Sermons and talks
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Good Friday MeditationsCirencester Parish Church 2010.(Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan) |
‘‘The Participants in the drama’ Meditation 1 Lord Jesus, you entered the garden of fear Reading: John 18, 1-11 Organ interlude John doesn’t name it directly, but the garden across the Kidron valley, is the Garden of Gethsemane. If you have been to Jerusalem you will know it as the place where the Church of All Nations is built. It also is the place with those very ancient olive trees, thus giving it an association with the Mount of Olives. As the Mount of Olives sweeps down into the Kidron Valley the other side of the valley is the mountain on which Jerusalem is built. Rising above you is the city wall, not the city wall from the time of Jesus, of course, but the city wall built by Suleiman the Magnificent in the middle ages. Jesus is a regular visitor to this garden. Whose might it be? A secret follower such as Simon of Cyrene, the one who was compelled to carry the cross for a time to give Jesus some relief? Possibly so. In 1941 archaologists found a burial cave in the Kidron Valley which belonged to Cyrenian Jews. The Simon of Cyrene mentioned in Mark’s gospel is identified as father of Alexander and Rufus. We assume that the family is known to Jesus, and to the early Christian church. At the end of Paul’s letter to the Romans, Paul says, ‘Greet Rufus, eminent in the Lord’. So we may have a hint as to the ownership of the garden in which Jesus and his disciples have entered. A familiar place, a safe place, for it belonged to one of the followers. This means, of course that the location is known also to Judas Iscariot. He will have been there often with the other disciples and with Jesus. In betraying Jesus there, is he also betraying the whereabouts of a ‘safe house’? It is to this place that Judas brings the detachment of soldiers, and the special constabulary of the chief priests and the Pharisees, bearing their instructions to arrest Jesus. As if it were necessary, Jesus approaches them. In other versions it is a kiss that gives away his identity, but not in John’s version of events. Jesus simply steps forward and says, ‘who are you looking for?’ The answer of course is so patent. Jesus was anticipating this moment. ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ they reply. Jesus vouchsafes his identity, but rather than immediately taking hold of him, they fall to their knees along with Judas. There is no resistance on the part of Jesus. HE is offering himself to THEM. They are dithering and hesitating. To begin with one might imagine that we have a ‘non violent resistance’ from Jesus, but no. He is surrendering himself totally, and his concern is for the well being of followers. We always seek to protect the ones we love. We can imagine those situations where a child is abducted, and the parents wish the abductors to take them in the child’s place; or a life threatening situation where someone pleads to be killed rather than the intended victim. Such a situation happened in Auschwitz with Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, who offered to take the place of a married man with children, who was going to be killed by the Commandant. It is an heroic action of self offering. In Kolbe’s case the Commandant conceded and took the priest’s life rather than the life of the family man. There is a special sacrificial love that comes into action in such circumstances. Jesus says, take me and let the others go. I’m the one you were looking for. For goodness sake, take me! Characteristically Peter responds differently. He is armed and ready to defend his Christ. In other versions of the gospel it is Peter who finds it hard to accept that the Christ of God will have to suffer. So he reacts and severs the ear off the high priest’s slave. There is no healing of the ear in John’s version, we are simply left with an act of violence, and an ear lying somewhere in the garden. The slave though is named – this gives authenticity to the action. It is the use of a detail to emphasize historicity. There is a purpose to all of this event. The self surrendering of Jesus is a necessity for God’s will to be done. Jesus knows it, and he enables it to happen. ‘I am he’. So different this to the great ‘I am’ sayings. He is simply saying ‘I am’ the one to whom the ensuing events are to happen. Silence Hymn: My song is love unkown
