Sermon at Matins on Good Friday 2018

Why should the tortured death of one man on a cross 2000 years ago on a scrubby hill in the Middle East matter to us in Westminster today?  It’s not a bad question to ask on Good Friday.

After all, there are plenty of men, women and children dying horrible deaths from snipers and shrapnel wounds in the vicinity of Syria’s capital Damascus, even as I speak.  There are soldiers and civilians being bombed in the Yemen.  There are Christians and peoples of other faiths being assassinated because of their beliefs in Pakistan, in Egypt, and elsewhere.  There is no shortage of innocent people being killed simply for their racial background, or for their conscience’s sake.  There is no shortage of babies and children, the frail and elderly who are put to death simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time in the midst of war.

Why then should Christians make so much of the death of one man so many years ago?  What difference does it make to us today?  And what difference does it make to those who face cruel and horrible deaths in our own day?

I want to suggest one simple but profound reason, among many, why the death of Jesus on the cross still matters today. Jesus’ death matters because of who Jesus was: he was fully human, just as you and I are, and at the same time, he was fully divine, just as God is.  It wasn’t just any young man who died on the cross.  It was Jesus – the God-man – who was crucified, and was then raised from the dead.  At the moment when Jesus died, God himself finally knew fully and utterly what it is to be human – and that knowledge changed our past, our present and our future forever. 

I’ll try to explain.

All of us are going to die one day. It is part of what it means to be human, isn’t it?  We might not like the thought of it.  We might be frightened of the prospect of dying. We might be very uncertain of what, if anything, lies beyond death. As the old saying goes, we can only be sure of two things in this life: taxes and death. They come to us all, without fail.

Christians believe in a God who created us and who reaches out to us in love, and who longs for the very best for each of us.  And in order that we might know how deeply and fully, how limitlessly God loves us, God has shown himself to us as a human being: St Paul tells us in his letter to the people of Colossae that Jesus is the very image of the invisible God.  He shows us what God is like.  He walked among us, he healed people, he taught us how to live well. Jesus fed those who came to see him, he laughed with them, he told fantastic stories; and he gave people hope, and purpose, and the possibility of faith and love, and much more besides.

But for God to know from the inside what it is like to be human, God in his turn had to go through all that we must experience as human beings.  So Jesus, the God-man, had to deal with taxes - you remember that saying, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (Matt 22.21)?.  And Jesus, the God-man, had to die – just as all of us who are human have to die. We have no choice in the matter. Jesus died a vicious death that was cruel, humiliating and public: nailed to a cross, by the roadside outside the walls of Jerusalem.

For Jesus that death was a real one, just as our death will be real.  A body had to be buried. A mother was broken with grief; and friends ran away in utter confusion.  Yet here’s the difference.  Jesus’ death was not the end of God, nor did his death mark the end of God’s love; quite the opposite.  Hatred did not win the day.  For God raised Jesus from the dead.  At a stroke, our past, our present and our future were changed forever.

Let me come at this from a slightly different angle.

The God-man, Jesus, was put to death as a result of humanity’s fractured and broken relationship with God – what we call ‘sin’ by way of shorthand. He died for our sin, we say, along with St Paul.

Jesus was innocent of all the charges put to him. He was dragged before the religious and political authorities of the day, and accused of fermenting rebellion, of claiming to be a king. Why? All sorts of reasons have been given, but at the very least Jesus was perceived as a real threat to those in authority. He was popular as a teacher and healer; a few thought that he was the promised Messiah, come to free the Jewish people from Roman occupation. And indeed, Jesus wasn’t afraid to speak the truth to power, making life very uncomfortable for those whose grip on power was based largely on manipulating a fearful and fickle populace. In the end, Jesus was betrayed to the authorities by one of his followers, for reasons we will never fully understand.

Jesus was killed as a result of the human failure to love as deeply and perfectly and selflessly as he taught and demonstrated in his own life. No one who saw Jesus arrested, tried and crucified knew fully what it meant to love God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength, nor to love their neighbour as themselves.

So as he hung on the cross Jesus bore the consequences of our sin – he hung there because of our own human failures and fears, leading to the choice of evil over good. He did not hang there in order to appease a wrathful divine Father; he did not hang there for any other reason than that he was fully human and fully divine. He hung there for love alone.

Jesus was crucified because his love for us gave him no alternative. He died at our hands, so great was his love for us. But that was not the end. Hatred did not win the day.  For God raised Jesus from the dead.  At a stroke, our past, our present and our future were changed forever.

It was love that won the day – God’s love.  Jesus is no longer dead; he was raised from the dead, and lives today.  Even today, we can know what God is like: we can read and chew over the Scriptures. We can glimpse God at work in the lives of those around us. Above all, we can meet with the risen Christ in prayer, and as we share the bread and wine of his body and blood.

That’s why we can speak of this Friday being Good Friday; because love won the day – 2000 years ago.

That’s why we can pray to God with confidence for those who face violent, cruel deaths today; because love can still win the day – for all of them.

That’s why we can stand before God today with all our doubts and fear of death; because love will still win the day – for each of us.

Jesus, the God-man, died; and Jesus the God-man, was raised from the dead.  God’s love won, and God’s love wins, and God’s love will win.  That’s what we see on the cross today.  That’s what we find at the heart of Good Friday.

A few years ago the poet and priest W H Vanstone wrote a passion hymn which echoes an ancient Christian hymn traditionally sung on Good Friday.  Here are the last two verses, expressing a hope that we might wish to make our own today:

Therefore He Who Thee reveals
Hangs, O Father, on that Tree
Helpless; and the nails and thorns
Tell of what Thy love must be.

Thou art God; no monarch Thou
Thron’d in easy state to reign;
Thou art God, whose arms of love
Aching, spent, the world sustain.