Bishop Jonathan Baker: Good Friday Homily

Holy Week 2020 at All Saints', Benhilton - Good Friday

THE VICTORY OF LOVE DIVINE

  He was wounded for our transgressions,

He was bruised for our iniquities,

Surely he bore our sorrows,

And by his stripes we are healed. 

          - Isaiah 53:5

So often in our culture the cross is experienced as a beautiful ornament. People wear gold and silver crosses around their necks. Great cathedrals have jewel encrusted crosses on their altars, drawing attention to the place occupied by the cross in Christian devotion.

A HORRIBLE DEATH

But Cicero commented: ‘It is the most cruel and shameful of all punishment. Let it never come near the body of a Roman citizen - not even his thoughts or eyes or ears.’ Crucifixion was for criminals. It involved unbearable thirst, stabbing pain, psychological torture and a slow lingering death. 

Christian devotion to the cross - evident from the earliest days as we see from ancient graffiti in Rome - was for non-Christians a very strange thing. Richard Holloway once pointed out that the modern equivalent might well be a decorated gallows, or even a brightly painted model of a brain tumour hung over an altar! 

THE CROSS IS THE CENTRE

Yet for us the cross - the sign of weakness, tragedy and defeat - is the centre of life, the centre of history, the centre of the universe. He who hangs there is innocent. His sufferings are undeserved. He is betrayed by a friend and executed after a mock trial. 

He had said to his followers: 'The Son of Man will give his life as a ransom for many' (Mark 10:45), and 'When I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all men unto myself' (John 12:32). Behind this death is the design of God’s redeeming love. Indeed, we boldly announce that it is God who dies that day!

ENTERING THE DEPTHS

On the cross God enters the very depths of our human experience, even the tragedy of that sense of forsakenness we find haunting our culture and dominating so much contemporary art, music and literature. 

He hangs there bearing the weight of our sins so that we can be forgiven.

He suffers in his human flesh. He reaches out from within his sufferings to you and to me, to support and strengthen us - to save us. From the cross he gathers to himself all the the brokenness and sinfulness of the world, transforming it from within by the power of his suffering love. 

On the cross hangs the human flesh of God, suspended between heaven and earth, bridging the gap, unleashing torrents of redeeming love into the world we had made the gutter of the universe. 

From the cross that anguished look of suffering love melts our hearts into a response that at least in its intention can be no less than total. 

THE POWER OF THE CROSS

For the early Christians the cross was no miserable defeat followed by the intervention of the Father at the Resurrection. 

No! The cross itself is the victory. On the cross our salvation is won. On the cross Jesus triumphs over the powers of darkness and hell. From the cross, his outstretched arms draw everything in heaven and on earth into a cosmic embrace. Resurrection is the logical consequence of the victory of redeeming love. It is the public demonstration that the victory has been won.

Difficult questions remain. Ambiguities continue to confront our tidy minds. Our hearts are still torn apart by the injustices of life and the unexplained suffering of good people and innocent children. 

HIS LOVE IS REAL

But the fact remains that for two thousand years, all who have allowed themselves to surrender to the embrace of Jesus from the Cross have come to know the reality of his love, of his risen presence, in the tragedies and joys that mingle in every human life. 

The Church is the community of love gathered around Jesus, crucified and risen, celebrating the victory of the cross, receiving the life of Jesus through prayer and the sacraments, in the midst of our pain, sinfulness, anxiety and fear. And we reach out to others who so desperately need to know the healing power of such redeeming love. 

In joining together at Holy Mass week by week on the Lord’s Day - Sunday - the Day of Resurrection, we not only celebrate the story of Jesus as something that happened a long time ago; we allow him to merge his story and our stories together, experiencing afresh the reality of death giving way to new life.

The Russian Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware expresses the mystery in these amazing words:

‘It has truly been said that there was a cross in the heart of God 

before there was one planted outside Jerusalem; 

and though the cross of wood has been taken down, 

the cross in God’s heart still remains. 

It is the cross of pain and triumph - both together.  

And those who can believe this 

will find that joy is mingled with their cup of bitterness. 

They will share on a human level 

in the divine experience of victorious suffering.’

SURRENDER

Well, this afternoon we will sing to the Cross. We will venerate the Cross. We will kiss the feet of the Crucified One. 

But much more importantly, as we gaze on the mystery of Divine Love, trembling and shaken to the core of our being by the beauty and terror of it all, may our hearts be so deeply moved that we surrender again to Jesus – especially if our walk with him has grown old and stale - and experience anew the forgiveness and healing that flows from Calvary’s Tree. 

I know a fount where sins are washed away;

I know a place where night is turned to day.

