Nobody knows the trouble I've seen? A sermon for Good Friday

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Mark 15.1-41

Each of the Gospels tells the story of Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion and resurrection in a slightly different way, shaping it and giving it their own slant, as you would expect. 

This year, we heard Mark’s telling, the earliest of the four, and the thing that strikes me about it is how alone Jesus is. From the moment he’s arrested he’s on his own, without a friend in the world.

His disciples run away. Peter denies knowing him. There is no story of Mary and John standing at the foot of the cross being entrusted into one another’s keeping – that’s in John’s Gospel. There isn’t even a penitent thief on the cross next to him, defending Jesus from the verbal abuse of the other man being crucified – only Luke tells that story. In Mark’s version, they both taunt him. There are bystanders, but they mock Jesus, treating him like a curiosity. There are women watching from afar, some of those who had followed him from Galilee, but they’re too far away to be any comfort. Where are the crowds that greeted Jesus when he rode into Jerusalem just a few days before? They are nowhere to be seen – or they’ve changed their minds about him. It is a terribly lonely picture. Yes, there is physical pain of course, but it’s the mental and emotional torture of feeling he has been utterly forgotten that strikes me. Even God seems to be absent. Jesus cries out as he dies, “My God, my God” why have you forsaken me?” Of course, as it turns out God hasn’t forsaken him, but that’s how it feels. 

Loneliness is a terrible scourge. All of us feel it sometimes. Some feel it often. It has been one of the hardest things for many people to cope with during this pandemic. Some people haven’t felt the touch of another human hand for over a year. Children have missed their friends. People have had to bear the sorrow of losing someone they love, without anyone being able to be with them, give them a hug, even share a cup of tea. Family members who would normally have been in and out of each other’s houses have been reduced to a brief conversation on the doorstep, or a Skype, a Zoom or a phone call. I know that there are many people who have missed the get-togethers they usually had at church and in our community; Friday group, the community lunch, Talking Village drop ins, choir, Messy Church. Even if they’ve been able to come to church when we’ve been open for worship, we haven’t been able to linger for a cup of coffee and a natter, a vital moment of connection for some people. And it’s not just those who live alone who might feel like that - many people are perfectly happy with their own company. You can feel just as lonely in a crowd, or with family around you who don’t understand you, don’t really see you. 

That’s the key to it; being seen. Whether we live alone or with others, we need to know that there are people who see us as we are, and accept us as we are, people to whom we matter, and who matter to us. On Good Friday Jesus was surrounded by people, but they were people who meant him ill, or just didn’t care at all.  He was nothing to them, less than nothing to them.

“Nobody knows the trouble, I’ve seen. Nobody knows my sorrow”, goes the African American spiritual we’re going to hear in a moment (see below), sung by Paul Robeson, a man who knew more than his fair share of grief. It’s a song which came out the times of slavery, a song written by people whose suffering was there in plain sight of the white people who enslaved them, but who managed not to see it, not to care about it. Like those who crucified Jesus, they developed a way of blanking it out. We may think that we would do better, but we can still fail to see those around us, especially if it would challenge us to do so.  Injustice of all kinds - racism, sexism, modern slavery, child abuse, poverty - is there all the time; it’s happening right under our noses, but if it doesn’t affect us directly, we can very easily turn away and not let it register. Perhaps it all feels too much. It’s hard enough living our own lives, without taking on someone else’s pain too. But if we’ve ever felt unseen, unheard, ourselves – and who hasn’t? - we should surely recognise how lonely it is when others treat us as if we are invisible. 

As we focus on the cross today, and on one brutal, unjust death two thousand years ago, we aren’t just looking back at something that happened long ago and far away, as if this is the only death that really matters. This death, and the physical, emotional, and spiritual torture that led up to it, stands for all the other suffering around us right now. Jesus embodies it for us, presents it to us, says to us “look – just for a minute, look!” Good Friday challenges us to see not just that one precious body on the cross, but all of those precious people who today feel invisible to others, or are looked on only with hatred or disgust. It invites us to acknowledge our own loneliness too, the times when we feel unseen adn unloved. Jesus has been there, it tells us. Jesus knows what that’s like. 

That’s the message whoever originally wrote that spiritual wanted to convey. Indeed, some versions of it run “Nobody knows the trouble, I’ve seen. Nobody knows but Jesus”, but whether it’s spelt out or not, it’s clear that this song is a prayer. It came out of the experience of people who knew that even if no one else saw them or heard them, God did. Even if no one else regarded them as human beings, with the dignity that every human deserves, God did. And that made all the difference. Glory, Hallelujah, as the song says.

At the heart of each of us maybe there’ll always be a place which will be unseen by others – no one is seen and known perfectly in this life, and sometimes we can’t even bear to look at ourselves properly. But the cross proclaims that Jesus sees and knows that place because he has been there. “Our lives are hid with Christ in God”, said St Paul to the Colossians (3.3). Jesus entered into the depths of the human heart, he came to the depths of us and endured the worst loneliness there ever could be, the sense that even God had abandoned him. But, confronting that loneliness, he discovered that even when he was hidden in the darkness of death, he hadn’t been forgotten. He was carried through death into new life by the Father who had never for a moment taken his eyes off him, as he never takes his eyes off us. 

Let’s hope - please God - that we’ll be able to get together and enjoy each other’s company again very soon, but the message of Good Friday is that, pandemic or no pandemic, visible or invisible to others, we are seen, and known and loved by the God who never abandons us. 

Amen