Lectionary Readings: Year A, Holy Week, Good Friday

In 1883, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared “God is Dead.” You’ve probably heard the phrase thrown about when discussing atheism, because Nietzsche is saying that God is just a social construct used to justify all sorts of evil and violence. If you read his work, you see that he was also claiming that religion no longer carried the authority it once had. That religious foundations – or predetermined moral codes – had eroded. Because people no longer cared about religious authority, Nietzsche believed that people would face a crisis of meaning, and that all of humanity would descend into nihilism – a mindset where nothing much mattered, where a religious moral code no longer held any sway over what people thought, or over how they behaved. Instead, the only thing that would motivate people was self-interest, and the only values that would matter were what made sense in the moment. His work might be a hundred and forty years old, but the message sounds like it could apply today.

The phrase we hear is “God is Dead,” but the full phrase from Nietzsche’s work is “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

“And we have killed him,” is an appropriate phrase for Good Friday, the day on which Jesus, the Christ, God incarnate, was crucified on the cross. The prophet Isaiah wrote, “he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities… All we like sheep, have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” The iniquity of us all means that from the very beginning of time, from every location on earth, from every tribe and tongue and nation, our sins were placed upon Jesus. 

Or, in other words: we have killed him.

We may not have physically been standing under the cross when they nailed Jesus to it. But, to Christ, we were there, because Christ died for all sin, once and for all time, for every person. 

Jesus was crucified at Golgotha, which, we are told, means “The Place of the Skull.” Did the hill look like a skull? Some say so. Some have found a hill with several caves that display the image of a skull when the shadows hit just right. Was this the reason for the name? Or was this simply a place of death, where many people died?

When we think of skulls, we think of death. Because it represents a life that has ended. We think of destruction, of pain, of suffering. It is a symbol – not of what might have been gained, but of what has been lost.

But the skull is also a symbol of the mind; it carries the center of our reason; it is where we measure out the consequences of our actions and determine the direction of our soul. God says, “I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” It is where we decide if self-interest and what matters in the moment is more important than the Truth presented by the Son of God. And whenever we choose error over truth, sin over righteousness, or death over life, we are right back there at the foot of the cross again – heaving the hammer to drive the nails into his flesh once more. 

“All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

God is dead…. And we have killed him.

Instead of merely a declaration of atheism, Nietzsche intended to point out that human knowledge, human ingenuity, and human self-determination were shifting. Rather than seeing God as the ultimate authority in our lives, humanity was beginning to view itself as the ultimate moral authority in life. While this was a warning to society, he also believed that humans could usher in a new world order of peace and prosperity, if only they were able to transcend traditional morality, and be creative in determining morality for themselves.

That sounds empowering, doesn’t it? Until you realize that only a little over forty years later, these concepts were used to help usher in the horrors and evils of World War II. These concepts created a morality that believed that God welcomes our prayers of violence, and loves our lack of mercy. That God would rather kill and destroy, instead of – in humility – be nailed to a cross, there to die. That God would rather do our bidding than ask us to follow in the footsteps of Jesus right up to the cross of calvary.

God is dead…. And we have killed him, indeed.

And yet, the day that God died, we call good. Why?

Good Friday demands that each of us confront the suffering and death of God. It demands that we sit with the weight of our own complicity in God’s death.

We are challenged to shift our minds and to see this day in light of God’s plan for the reconciliation of all people, rather than from our human perspective of self-interest. We are challenged to see that God’s way is the pathway to joy and peace. We are challenged to see that no matter how creative we are in determining and declaring our own morality and our own justice, that we can never hope to emulate the love and mercy available to all people, and which was made clear in the crucifixion.

We are challenged to see such a horrible day full of suffering and pain, and to call it Good. Because today is the day that death was swallowed up in victory, and opened up for us the possibility of standing blameless in God’s presence.

[This service was not live-streamed, or recorded.]

[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on April 3, 2026.]