You know this sound.

The hammer comes down. The nail bites in. The sound is blunt and final and it does not apologize for itself.

In this Good Friday sermon from St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Keller, Texas, Fr. Alan sits with that sound and refuses to move past it too quickly. Because before we get to Easter, we have to hear what love actually sounds like when it goes all the way.

It was not only the soldiers swinging the hammer. It was our failures, our denials, our wounds carried and wounds caused, that drew Jesus to the cross. Not to crush us with guilt. But to show us the length he was willing to go.

For us. Because of us. All the way to this.

The silence after the hammer is real. We do not explain it away. We do not rush past it. We just hold, quietly, the possibility that it does not have the last word.

Tomorrow is silence. Sunday is coming.

St. Martin's Episcopal Church | Keller, Texas

Scripture: John 18:1–19:42