Meditation 2 Lord Jesus, you were betrayed by the kiss of a friend: Reading: John 18, 12-14 Organ interlude Just because there is no kiss of betrayal in John, doesn’t mean any less that Jesus is betrayed by Judas. How must this betrayal have felt. One of the chosen ones – a familiar friend, one to whom much had been trusted and entrusted. Had Jesus disappointed Judas so much that this had to happen? What had Jesus done that was so wrong? Had he not been the right kind of Christ for Judas – not the rebel who would overthrow the Roman rulers, and maybe just not Judas’s kind of man? After all Jesus spent his time with women. ‘I thank you God that I was not born a woman’ is the very Jewish male thanksgiving; prostitutes too, and slaves and lepers. Just not the right types! This is not the way to bring in a new and powerful government. What does any betrayal feel like? What is the effect on you and me when we have been let down badly by someone we have trusted. Perhaps we have confided in a person because we thought they were so close and trustworthy, but they go blabbing about this or that precious and intimate information. It goes to the very heart of our human vulnerability. Often we feel unable to trust another person ever again, when we have been betrayed. It happens in human relationships. It can happen between woman and men, especially where a woman has been badly treated by a man, perhaps beaten or mistreated repeatedly until such a time that she gets to utter despair, or has to be placed in a refuge for the sake of her own existence. In human relationships we vouchsafe a huge amount to another, and this can leave us feeling so fragile. And it is not just women who suffer from this type of treacherous abuse. As a priest I often see couples who wish to get married where one or both have been married before. Their stories can be heartbreaking. Like the quiet young man sitting on my settee seeking to be remarried after he had been divorced. On entering into some discussion it emerges that his first wife used to batter him, and because he was a male he felt it was unjust for him to retaliate against a woman. In that vulnerability on his part she persisted until he had no self esteem left. His intended new wife was fully aware of the situation her future husband had tolerated, and was hugely sympathetic towards rebuilding the life of the man she loved. But isn’t it a miracle that he could get to the point of being able to trust again. I pray that their marriage will be a blessing to them, for I don’t know how he would cope if his love were betrayed again. So Jesus is betrayed into the hands of the Jewish authorities who loathed this man Jesus. He had healed a man on the Sabbath – outrageous behaviour. Far better that the man had another day of his infirmity than that the Sabbath rules should be broken. This Jesus had even raised a friend of his from the dead, Lazarus, a leper. Why would Jesus want to raise to life again someone who was being punished for his sinfulness by God. Yes, sickness was seen as punishment for sin. God’s revenge. The soldiers who had initially fallen to their knees when Jesus had said, ‘I am he’ now bind Jesus and take him before the 2 key players among the Jews. First the take him to Annas, father in law of the High priest. Why should they do that? Who was Annas? – who was Caiaphas? There can be no doubting the power of Annas and Caiphas. Annas was High Priest for 9 years. Five of his sons succeeded him, and so did his son in law, Caiaphas, who was High Priest for about 18 years. This is called ‘keeping it in the family’. Normally the High Priest was consecrated for life, but in Roman times they replaced them every few years, so you can imagine how well in this family must have been with the Roman authorities. Then on to Caiaphas, the High Priest of that year. He was a real calculating individual. His was the office that not only had religious duties to perform, but who also had to negotiate in a Machiavellian way the relationship between the Jewish population and their Roman masters. He was the politician par excellence, and he was the protector of the religious rites par excellence. Jesus threatened to destabilize that delicate balance that kept Jew and Roman in an uncomfortable but peaceful co-existence. Caiaphas must have hated Jesus. This popular preacher and healer who was so publicly critical of religious hypocricy! What did Jesus know of all the hard work that he Caiaphas had to put in to keep things working. Is the motivation jealousy? Perhaps. Or is it envy? More likely. There is a difference between the two. To be jealous of someone is to want to have what he or she has. To be envious means that you will stop at nothing to take away and destroy what that person has. It can afflict any of us. Jealousy is such a natural tendency in us. So much so that 2 of the 10 Commandments admonish us about it. ‘Thou shalt not covet..’ But envy is far more insidious – it is the bedfellow of betrayal. So Caiaphas places into the hands of Jesus’s treasurer thirty pieces of silver. Judas’s weakness for money is the way Caiaphas’s envy can capture and destroy its prey. So Annas and Caiaphas make their appearance on this fateful night when things are being signed, sealed and delivered. But who is missing? Herod. John says nothing of him, and yet the other gospels include a journey for Jesus form the High Priest’s house to Herod’s place, and then he passes on Jesus to Pilate. John concentrates on Jesus as the plaything of these two religious leaders. John is moving things on. Silence Hymn: My God and is thy table spread
