Good Friday 2005

Good Friday 2005

Introduction

Good Friday commemorates an atrocity: the taking of a human life. In an essay written in 1931 George Orwell writes of how, during his time in Burma, he was required to participate in an execution. As the prisoner was being led to the gallows Orwell noticed how the condemned man stepped to one side to avoid walking through a puddle on the ground, and that simple act had a profound impact on Orwell. He wrote:
It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying; he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working — bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming — all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned — reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone — one mind less, one world less.
Today we commemorate a life being destroyed, an execution. And as we’ve just heard in the passion reading that life was destroyed, not in “a sudden snap” but in a long slow process of dehumanization and torture. A process designed to deter others from acting as this man had acted, from doing what this man had done. And because it was designed to deter it was designed to be as horrible as men could make it. Because the more horrible it was the greater its value as a deterrent.
So this death had a clear purpose and a clear message; don’t do what this man did, or this is what will happen to you. It’s a message which the powerful have used against the powerless since time immemorial; don’t threaten our power, don’t question our authority or you will be destroyed. And yet, amazingly, that is not the message and the meaning that Christians have attributed to the cross down through the years. Amazingly the meaning which Christians have attributed to the cross has been the total opposite of those intended by Jesus’ Roman executioners. Far from speaking of submission to power and oppression, for Christians the cross speaks of liberation from oppression. Far from speaking of death and futility for Christians the cross speaks of life and hope.
Right from the very beginning this has seemed to outsiders a bizarre attitude to take to something so horrible. St Paul speaks of the cross as “…a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” and yet he say “to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
Down through the centuries Christians have used different pictures and metaphors to try to explain why it is that the cross is, for us, not a symbol of defeat but one of victory. This afternoon I’m going to examine some of those pictures, some of those metaphors. But before I do I want to issue a warning, and that is to beware of mistaking the picture for the thing itself. Ultimately, we know that through the cross Jesus has won new life and new hope for the world. How that new life and new hope has been won is in the end a mystery. The pictures can point to ways of understanding that mystery but they do not explain it.

So on to the pictures.

1. Christ the Victor
The first picture is that of a field of battle. This is a picture which was dear to the hearts of the earliest Christians as they explained Jesus death as being the final act of a lifelong battle against the cosmic forces of evil.
In the Old Testament there is the well known story of David and Goliath. David goes to take supplies to his brothers who are serving in the army of King Saul. As he visits them on the front line there emerges from the ranks of the enemy a giant figure who challenges the army of Israel to send out a champion to fight him in single combat. The outcome of the fight will decide who wins the battle. When no-one from the army of Israel is willing to fight the giant David steps forward to face him. The odds seem overwhelming but David’s courage and tenacity win the day and the giant is slain. So victory is secured for his people as he becomes their champion.
The earliest Christians saw the death of Christ like this. Human beings stand powerless and fearful in the face of our enemies – sin and its consequence death. But just as all seems lost a champion steps forward to battle in our place. On the cross Jesus meets those enemies face to face and battles with them like David fighting Goliath or like Gandalf battling with the Balrog in Lord of the Rings. Though death seems to gain the upper hand it is defeated and Christ rises from the tomb as victor. In this picture Christ fights for us the battle we were to weak to fight for ourselves, and wins for us the victory we could have never gained through our own strength. And we share in his victory because he has fought on our behalf.
So let’s take time to reflect on this picture? What are the battles that Jesus must fight so that you may share in his victory? What battles of yours does he fight on the cross, and where do you need his victory today?

