Good Friday
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Readings: Isaiah 52: 13 – 53: end and John 18: 1 – 19: end
I’m sure you’ve all heard the anecdote about the person who goes into a jewellery store and asks to buy a cross. After ferreting around in various display cases, the young assistant asks the customer, “Do you want a plain one, or one with that little man on it?”
I apologise if you’ve heard that before, but it does demonstrate the ignorance there is in matters of faith and religion, I’m afraid to say, with an increasing proportion of the population. But, of course, we should remember that here was somebody asking to buy a cross – the sign of Christ. We do see many people wearing crosses around the neck or even hanging from the ears, or as a tattoo, and we sometimes wonder if this is just a fashion statement. But before we get too critical, we should pause to consider that churches have been divided for a long time over whether to display a plain cross, or one with the little man on it. Churches have their best crosses and their everyday crosses, gold crosses (probably not) with jewels, silver crosses and wooden crosses. I don’t mean to open a debate about on this occasion.
Today we remember what happened on that cross. If we’re ever tempted to romanticise the cross by wearing it as jewellery, today brings us back to basics. And the basics are, of course, horrific. Crucifixion was largely reserved for the outcasts of society. ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’ says the Law of Moses. It probably wasn’t crucifixion in his day; we must blame the Romans for introducing this particular form of barbarity.
The gospel-writers are notably very restrained in describing the act of crucifixion, possibly out of respect for our Lord, or because people knew the details only too well. But they do give us very detailed accounts of the last days of Jesus’ life; the Last Supper, the betrayal and arrest, the trial, the walk to Calvary, the crucifixion, the burial.
Non-Christian writers of the time talk of this Christus who was put to death. As I say to the sceptical sometimes, “Whatever you believe or disbelieve about Jesus or the resurrection, it is 99% certain that this man lived and was put to death by the authorities.
And, indeed, this is probably why the crucifixion of Jesus has captured the imagination – if that is a correct way to put it. Jesus’ execution was, of course, thoroughly unjust and a deliberate miscarriage of justice. This is why the cross speaks so vividly to people of faith and of no faith; they see in Jesus a representative of all who suffer unjustly under cruel regimes; of all who have suffered violence, of all who have been mocked, or tortured, or excluded. And this happened to the man who claimed to be Son of God?
It all seems to have been foretold by the prophet Isaiah – or, at least, the author of chapters 52 and 53, who may not have been Isaiah himself. He speaks of a mysterious figure, not named, who faces similar suffering, mocking and abuse. The Church hears in ‘my servant’ an allusion to the suffering and death of Jesus as a saving event willed by God. The poem voices a remarkable anomaly: the one despised and rejected will be lifted very high. He has the sort of physical defect or appearance that causes people to look away in repulsion and yet also to look glancingly back in fascination. He is a loser, nevertheless he carries in his body the capacity to heal and restore. This unattractive victim has embraced and appropriated ‘our’ infirmities. It is his suffering embrace that has caused us to be healed, forgiven, restored.
Written around 600 years before the time of Jesus, the isaiah passage still speaks loud and clear today. We are here at the central mystery of the gospel. We are face-to-face with the deepest issue of biblical faith: how can one in suffering appropriate the hurt and guilt of another? It’s not a question to be resolved by conventional logic; but it lives very close to honest human experience. Which is maybe why we see crosses at war memorials; at the site of road accidents where someone has died, and, of course, as jewellery. People seem to make a connection with the cross. This Servant does not behave boisterously, aggressively or violently, but silently and peacefully. The servant acts vulnerably, in the only way that hurt can be healed or sin assuaged. Our response should be stunned, awed silence in the face of a mystery too deep for speculation or explanation. God acts vulnerably and at enormous risk.
The keeping of Holy Week and of Jesus’ Passion this year is so relevant to the times we are living in. I’m sure people have said that in every age, but we seem to be more exposed this year to the ‘ravages of sin’ than in other years. Whether it’s all the moral failings of those involved in the Epstein saga, not, of course, forgetting the victims and the victims of similar abuse the world over, or the bloody conflicts which cause such misery and few solutions, or the aggrandisement of nations, and those ‘easy speeches that comfort cruel men’ – to use G.K. Chesterton’s words. It is instructive to look at the figure of Jesus on this day, and see another way of living.
While Simon Peter denies his Lord, rejects his real relationships and goes free, Jesus affirms his consistent testimony and is assaulted by a guard. While Jesus stands firm Pilate vacillates and doesn’t know whether to appease the crowd or his Roman masters. Well he might ask, “What is truth?” Pilate announces Jesus to the crowd as ‘your King’ but they reply ‘We have no king but Caesar’, even though in their Passover meal they would have recited that their only king is God. All through the drama we see incongruities that reinforce the true nature of Jesus, and the feeble, often pretentious schemes of other characters. Somehow the Jewish authorities whipped-up the crowd into such a frenzy that they asked for Barabbas to be released, a type of insurrectionist that both Jewish and Roman authorities would have liked to be rid of.
As we follow the events of the Passion, we note that in fact very few people come out of it with their reputations enhanced. Not Caiaphas, not Pilate, not Herod; not the soldiers who so shamefully mistreated Jesus even before he reached Calvary; not Peter, who denied Jesus three times; not Judas. Jesus, by contrast, shines through the web of conspiracy and deceit and betrayal. In his patient and exemplary conduct we surely see truth personified.
Earlier in the gospel, Jesus promises the disciples, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Today, and indeed throughout human history, lies and falsehood surround us, while truth is at a premium. The world understands those who compromise. In our increasingly complicated modern world, few of us do not compromise to one degree or another; in fact compromise is not always a bad thing, when we have to decide which is the better of two options in a difficult situation. But Jesus doesn’t compromise in his steadfast life of faith and obedience to his Father, even though he knew he must give his very life.
Through his supreme self-giving on the cross, all humanity can be redeemed and brought closer to God’s great heart of love for them. Perhaps the task of the Church today is to proclaim this mystery to a world where this significance is not always grasped. Maybe in our dealings with others, we can try to show that through Jesus’ suffering, all human suffering can have purpose: that God through Jesus knows what it is to suffer, and that God’s good intentions for the world are not thwarted by suffering, or the evil that often produces it.
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 effects 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.”