Meditation 3 Lord Jesus, Reading: John 18, 15-27 Organ interlude Peter now moves centre stage for a time. His violent action in the garden had been condemned by Jesus. I find myself wondering if Peter always carried a weapon. A fish knife I could understand, but we are told it is a sword. As the soldiers and the Temple police take Jesus bound to the High Priest’s lodgings, Peter follows. He is not by himself. He is with a disciple who was known to the High Priest. No name. Intriguing. Whose identity is being covered up? Being known to the High Priest – does it mean that Caiaphas knew that this man was a follower of Jesus, or that there were so many secret followers of Jesus who mixed with even the highest of religious circles. Might it have been a member of the Sanhedrin, the Holy Council? Wouldn’t it be fascinating to know what the relationship was between that far greater group of followers than just the 12 we associate as ‘disciples’. So much mystery involved there, and we must remember that identity may have to be protected for fear of reprisal. So this mystery follower goes with Peter to Caiaphas’s house. He is allowed into the courtyard – he is a familiar face. Peter has to wait at the gate, as he has no privilege. The gatekeeper recognizes Peter though and quizzes him about the relationship between him and Jesus. ‘Not me’ says Peter. Peter enters the courtyard and makes his way in the cold of the evening to a place near to the charcoal fire that has been lit. Not only heat, but light also is emitted from the fire, though it casts strange light and shadows. Others begin to get curious about Peter. He denies for a second time that he has anything to do with the man that has been brought bound into the High Priest’s residence. Most of us have relatives – so did the man whose ear Peter cut off back in the garden in the Kidron Valley. This man is now sure that Peter was the one that had his cousin’s ear off. ‘No, not me.’ And the cock crows. It is just as Jesus had said, back in John 13,38. Jesus knew Peter well. He knew the very character of the man, just as he knows us through and through. Even the secrets of our hearts cannot be withheld from Christ. The irony is that Jesus had given Peter his name. Up until he met Jesus he was just plain old Simon, and with his brother Andrew he was quite happy fishing. He could be who and what he wanted to be – sometimes steadfast and reliable, other times he could wobble about and let people down. That’s how it is. You and I find it difficult, maybe even impossible to be unshakeable, utterly consistent, always reliable, never wrong in our judgement of things and people. But Jesus gave to this ambivalent character the name Cephas, which translates into Greek at Petros, the Rock. Did Jesus know that by the lakeside Peter would make so many mistakes? Was he aware that Peter would waiver between loyalty and devastating disappointment? Of course he did! Otherwise how could any of us be called to follow Jesus as our Lord? Peter’s real identity, his true understanding of himself, is realized at the charcoal fire. The next time we have a charcoal fire scene it will be in the bright light of a resurrected Christ, and even then Peter will be rumbled by Jesus. All this is outside on a cold night. Inside, the two religious leaders are dealing with Jesus as a warm up to his visit to Pilate. The High Priest interrogates Jesus about all his teaching. It certainly was largely speaking subversive of the religious conventions of the day, over which the High Priest was Curator in Chief, and Enforcer. Jesus, in turn, replies that everything he has said and done has been in the open for all to see – his has not been a secret subversion. He has even been faithful in his attendance at the synagogue and the Temple, so it is not even as if he has relinquished practicing his faith. But here, with Jesus, is the big difference between these two men. Annas practiced his faith, and in doing so was seen by all to be doing all the requirements of the law. Jesus, on the other hand, shows us what it is to ‘faith our practice’. He brought his living faith in God the Father into each situation he found himself in, and so instead of trying to mould people uncomfortably into religious observances, he let his faith, not his religion, dictate what would be said and done. We would all learn much from this idea of ‘faithing our practice’. As we go about our daily lives meeting people, doing things, spending time at work or leisure, or with family, we simply bring our faith into that situation. ‘Faithing practice’ is indicative of a more natural way to live the Christian life. It also guards against the dangers of that which so many of us religious people are rightly accused of, namely that there is a gulf between what we say we believe, and how we are seen