Homilies for the Three Days
Homilies by Pr. Craig Mueller for the Three Days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter, 2025.
JESUS ISN’T A STRONGMAN
Do you think of Jesus as androgenous? In our gospel, is Jesus subverting traditional power structures, including patriarchy? When Jesus dies on the cross, is he revealing a vulnerable God—a God who does suffers rather than takes up arms?
Richard Rohr writes of the opposites that we hold during these Three Days. “The cross was the price Jesus paid for living in a ‘mixed world,’ which is both human and divine, simultaneously broken and utterly whole. He hung between a good thief and a bad thief, between heaven and earth, inside of both humanity and divinity, a male body with a feminine soul, utterly whole and yet utterly disfigured—all the primary opposites.”1
These Three Days are filled with paradox—holding two things once. Darkness and light. Bondage and freedom. Sin and grace. Weakness and strength. Death and life.
But there is one phrase from Rohr that would certainly rankle many fellow Christians! Jesus having a “male body with a feminine soul?” Surely not! Dale Partridge has written a book called The Manliness of Christ. For many Christians today, Jesus is not only the sacrificial Christ, but the conquering lion. Several years ago, some of us read the book Jesus and John Wayne. The author portends that much of white, conservative, evangelical culture today is rooted in a militant masculinity, personified by John Wayne, and revealed in Christian nationalism.
Partridge criticizes the culture and the modern church for its portrayal of an anemic and soft-smiled Jesus—in paintings that look like he’s just put on a fresh coat of blush and tweezed his eyebrows. He blames feminism and the progressive church and believes our culture despises masculinity and is trying to de-gender everything. I am quite certain Partridge would be a bit apoplectic about how this church tries to balance the patriarchal language of our faith with images of Sophia, Mary, Jesus as Mother Hen, and some of the feminine metaphors (from scripture) that we use for God!
I don’t want to pit the masculine and the feminine! And remember that is different than male and female. We need both. I value both in myself. And though gender can be fluid for many people, I also know it is a mystery and at the depth of who we are as human beings.
What I will say is this. Jesus is certainly saying and doing things a Strongman (as is portrayed these days) would never say or do!
For one thing, everything is set-up for what should have been a show down. In John’s account, Jesus knows what is going to happen to him, and who is going to betray him. Here’s what many of us would do today, We’d claim, “I’ve got evidence.” It’s the smoking gun, the leak, that reveals the betrayer. But not so for Jesus. He doesn’t call out the sham of Judas’ behavior. He doesn’t become a whistle blower. Instead of exposing the hearts of Judas and Peter, he washes their feet tenderly. He loves them to the end.2
And even more shockingly, Jesus takes the form of a servant. A role reversal, indeed! Maybe we’re not shocked by it because we’ve heard it so many times. The servant of lower status should wash the feet of the person with higher status. What is going on here? It’s a subversion of the disciple’s expectations—and ours.
We will enact this footwashing ritual as Jesus commands. But if we get hung up on what our feet look like, or whether we had a pedicure, we are missing this revolutionary act that aligns with everything Jesus stands for. As one writer puts it, in an age when our leaders “rule with brute strength, oppression, and violence, Jesus demonstrates that he came to rule with service, liberation, and love. . . At a time when success in leadership is defined by the promise of prosperity, military power, and the will to vanquish enemies of the state no matter what the cost, the contemporary world could use an example of what it means to lead with softness and love.”3
Throughout these Three Days, the rituals we enact reveal divine love for the world—love for the loveless, love for the planet, love for plants and animals, love for all persons created in the divine image, regardless of their race or religion, or what they do or don’t believe. Love for bodies and flesh. Love for us as we journey to the cross. And as we light a new fire and sing of resurrection and new life.
So many of our prayers are addressed to “almighty God.” But in our most holy three days, God is revealed among as servant, as vulnerable, as one who suffers with us, whose weakness is the very strength of God. And whose death is not shame, but glory. And the very path to resurrection.
1Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe
2 Robert P. Hoch-Yidokodiltona, Working Preacher, April 2020.
2Elizabeth Evans, Maundy Thursday reflection in The Christian Century, April 2025
April 18, 2025
Good Friday
WHAT IS TRUTH?
What is truth? Pilate’s enigmatic question.
Once upon a time telling the truth didn’t seem so complicated. Something was either truth or a lie. And we pretty much could recognize truth when we saw it.
Last month the president signed an executive order that stated: “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
The narrative, it seems—and the truth—depends on who is telling the story, and who holds the power. I wouldn’t call the stories and experiences of Native Americans and African Americans distorted narratives.
Imperial Rome held the power. Only its agents, such as Pilate, had the power to crucify those who were a threat to the state. Yet in John’s passion account, Pilate emerges so weak that some say he acts of like a buffoon.