2. The Ransom
The second picture comes from the slave market. It sees what Jesus did for us on the cross is that his death was in some way a ransom which was paid to set us free. This kind of language is used in many some of the more well known hymns that are sung on this Good Friday. For example, from the hymn “When I survey the wondrous cross” we have the lines “There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin.”
In the ancient world it was possible through ones own fault or through misfortune to fall so low that one had no option but to sell oneself into slavery. For such a person there could be no future save that of a life drudgery lived at the whim of the slave owner. Unless, that is, you were bought by a friend who set you free.
I’m sure many of you will have heard the phrase, ‘sold down the river.’ It comes from the time when slaves were bought and sold in Africa. Very often these were not captured directly by the white or Arab slave traders but were sold by other Africans to be transported ‘down the river’ and across the ocean to slavery in the Americas. Hence the phrase, ‘sold down the river’ meaning a betrayal.
In this picture we have as human beings sold ourselves into slavery by giving in to sin. We’ve sold ourselves down the river and our only hope is that a friend will by us back and set us free, and in Jesus we have such a friend. His death was the price paid for our freedom, our salvation.
So again let’s take time to reflect. What is it that holds you prisoner? What is it that enslaves you? From what do need to be purchased back before you sell yourself down the river?

3. Satisfaction
A third picture is that of the law court. There can be no doubt of the guiltiness of the accused, he has freely admitted his guilt and declares that he regrets his crimes and seeks to live a new and better life. All that remains now is for sentence to be passed. But instead of words of condemnation the prisoner finds himself being set free. The judge says, your crimes carry consequences which someone must bare, but I will carry them for you. You can go free because I have paid your fine; I have served your sentence.
In this picture the punishment born by Jesus on the cross is seen as a punishment you and I deserve for our sins. This is a difficult picture for some people because it looks as though God is inflicting suffering on the only human being not deserve it, his sinless son. It’s vital, if this picture is not to become as one author has described it, a tale of ‘cosmic child abuse’ that we recognise that in Jesus God walked among us. That it is not God inflicting punishment but God absorbing it.
So another time for reflection: What guilt do we carry, that we need not carry, because Jesus has carried it for us? How do we punish others or ourselves when we need not do so because Jesus has born our punishment?

4. The one who stands in it with us
One final picture, or rather not a picture this time but simply a way of thinking about the cross. On the cross Jesus stands with us in the depths of what it means to be human.
In his letter to the Christians at Philippi Paul tells of the way in which Christ emptied himself in order to enter our humanity.
Jesus, he says, was in the form of God, but did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited. He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death -- even death on a cross.
When I was a child in Sunday School I remember singing songs about how Jesus had been a child like me, but because of the cross there part of our humanity that we can’t point at and say Jesus experienced what it was like to be like me. And because as Christians we maintain as central to our faith that Jesus is God, we can say God knows what it’s like to be like me. And to say those words not in despair as some might say them but to say them as words of hope, and as a source of hope.
God knows what it is like to be like us, and so God knows what it is like to be like those we love. Many of us will know what it is like to see someone we know unjustly abused. Many of us will know what it is like to see loved ones in pain. Many of us have had the experience of being beside someone in the as they move slowly towards death. Because of the cross we can see that Jesus is with them, God is with them – not providing an easy escape as we so often wish he would but there alongside them plodding down the dusty road to Calvary carrying his cross, as they carry theirs.
So as we pause for reflection now let’s think of those who carry their crosses today, and of the cross that we may carry too? Let’s recognise Christ alongside us, walking with us to Calvary.

Conclusion
The cross as the place where the ultimate battle between good and evil took place, the cross as the place where the ransom was paid which purchased our freedom and salvation, the cross as the place where the consequences of our sin were faced on our behalf, the cross as the place where we meet God in midst of what means to suffer as a human being. All these are pictures, and if they don’t work for you then there are many others. No one picture exhausts the meaning of what Jesus did for us but each can provide an insight, illuminate a facet, of the one amazing truth:
That God so love the world that he gave Jesus his Son to die for us. That God himself entered all that it means to be human so that we might share in His eternal life.

