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Thank God It's Friday: Encountering the Seven Last Words from the Cross

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The Seven Last Words of Jesus on the cross have inspired a variety of religious devotions over the years. In many churches, people gather between noon and three in the afternoon on Good Friday afternoon and hear reflections based on these poignant and powerful words of Jesus. Methodist Bishop William Willamon offers seven contemporary reflections and a concluding afterward on the final phrases Jesus uttered while crucified in his book THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY.

While the title may be somewhat whimsical, this is not a feel good kind of spiritual book. Willamon's reflections are solid works that encourage people to encounter Jesus Christ as he dies on the cross. For Willamon, Jesus' suffering is real and his suffering is still meaningful for modern people, even though the current trend for many is to see themselves as more spiritual than human which can lead to almost denying the physical sufferings of Jesus. Though never graphic, Willamon is not afraid to confront the hard realities of Jesus' final moments in his ministry and believes we need to understand that Jesus' death is central to his life and the way he entered into his crucifixion says so much about him. Willamon does not focus as much on biblical scholarship or theological concepts as he does personal experience. The reflections are full of wonderful examples of how the words can be applied to our own day and age.

The most appropriate time to use the reflections would be Lent and Holy Week, though one could argue that Willamon's reflections have something to offer at anytime of the year. While at times stark, Willamon's reflections are always hope filled and remind us of the reality of Jesus' love for us and have a way of helping us remember the full extent of Jesus' sacrifice for us and his ministry.

Let me say that I have been a long-time fan of Willimon's sermons and writings (such as 'Resident Aliens', 'The Service of God', 'Pastor', 'Conversations with Barth on Preaching') but this book which I had looked forward to reading for the Holy Week was a letdown. It could be that Willimon had written some really excellent stuff in the past that my expectation from him has been unrealistically set. My disappointment stems from the uneasy feeling that he is trying too hard here to make Jesus stranger, more subversive and offensive than he really is. Alright, I take it as a given that Jesus is larger than anyone can conceive. It is true that Jesus has been tamed by centuries of domestication and remaking him in our own image...but I am not convinced by the silly portraits Willimon here made him out to be.

For example, the first sermon which zeroes in on Jesus' forgiving his enemies, calling it his 'pre-emptive forgiveness' (a phrase coined to counter the pre-emptive strikes of American military campaigns?) appears to be an exercise in caricaturing what forgiveness is. He seems to take the first of 'Jesus' last words on the cross' as the first and the last word the whole bible has to say about forgiveness. It is true that we have put too many hedges and qualifiers around the gracious act of forgiving but Willimon's taking his words to a one-dimensional extreme seems to fly in the face of the bible's own complex and nuanced conception of that divine-human transaction. It does not take into account that forgiveness proffered is not the same as forgiveness received. It breezes over the fact that God does sometimes withhold mercy (Mt6:14) and that Jesus calls the apostles to sometimes do likewise in their ministry (Jn 20:23). It does not say anything about the condition of those who would die without mercy, having crucified the Son of God all over again (Heb 10:26). There is a lavish, subversive, generous petition for mercy on the cross but it is predicated on the ground that 'they know not what they do' in the sense that Jesus meant it. Curiously, the connecting word 'for'(gar) was left out of his exegesis.

Indeed, Willimon's thesis makes no such nuances but pushes for what appears to be a no-holds-barred blanket application of divine mercy. It sounds shocking and 'shocking' has become something of a novelty lately but the message is not one that one can ulimately live with, nor does it prepare a disciple of Christ to practise forgiveness in a complex, broken world.

Now, that is the first sermon/chapter in the book. I could have skipped over this and hoped for a more balanced treatment in the others but my hope sadly went largely unmet. Somehow Willimon continues to take far too much 'poetic liberty' with the words of scripture to the point of being prosaic. Consider this:

'Death is the ultimate rip-off...In one of his parables, Jesus compared God to a thief who comes in the night while we are asleep and think we are secure, and steals everything we've got. Not the nicest image about God but a truthful one. In the end. God is going to rip off everything that we thought we had.' (page 69) We get his point about the ephemeral nature of life but one wonders if all these immodest language and confusing half-truths about Jesus comparing God to a thief that comes to rip us off are all that necessary. There's a good chance that many of such off-hand allusions are not even accurate if one takes the trouble to examine the texts closely. In this instance, Willimon appears to have conflated two different parables (Mt 24:42-44; Lk 12:20) from different places to make a point quite different from what Jesus actually says in either parable.

Over and over again, he appears far too eager to 'get at the shock of what Jesus says' (page 20) that it does not matter that Jesus actually means no such thing.

As such, the general tenor has been one that is big on 'shock value' and 'provocativeness' and little on what the final words spoken by Jesus really mean, how they breathe new life into the church and guide us in the way of the cross, he commands us to bear daily. He seems tired of the old truths and seeks to hit the audience with something 'fresh' by straining the texts.

P/S: This critical review in no way detracts from my deep admiration for Willimon's scholarship and ministry as a whole but I do so out of a frank appraisal of this particular work, in the hope that perhaps we read/hear him with the respectful critical engagement his work deserves.

The last seven weeks I have been preaching on the seven last words of the cross. One of the resources I have used has been THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY: ENCOUNTERING THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSSby Will Willimon. In this book I discovered what I believe to be a collection of sermons that Bishop Willimon has preached during his career on each of these seven last words. What I found was a book that was very helpful in my preaching preparation, as well as a spiritual guide in helping me place myself under the cross for the 2011 season of Lent.

One of the things I love about Willimon's writing and preaching is that he appears to be unafraid. He is open about his mistakes and his victories, which takes courage. It also takes courage to boldly state the truth about what the Scripture is saying without trying to nuance it or make it more pallatable. Willimon demonstrates both kinds of courage.

Willimon is also skilled at bringing out parts of the text he is preaching or writing about that other people might miss. This is true in all his books. It is also true in this one.

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAYspeaks both with profundity and with simplicity as it shares about what is happening on the cross. This is especially true, in my opinion, with the afterword. Usually I don't read afterwords, prefaces, or epilogues, but I did with this book. The afterword in this text is an expansion on the author's theology of the cross. The discussion of Luther and Barth was enjoyable. Even more helpful was the author's insistence in the centrality of the cross not only during the Lenten season, but in our entire Christian journey.

A book I would strongly recommend to anyone wanting to understand more about Jesus and his message.