Burdens are lifted, blind eyes made to see;

There’s a wonder-working power

In the Blood of Calvary.

- Oliver Cooke (1872-1945)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

IF WE WERE IN CHURCH

On this day, the church is bare of all adornment. The sacred liturgy is in three parts:

1. THE WORD AND THE PRAYERS: The priest and servers enter and prostrate themselves before the altar (i.e. lying face down on the floor while the people remain kneeling) for a few minutes, while everyone prays silently. Then follow the ‘collect’ and the readings, including the long Passion from St John’s Gospel. This part of the service concludes with intercessory prayer offered for the Church, and for all people throughout the world.

2. VENERATION OF THE CROSS: The Crucifix is brought in from the back of the church and unveiled very slowly and deliberately in three stages as we sing each time: v. Behold the wood of the cross on which hung the salvation of the world. R. Come, let us adore.'  It is then placed in full view of all. We sing hymns of adoration and then all line up to make an act of reverence to our Lord usually by kissing the feet of the crucifix.

3. HOLY COMMUNION: The Blessed Sacrament is brought from the Altar of Repose to be consumed in Holy Communion. This corresponds to our Lord’s leaving the Garden to be consumed in death for our salvation. Jesus is no longer present in our church in the Blessed Sacrament. The Tabernacle on the High Altar is empty with its doors wide open. As a parish community we experience something of the desolation felt by Jesus’ followers even as we await his resurrection from the dead.

". . . where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet"

The widely acclaimed and deeply confronting life-size Crucifixion sculpture 

in St Peters Church, Plymouth, by Jacquie Binns, 

unveiled in November 2007. 

Anglicans should recall that the Canon of our Prayer Book Mass describes the death of Jesus as “. . . a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world”, echoing the teaching of the Apostle Paul who said that “for our sake he [the Father] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (Romans 2:21).

In his book, God is not Angry, Ian Petit OP takes us into the depth of this mystery. Having shown us how we as guilty sinners have removed ourselves from the relationship with God for which we were created, he explains what God in his amazing love has done to set us free:

“Jesus did not simply pretend to be incapable of being in God’s presence; rather, he took our sins on himself at the crucifixion and actually experienced banishment . . . The consequence of sin is more than physical death; it is a wounding that separates us from the Father.”  (God is Not Angry, Page 42)

In Mysterium Paschale, the great Swiss theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar goes even further when he says:

“Jesus does not only accept the . . . mortal destiny of Adam, He also, quite expressly, carries the sins of the human race and, with those sins, the ‘second death’ of God-abandonment.” (Mysterium Paschale, Page 90)

Balthasar then says that this

“is not an anonymous destiny that he obeys, but the person of the Father.”

The idea that the Cross is the “trysting place where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet”# is an affront to the old fashioned liberal theology that plays down the supernatural and uses the Christian faith as a collection of metaphors to “nudge us along the path towards spiritual fulfilment” - the kind of wimpish theology that that H. Richard Niebuhr caricatured back in 1937 when he wrote:

“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” (The Kingdom of God in America 1959 ed., page 193)

The Bible is more realistic about human nature, more aware of the horrific dimensions of sin, and more cognisant of the mysterious demand for justice that seems to be written into the fabric of our being. It tells us that Joseph was to name Mary’s Son "Jesus" because he would “save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21), and that Jesus is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

It is authentically human to cry out for love - unconditional love. Our instincts, if not our experience of life, tell us that such love exists. We all seek it. In Jesus we discover that we are loved “with an everlasting love”. 

But - even in our post-Christian age - it is just as authentically human to cry out for justice, which is why today - Good Friday - is truly awesome. Today we stand at the foot of the cross as the precious Blood is shed, atonement being made for the foulest sins ever committed. “O trysting place where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet”.#

Balthasar shows just how central this theme is in the New Testament:

“The injustice is not cleared away by half-measures and compromises, but by drastic measures which make a clean sweep of it, so that all the world’s injustice is consumed by the total wrath of God, that the total righteousness of God may be accessible to the sinner. That is the Gospel according to Paul who sees the fulfilment of the directional meaning of the entire Old Testament in the Cross and Resurrection of Christ . . . God, as the man Christ, takes upon himself the totality of ‘Adam’s’ guilt (Romans 5:15-21) in order that, as the ‘bodily’ incorporation of sin and enmity (2 Corinthians 5:21, Ephesians 2:14), he might be ‘handed over’ (Romans 8:3), and as the Life of God, which died in God-forsakenness (Romans 4:25) and was buried, to be divinely ‘raised for our justification’ (Romans 4:25). That is not myth, but the central biblical message and, where Christ’s Cross is concerned, it must not be rendered innocuous as though the Crucified, in undisturbed union with God, had prayed the Psalms and died in the peace of God.” (Mysterium Paschale, page 122)

Ours is an age when in the once Christian West many important Church leaders are so desperate for the approval of a cynical and unbelieving world that they will play fast and loose with just about anything God has revealed to us - and not just in the areas of morals and sexuality - though that's bad enough - but in terms of the basic Gospel itself. They don't understand that we do not actually help those around us who are not yet believers if we destroy the power and wonder of the Cross by watering down either the unconditional and profligate love of God that is embodied there, or the absolute horror of that first Good Friday when Jesus became sin for us, bearing in his own body on the tree the self imposed consequences of our having pushed God out of our lives. 