Pilate is the archetypal politician trying to broker a deal, a compromise between Jesus and his accusers. He shuttles back and forth, outside and inside the praetorium “caught between an uncooperative defendant and his stubborn accusers” who are demanding Jesus’ death. Pilate’s cynical line, “what is truth,” echoes through the ages.
Jesus declares that he has come to bear witness to the truth. By his words and his deeds. By his faithfulness. By his silence. By his calm manner. By his steadfast devotion to his calling. And by loving his followers, and loving us, to the end.1
Though Pilate finds no basis for the execution, he can’t risk infidelity to Caesar. He changes course. He flip flops and Jesus is led away.
Crucifixion in the Roman Empire was meant to be a public spectacle, a warning for those challenged Caesar that they would face the same fate. Did Jesus subvert the norms that kept others in power? Jesus revealed a love, as one author puts it, “that transcended the boundaries that the empire had constructed to preserve its own power. It was a love that stood in solidarity with those considered ‘other’. It was a radical love that, at its core, critiqued the power of the unjust.”2
What is truth? Whether in the realm of politics or religion, we live in troubling and bizarre times. Consider the title of a recent book: Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful. Or the recent banning of books, such as at the U.S. Naval Academy where Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is banned, but Hitler’s Mein Kampf remains. One person mentioned that the banned books aren’t about D.E.I but they are by or about LGBTQ people or Black people.
Folks on both sides of the political spectrum are making connections these days to George Orwell’s dystopian and chilling novel 1984— which is about the power to control truth. If the Leader says something never happened, or that two and two are five, then that is what is true.
You add the internet and it’s a whole new world. In a study of news stories circulated and shared on what used to be called Twitter, false or misleading statements were 70 percent more likely to be shared than factual ones. Why are the fake and false stories shared? The researchers respond that novelty attracts human attention, whether true or not. And that is the nightmare we are living.3
Jesus lived and died in a politically charged environment. And Jesus’ death, in John’s account, is his vindication. His glorification. His victory. His triumph. “It is finished.” All is accomplished. That is why the way we celebrate Good Friday has hints of Easter. Death and resurrection cannot be separated.
There is the political. And there is the personal. As we come to the cross tonight we carry our own sufferings. Heartache and grief. Doubt and despair. Our Crucified God shares the suffering of the whole world. The agony. The losses. The hurt. The oppression.
As you come to the cross tonight, you will not be ushered. Come in your own time and at your own pace. Maybe you will sit on one the black cubes for a few moments. Maybe you will simply pause for a moment. Maybe you will bow, kneel, or bend low to touch the cross.
What does it mean? For me, it is beyond words. That is the point of the ritual. What I know deep in my bones is that death and resurrection are built into nature. They are at the heart of my faith—the truth of what it means to be human. As we will sing, “This is my ending, this my resurrection. Thanks to Christ whose passion offers mercy, healing, strength, and pardon.”
For us, the cross it not only about loss, but becomes for us the tree of life. A sign of hope. The promise of resurrection. In a sense, to touch the cross is touch the truth, the deep mystery of faith.
But first, let us pause, and then pray for the world that God so deeply loves. Seeking the truth, the justice, and the healing that God offers to us this Good Friday.
1Jim Green Sommerville, Pastoral Reflections on John 18:1-19:42 in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Volume 2, Lent through Eastertide.
2Elizabeth L. Evans, Good Friday reflection in The Christian Century, April 2025.
3Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, 143.
Easter Vigil
April 19, 2025
AN ACT OF RESISTANCE
Anyone here born again? Anyone here responded to an altar call?
Lutherans say we are born again in baptism. But not as a once in a lifetime event. Baptism is for life. Each die we die to sin, and rise to newness of life with Christ.
And each Easter Vigil we affirm our baptism. Think of it as our annual altar call. Except there’s not room for everyone to leave their pew to come forward while we sing “Just as I am.”
Our world is growing more dangerous, more troubling, more chaotic every day. Christ calls you and me to live our faith boldly in the world. Taking stands for the values of our faith, especially for those whose rights are threatened. For the last and the least. And those without a voice.
There are different ways to be Christian, to be sure. For many of us, the values of our faith—what it means to follow Jesus—are being threatened as never before.
One writer reminds us that baptism “is an act of disaffiliation.” It confers on us an identity apart from family, nation and ideology. (Debra Dean Murphy)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer states that those who are baptized no longer belong to the world. They are no longer subject to the world. They belong to Christ alone. The relate to the world only through Christ.
Think of baptism as an act of resistance. Easter is an act of resistance. Love is an act of resistance. When there is hate, when there is injustice, when there is racism, when there is any of form of dehumanization, we resist.
An altar call involves a bold response. Affirming your baptism this night is an act of resistance Respond to Pr. Michelle’s questions with boldness. Respond with resolve. Respond with the deep joy and hope of this night. Together we will practice resurrection. Together we will be bearers of Easter light for our world!