The 5th Sunday of Lent 2005

Jesus said to her,
‘I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me,
even though they die,
will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me
will never die.
Do you believe this?’
John 11.25,26

“Them bones, them bones, them dry bones.” It’s a quaint song, one that you might teach your children or grandchildren. It’s not a song you’d see as being subversive or revolutionary – which just goes to show how wrong you can be.
The song is based on the vision of Ezekiel which formed our first reading today. Ezekiel was someone who spoke out God’s message at a time when his nation seemed beyond hope. The Babylonians, the superpower of the day, had conquered their land, destroyed their temple and deported the population, leaving their cities as empty ruins. It is in this situation that Ezekiel has his vision of the valley of dry bones. In a heightened state of awareness Ezekiel sees a valley full of corpses, so dead that the flesh has fallen away from them leaving just the bones. And God asks him, “Can these bones live?” The answer is obvious, and yet Ezekiel does not give the obvious answer. Instead he acknowledges that even in a situation as seemingly hopeless as this one there is still the possibility that it can be transformed by God. “Can these bones live?” “O Lord God, you know.” And instructed by God Ezekiel speaks to the bones and the bones come together, flesh grows over them, breath enters into them and they stand “a great multitude”.
The message that Ezekiel is given to draw from this vision is this. That although things look hopeless for Ezekiel’s nation it is still possible for God to transform their situation and, says Ezekiel, he will. They will be brought back from their land of exile, and their nation will be restored.
Now to the African slaves in America this seemed like a picture of there own situation. Like Ezekiel’s people they had been taken from their homes as captives and deported to a distant land. Like the situation of Ezekiel’s people, their situation looked utterly hopeless. And in that situation, like Ezekiel’s people, they found hope in the God who can transform hopeless situations. So they sang a song of transformation about the bones joining together and dead coming to life, knowing that it spoke it hope when no hope seemed possible.
One can imagine the slave owner looking on complacently as these human beings, whom he regarded as possessions, sang what he must have regarded as a comic song, unaware that they sang of his downfall and their own vindication and liberation.
God gives hope when hope does not seem possible. God gives life when all possibility of life seems to have gone.

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This message of hope when hope seems impossible, life when all possibility of life seems to have gone is, of course, implicit in the story of Jesus and Lazarus.
Lazarus is dead, there can be no doubt of that. Some scholars suggest that the mention of the fact the he has been in the tomb for four days is meant to emphasise the reality of Lazarus death. There was apparently a superstition amongst the Jews of this time that the soul hung around the body for three days after death but by the fourth day had gone from it. Others simply take the text at face value. By the fourth day, in the hot Mediterranean climate decomposition would be well underway. However we read this there could be no doubt that Lazarus was dead. The situation was hopeless.
And yet into this hopeless situation comes hope, as Jesus arrives. The tomb is opened, Jesus speaks and the dead man lives.
In one sense this is a unique event. Whilst there are other reports of the dead being raised, both in the Bible and in later Christian experience, such events are very rare and I personally would regard those reports from outside the Bible with a great deal of scepticism. I know there are people who have prayed beside the bodies of their dead loved ones firmly believing that that person will be raised from the dead. I have never yet heard a convincing account of this happening. But I have heard of people who have moved on from the depths of grief to find new hope. In this sense what happens in this story is typical of what Jesus does. He gives hope when all seems hopeless and life where no life seems possible.

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But giving that hope is costly. John makes it clear that the raising of Lazarus is, for the Jerusalem authorities, the last straw. Confronted by such a powerful miraculous act they must either accept that Jesus is who he says he is, and worship him, or do away with him. And they choose the latter. The cost of new life for Lazarus is Jesus death on the cross.
And that is true for us too. Today Lent moves into higher gear. We begin to focus more intently on the cross and the suffering of Jesus, on what is called his passion. From the earliest days Christians have believed that Jesus death on the cross is more than simply the suffering a good person and an example of how such suffering can be born. Christian’s believe that Jesus death has in some way transformed our situation so that we may experience new life and new hope because of him. There are many ways that people have sought to explain how that was accomplished. Some of those explanations are more satisfactory than others and none seems completely adequate. I’m going to look at some of those pictures when I speak on Good Friday, but I warn you none of them are completely satisfying explanations. They are like pictures attempting to portray a reality beyond depiction. They have value and point to the thing they describe, but they are not that thing.
That thing is the fact that Jesus death gives us new hope and new life. When everything seems lost, when all seems hopeless Jesus tells us “I am the resurrection and the life.” And then he challenges us, as he challenged Martha long ago, “Do you believe this?”

Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ John 9.40
Introduction
Some time ago some concern was expressed by the charity the Royal National Institute for the Blind about the way blindness was often equated in Christian worship with being unspiritual. You only have to look through the hymnbook to find examples of this. One hymn that I remember singing in the church where I grew up began:
Lord, I was blind I could not see
in thy marred visage any grace.
Or, more familiarly:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
was blind but now I see.
The danger in this kind of language is that there is one factor which is very different between physical and spiritual blindness. No one chooses physical blindness and no one can be blamed for being physically blind. Spiritual blindness is, however, something that people may well have a choice about, and those who choose to be spiritually blind have no one to blame for the consequences but themselves.
Exposition
Today’s gospel reading is another of the long passages from St John’s gospel which the lectionary sets before us during this season of Lent. For me it is one of the most vivid and captivating stories in the gospels. The dialogue between Jesus and the blind man, Jesus and the authorities, and then the blind man and the authorities is just so real, and the way that in which the blind man who can now see stands up to the bullying of the authorities is so engrossing that when I hear the man say “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from and yet he opened my eyes” I just want to punch the air and shout “yes!” It’s a wonderful story, not only because it shows that Jesus is on the side of the outcast and disregarded but it goes further than that and shows the outcast and disregarded standing up for Jesus. It must have been a story which brought great encouragement to the early Christians as they sought to stand up for Jesus.
And that, really, is the context in which we need to read this story. It was written down at the time when Christianity was becoming a separate faith from the Judaism in which it had had its origin. Christians, like the blind man in the story, had been expelled from the fellowship of the synagogue and with that expulsion had lost the legal protection that Roman law gave to the Jewish people. Jews and Jews alone, in the Roman world were exempt from sacrificing to and worshiping the Roman gods. When Christians lost their status as part of the Jewish community they became subject to the expectation that they would participate in pagan rites. When they refused to do so they were persecuted and harassed. It’s a reflection of this situation that the word ‘Jews’ becomes in John’s Gospel the label applied to those who oppose Jesus; this despite the fact that Jesus, his disciples and almost everyone else we encounter in the gospels were Jewish. To Christians it was obvious that Jesus was the long awaited Jewish messiah. They must have agonized over the question why the Jewish people themselves could not see this. For St Paul in the letter to the Romans this blindness is seen as part of graciousness in that it allowed the inclusion of non-Jews among God’s people. For John, however, it seems to have been much more a wilful act on the part of some of the Jewish teachers not to see who Jesus was. The closing words of the Gospel reading today, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, “We see”, your sin remains” imply that the particular teachers that Jesus is confronting in this passage have chosen not to see who Jesus is. They have been faced with a choice, they’ve seen a man set free from a condition which has restricted and narrowed his life, and they refuse to see in this the hand of God.
What Jesus does in this passage is not to draw a parallel between physical and spiritual blindness but in fact to contrast them. The physically blind person may actually be able to have greater spiritual perception than those who have had no such disability.
Application
There is a challenge in this for us and I believe that it is one which is especially relevant to us today. If God starts to do things which don’t fit in with our preconceived ideas will we refuse to see his hand at work? Now the danger here is that anyone can claim that what they are doing comes from God and that it is God acting in a new way. The bible is clear gives us a way to test this. The acts of God bring forth good fruit – that is, where we see human lives enhanced, where we see the oppressed liberated, where we the oppressor cast down, there we can see God at work.