to live our lives. How many people must there be who have ceased to be church people because of a wound inflicted by someone who did not ‘faith their practice’. How difficult do we make it for newcomers to the world of the church because we put practice first, and faith second. We expect them to ‘do as we do’ the minute they have contact with us, when it would be far more compelling if people were simply overwhelmed by the faith that they encountered in us individually and as a community. And so, Annas fails to show that Jesus has done anything secretive and disruptive, and Jesus invited Annas to prove if it is different to what he says, for which he gets a slap from one of the policemen, whose task it is to defend the dignity of the High Priest. Silence Hymn: And can it be
Meditation 4 Lord Jesus, you were condemned to death for political expediency: Reading: John 18, 28 – 19, 16 Organ interlude Being the Govenor of the Roman province of Judea was hardly the jewel in the diplomatic bag. A bit like being Ambassador from the Court of St. James to Uzbekistan, or somewhere like that. It was known to be a difficult place to govern. It didn’t really produce very much to keep the Roman Empire afloat. It is hardly as if Judea supplied corn or oil in super imperial quantities. To add to all of this there was the difficulty of the religion of these people. Every corner you turned there was the egg shells of religious sensitivities. Much of this was focussed in Jerusalem, and in particular the temple. To keep conquered nations happy, it was the Roman imperial custom, no doubt following the example of Alexander the great some few hundred years earlier, to retain the local rulers, to work with them and keep them loyal, so long as they all knew who the real boss was. To such a group of puppet kings, in Judea, Pilate finds himself as Governor over Herod the Great, King of the Jews. You will recall that an earlier Herod had wiped out all the little boys in his kingdom in the hope of killing a child that had been born in Bethlehem, a child referred to by the Wise Men as King of the Jews. We are back to that word ‘envy’ again. It is early in the morning – remember that the Jewish calculation of the hours of the day are different to ours. The new day began at about 6pm. Jesus has spent that night, the whole of which was part of the preparation or eve of Passover. Jesus’s captors have already done all the rituals demanded of them, so although they have held a mock type of court on the day that was Passover Eve, they will not enter the Governor’s Palace. They know that Pilate will be indifferent to the envy they show towards Jesus, and he is unlikely to be moved by their appeals to deal with Jesus on any religious charge. Pilate however goes to them to ask why they have brought someone to him for a judicial ruling. Ritual purification means they can’t go to him, so he comes to them. He must have found these religious scruples irritating. They want Jesus out of the way, but they know that Pilate will need a criminal reason, not a religious one. So they have told Pilate that Jesus claims to be a King. Rome had decided who the local King of the Jews would be – they were in charge of local polity wherever they invaded. The Chief Priest feels he is on safe ground with this one. Pilate, on the other hand, is presented by the gospel as a more sophisticated man, a man willing to find out genuinely if Jesus made this claim. If Jesus is a king, his explanation to Pilate has nothing to do with overrunning the Roman authorities and establishing a new power base. Jesus speaks not of the raw brute power of Rome, but of truth. Pilate then has a great line. ‘What is truth’? He gives Jesus a second chance. Pilate can make a Passover gesture – he can pardon someone whom the crowds could choose. Might this be his way out of avoiding an unnecessary and unjustified death? The crowds think differently, not doubt urged on by the loudest voices. Maybe a beating will satisfy the crowds. But no – they’ll have a robber spared instead. Suddenly though the truth is beginning to come out. Jesus isn’t before Pilate because of a kingship claim. No – he said he was the Son of God. The Jews had the blasphemy laws to deal with this claim, and no doubt they could have stoned Jesus to death, but no, they couldn’t because they would have violated their religious scruples – they were all scrubbed up for Passover. Pilate still seems to be relenting, but the crowds use the fear tactics. He can’t have an insurrection – it was the one thing Rome could never tolerate, and if it got back to Rome that he had caused it, it wouldn’t look good on the promotion front. Passover is getting near – they need a death, and soon, otherwise it will all have to wait another 24 hours. Pilate concedes. He sits on his judgement seat. The ultimate treachery in all of this is that to get their own way, they claim the absolute power of Caesar as their own – the very thing they