Good Friday    2nd April 2021

As I say, the name for this procedure was ‘pharmakos’ – maybe best translated for us as ‘scapegoating.’ If ‘ pharmakos’ sounds very much like the word ‘pharmacy’, it is: both words come from a common root. Both pharmakos and pharmacy were thought to bring healing to the community. Unfortunately, scapegoating has not been confined to the time of the ancient Greeks. Even in the 20^{th-century, if not the 21st, sections of society in different places have been made scapegoats, whether this has been explicit or not. You don’t need me to spell out all the examples. The Jewish people, of course: not just under Nazi tyranny, but at many other times before and since, including our own. Gypsies or travellers have suffered from constant scapegoating. Various examples of so-called ‘ethnic cleansing’ have been a regular feature of conflicts over the past decades. (Note that term ‘cleansing’ again, suggesting a parallel with healing). In our own country, asylum seekers or economic migrants are often blamed for much, not least the way in which they are reckoned to deprive others of employment or use up resources to which they are not entitled, as some would say. Compassion for their plight can quickly be overtaken by uncharitable feelings when they might threaten our well-being in some way.}

The contemporary Franciscan priest Richard Rohr says that when human nature is seeking power , it wants either to play the victim or create victims of others. The second follows from the first: once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse or attack. And the philosopher Rene Girard (1923-2015) identifies this sequence; We compare, we copy, we compete, we conflict, we conspire, we condemn, and we crucify. Richard Rohr goes on to point out, very sadly, that the most persistence violence in human history has been ‘sacralized violence’ ^{– that is, fearing or hating on behalf of something holy and noble: God, religion, truth, morality, or love of country. It takes away all guilt, he says, and one can even think of oneself as representing the moral high ground in doing it. So some of the charges laid against Jesus were that he blasphemed and made himself God. But earlier he had enraged the religious authorities by healing on the Sabbath, and proclaiming forgiveness of sins. The authorities’ objection could therefore be ‘legitimised’ by claiming their action against Jesus was protecting their religion; their God.}

Earlier we heard from the Epistle to the Hebrews. It looks at the redemption we have in Christ from the standpoint of those familiar with the old Jewish world of covenant and ritual sacrifice. In the passage preceding the one we just heard, the writer says that it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. But now, he says “there is a new and living way opened for us” to reach God, and to have fellowship with him – through the blood of Jesus. The old covenant between God and his chosen people is replaced by a new one forged through the righteous deeds of one man, the very Son of God. The barriers between God and humanity are taken away, symbolised in the Easter story by the curtain of the Temple being torn apart at the time of the death of Jesus. With this covenant comes the forgiveness of sins, and the writer of Hebrews notes that where there is forgiveness of sins, there is no longer any offering for sin. So no need for a scapegoat to be sent out into the wilderness.

Those Jewish customs took place annually, but what Jesus has done he did, as the hymn says “Once, only once, and once for all” – that ‘full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction’ talked about in the Prayer Book Communion service. In normal times we may be saddened that so few people seem to take notice of Good Friday – at least in terms of church attendance. But I’m sure there are plenty of people who make the connection between undeserved suffering in the world, and the undeserved suffering of Jesus. Look at the tradition of American spiritual songs like ‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord?’ – a subjugated and persecuted people identifying with the sufferings of Jesus.

Though we shouldn’t anaesthetise ourselves from what Jesus went through, I don’t believe we’re intended to wallow in the graphic details of it. But we are meant to be thankful; thankful that God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son – so simply put in the most-quoted verse of the bible: John 3.16. The late Professor John MacQuarrie said, “This is the absolute paradox – that this humble crucified man is also the eternal Word of God.”

Our keeping of the passion centres on this paradox: a story of human suffering bringing salvation to the world. Other human suffering, like the sort of scapegoating we’ve been thinking about, and similar ruthless treatment of humans by others – doesn’t bring salvation to the world, although good things may come from that suffering. But the suffering of Jesus – a once, only once and once-for-all event, does bring salvation, redemption and healing to the world.

Rather, through the supreme self-giving of Jesus on the cross, all humanity can be redeemed and brought closer to his great heart of love. And for us, who have accepted some of all this, what should our response be? Certainly today is a day to be thankful, a day to take to heart that we have been redeemed – brought back to the state we should be in, and bought back: saved. But it is also a day to acknowledge that only by seeking forgiveness and healing for ourselves can we deal with the real meaning of evil and sin. It is a day to avoid any temptation to blame others, or to project our fears or insecurities or anger onto ‘them’ whoever ‘they’ might be. Rather it is a day to contemplate the cross, and recognize our own complicity in the sin of the world, and all those evils we imagine others are responsible for. Above all, it is a day to commit to Jesus Christ being at the centre of our lives, not just at the edge. Isaac Watts put it as well as anyone – “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”