Peter didn’t need a redo of Easter.

Not because Good Friday didn’t happen. Not because he hadn’t made plenty of mistakes. Not because everything was back to normal. And not because the future was going to be easy.

He didn’t need a redo of Easter because Easter wasn’t a one-time thing that Peter missed because of his fear and his denials. Easter was a continual, repeated invitation to love and to follow that Peter would spend the rest of his life living into. Easter was another chance, and another, and another – as many chances as Peter needed – to let go of the burden he’d been carrying.

The Reverend Dr. Mark Jefferson serves as the Assistant Professor of Homiletics (Preaching) and the Associate Director of the Deep Calls to Deep Preaching Program at Virginia Theological Seminary. He holds a Ph.D. in Religion with a focus on Homiletics from Emory University and a Master of Divinity degree from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, where he concentrated his coursework in homiletics, completed a certificate in Black Church Studies, and served as President of the Black Student Caucus. Mark is an internationally respected preacher and teacher of preachers. His preaching, scholarship, and engagement with popular culture outline his commitment to be a public theologian.

Today is a new beginning. And Jesus is calling each of us by name. Jesus is calling my name and your name just as surely as he called Mary’s. Sometimes we hear Jesus calling our name in joyful times, but often we can hear it most clearly when we are going through a difficult time, when Jesus comes to us in our very darkest moments and gives us the precious gift of his presence.

It has been said that on Good Friday “the Christian gospel decisively defines itself.” [1] I believe this to be true, with my whole heart I believe it to be true, and yet, when all is said and done, I’m not confident that I can, in this moment, do Good Friday justice –define it, make it clear, make it all connect. In fact, I know I cannot.

And yet, stopping here would make the service shorter, but it would not quite be holding up my end of the bargain, so to speak.

Often, it’s easier to say what something is not than what something is, and so I’d like to offer a few thoughts on what Good Friday is not.

Instead of the how, it’s the that which is important to us – that Christ is truly present with us and in us as a transfiguring promise of God’s sacrificial love for us when we gather as one body to remember and receive the one body offered up for the world’s salvation. In the memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection in the Eucharist it is as if time and space are compressed and Jesus is as much with us in our Eucharist as he was with the disciples at that very first Eucharist. Again, remembrance is a physical act. Remembrance is presence.

Hosanna in the Highest! Crucify Him!

Our ears may well ring and our heads may hurt in considering how these two cries could ever be in relationship, and yet in it is the full spectrum of human experience, the full witness of the Christian life: stubborn hope and hopeless sin met with lavish grace again and again.

Accept your propensity for sin, for betrayal; but do not do it and not also accept God’s love and forgiveness. The reverse, of course, is also true. There is not one without the other. It is our unworthiness that makes God’s grace so extravagant.