is so intense that he, too, ends up hungry and sleepless for three days and nights. He enters her fallen world in order to bring her home. It’s just what you do when you love someone enough. You follow wherever they go.
And that’s what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Rather than tracking us down US Marshall style to punish us for eternity. Rather than giving up on us, leaving us to our own devices, or waiting for us to become enlightened enough to come crawling back, God has come to us. God has left his transcendent majesty and glory to wander the broken down and busted corridors of our wounded existence. In Christ she has stepped inside the hurt, lonely and shameful recesses of the human heart, and taken our suffering, our pride, and brokenness into himself. Like the parable of the shepherd who leaves ninety-nine of his sheep to search out a single one who’s wandered away.[ii] If you love somebody enough, you’ll follow wherever they go. You’ll do whatever it takes. You’ll enter their world and their life, no matter how dangerous, rank or squalid—even if it kills you. And that’s just what Jesus did on the cross. In the words of the Apostle Paul, he who was without sin was made sin for our sake,[iii] to retrieve us with the power of his self-giving love. It’s how Tom T. Hall got to Memphis. And it’s how Jesus got to Gethsemene. It’s what brought God to Good Friday.
Of course, in the song, Tom T. Hall leaves us hanging. We don’t really know how it ends, if his rescue effort finds this woman, or even brings her home. It ends with tears, and with fear that the whole search was in vain. In that way Good Friday leaves us hanging, too. Christ hangs on the cross. He hungers, he thirsts, he cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Even Jesus appears to have lost the hope of retrieval. We’re left hanging as Jesus hangs, and breathes his last.
This is where the similarities end, though. Because—unlike this song—Mark’s passion story gives a clue, it hints at a final reunion.
Darkness covers the world. Jesus cries out, and breathes his last. And suddenly Mark shifts locations to the temple in Jerusalem. The most holy dwelling place of God. “And the curtain,” it says. “And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. From top to bottom.” In the temple, the curtain fenced off the Holy of Holies, the touch-point between heaven and earth. Here it’s torn in half. The divine presence, that normally lies hidden is finally exposed for all the world to see. And when a soldier who stands facing Jesus sees his last breathe, he declares “Truly, this man was God’s Son!” His declaration is the first time in the whole story that anyone actually says this about Jesus. This is the first time that the truth actually comes out of anyone’s mouth. The definitive revelation in the whole story is found not in Jesus’ ministry. Or even in triumph at the resurrection. It’s found in the cross. In the midst of such ugliness, abandonment, terror, and death, the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. God is found hidden in the cross, and God is at loose in the world.
Here it’s not quite Easter Sunday yet. But if God is in the cross, there’s nothing we can do, there’s no place we can wander where God won’t find us. God’s already made his way to Memphis. God’s already shouldering our suffering and our pain, here and now. Dragging us with him to Easter. Carrying us toward the New Creation.
It means that you are not abandoned in your brokenness, anxiety, and fear. It means that the world with all of its crises, its suffering and its pain isn’t simply left to crash and burn by its own devices. Because if you love somebody enough, you’ll follow wherever they go. It’s this love, the unbelievable mercy of the Creator that brought Christ to calvary. It’s this love, the unshakeable forgiveness of the Father that brought Jesus to the cross. And it’s this love, the inescapable grace of our Maker that’s come for you. Suffered, died and rose for you. And will one day bring you home, each of us home, for good.
If you love somebody enough, you’ll follow where ever they go. Meaning that there’s no sin, no shame, neither death or hell itself, can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, our Lord.[iv]
And that’s why we call this Friday “Good.”
AMEN.
[i] Tom T. Hall, “How I Got to Memphis,” Ballad of Forty Dollars & His Other Great Songs (Mercury Records, 1969).
[iii] “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21.
[iv] See Romans 8:38.