The following is not really great poetry, but it is the kind of prayer we should all whisper today:   

Was it the nails, O Saviour,

That bound thee to the tree,

Nay, ‘twas thine everlasting love,

Thy love for me, for me.

O make me understand it,

Help me to take it in,

What it meant to thee, the Holy One

To bear away my sin.

(Katherine A M Kelly 1869-1942)

# “Beneath the Cross of Jesus” by Scottish Presbyterian Elizabeth C. Clephane, 1868,(published posthumously).

Good Friday: God in the depths

The Good Friday Sepulchre at St Stephen's Basilica, Budapest, Hungary.

Gold and silver crosses worn as ornaments (sometimes even by those who don't believe). Jewel encrusted crosses crowning the altars of great cathedrals. Roadside crosses marking the locations of tragic motor vehicle accidents. 

Whichever way you look at it, the cross still has a place, not just in Christian devotion, but also in our culture, on account of the death of Jesus. 

Cicero famously commented: "It is the most cruel and shameful of all punishment. Let it never come near the body of a Roman citizen - not even his thoughts or eyes or ears". Crucifixion was for criminals; it involved unbearable thirst, stabbing pain, psychological torture and a slow lingering death. 

Christian devotion to the cross - evident from the earliest days, as we see from the holy graffiti on the walls of the Catacombs in Rome - struck non-Christians as peculiar. As Richard Holloway once pointed out, the modern equivalent might well be a decorated gallows, or even a brightly painted model of a brain tumour hung over an altar. 

Yet for us the cross - the sign of weakness, tragedy and defeat - is the centre of life, the centre of history and the centre of the universe. He who hangs there is entirely innocent. His sufferings are undeserved. He is betrayed by a friend and executed after a mock trial. 

He had said to his followers: "The Son of Man will give his life as a ransom for many", and "When I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all men unto myself". Behind this death is the design of God's Redeeming Love. Indeed, our faith has taught us audaciously to say that it is God who dies on Calvary's hill. 

On the cross God enters the depths of our human experience, even the tragedy of the sense of ultimate forsakenness that haunts our culture and dominates so much contemporary art, music and literature. 

He hangs there, bearing the weight of our sins, so that we can be forgiven. 

He suffers in his human flesh, and he reaches out to you and to me from within his sufferings to embrace and strengthen us. From the cross he gathers to himself the brokenness and sinfulness of the whole world, transforming it from within by the power of his suffering love. 

On the cross hangs the human flesh of God, suspended between heaven and earth, unleashing torrents of forgiving, redeeming love into the world we had made the gutter of the universe. 

From the cross the anguished gaze of suffering love melts our hearts into a response that at least in its intention can be no less than total. 

The early Christians do not see the cross as a miserable defeat followed by the Father's intervention to turn things around at the Resurrection. No! For them the cross itself is the victory. On the cross our salvation is won; on the cross Jesus triumphs over the powers of darkness and hell; from the cross, he draws everything in heaven and everything in earth into the cosmic embrace of his outstretched arms. Resurrection is the logical consequence of the victory of Redeeming Love; it is the public demonstration that the victory has been won. 

Questions still remain. The ambiguities of life abide. Your heart and mine are still ripped open by life's injustices and the unexplained suffering of good people and children. But for two thousand years, those who have  - however reluctantly - given in to Redeeming Love have come to know the reality of Jesus' presence and that same love in the in the struggles, contradictions and tragedies as well as in the unspeakable joys of our human story. 

The Church is not primarily an "institution" to be understood in organizational terms. It is first and foremost the community of love gathered around the risen Jesus, whose victory, risen life and healing power keep breaking into our lives through prayer and the sacraments, even if it is sometimes in our pain that we share the Redeeming Love he personifies. 

In joining together at Mass on the Lord's Day - Sunday - the Day of Resurrection, we not only commemorate the story of Jesus - something that happened a long time ago; by faith - however tenuous - we allow Jesus to merge his story and our stories together, and experience each time a little more of the reality of death giving way to new life.