detested, and possibly the very reason why Judas Iscariot had turned against Jesus in the first place. Pilate’s ambivalence in the gospels shows him in a reasonable light. We might even have sympathy for him. He is even a saint in the Coptic Church. Don’t be deceived though. The gospel writers seek to characterize the High Priest and the Jewish authorities as the baddies. In fact other ancient historical sources give a very different picture of Pilate. He is cold and calculating. Josephus presents us with a Governor who rides roughshod over religious conventions, and he is the first Governor to bring the Roman Imperial standards within the city walls of Jerusalem, thus overturning previous political and religious conventions. The gospel writers have good reason to curry favour with the Roman authorities, as the nascent Christian Church is seeking to survive and be tolerated. Even we can be the same as the Jewish authorities at the time of Jesus. Christians too can distort truth when it is politically expedient to do so. We can turn a blind eye to injustices, and we can collude with aweful atrocities. We are doing it in the Anglican church in Zimbabwe now, and in Uganda Anglican bishops are not seeking to prevent new legislation that brings down hard punishment, even death, for homosexuals. What is truth? What indeed? Silence Hymn: From heaven you came
Meditation 5 Lord Jesus, you carried the cross through the rough streets of Jerusalem: John 19, 17-25 Organ interlude There is a real diversity of detail in the gospel narratives surrounding this whole Passion Narrative. Listen to what Mark says. ‘They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus.’ Luke and Matthew, of course concur with this. John says nothing of such an incident, even though we established in an earlier meditation that these names seemed to be well known to the followers of Jesus, and may well have been disciples themselves. It could be the garden of Simon of Cyrene where the arrest of Jesus took place. But there is something extra in John’s version. He does not only omit any reference to Simon of Cyrene, there is something emphatic in what John says. Hear it again. ‘So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull.’ Is John trying to correct an error, or as he presents the Christ on the Way of the Cross as the one who is bearing all the burden of this action? John’s point being that Christ is carrying his own cross which is the throne of his servant majesty, and through which God will be glorified. No one else is doing this for Jesus – on the contrary, he takes the entire burden himself. It is part of his total self surrender to the will of the Father. The Place of the Skull, Golgotha, was outside the city wall. Attempts have been made to locate it beside what we now call ‘The Garden Tomb’ in Jerusalem. General Gordon fabricated the whole notion, because there are some rocks there that could be construed to look like a skull, and it was outside the city wall, and some ancient tombs were indeed found there. So Gordon rejected the location that had been considered genuine since the time of Empress St. Helena, mother of Constantine, on the grounds that it was not outside the city wall. However, Gordon did not take into account that he was calculating all of this on the basis of a much later built wall – the wall of Suleiman the Magnificent. He may also have been motivated by the desire to present Queen Victoria with a religious site that belonged to the British. If you visit it nowadays it is a very beautiful site, but a bit too National Trust to seem authentic. Crucifixion was a standard way for the Romans to punish people. It was a cruel death, so it was used to try and prevent subjugated peoples from even attempting to rise up against Roman authority. So it is that on this day, which the great Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Geza Vermes has calculated to be the 7th April AD 30, Jesus ascends his cross at Golgotha, with 2 others, one at each side of him, at which point begins the slow and harrowing process of death by crucifixion. This has been preceded by the whipping that would cause the roughness of the wood to inflict great pain on the back of the one being crucified. As well as fixing the arms and the legs to the cross, it was standard practice to break the legs of the criminals so that they couldn’t use any support at all to try and alleviate the slow suffocation. John is characteristically quiet about some of the details given in the other three gospels. The other three relate a conversation between Jesus and the robbers about the kingdom, John says nothing about this. The focus for John is the cross and Jesus, and the Kingship of the one they had crucified. King of the Jews, in the two main languages of the Empire, and in Hebrew. John even seems to be bringing Pilate to witness to the truth as John sees it. ‘What I have written, I have written’. It was customary for prisoners to have a placard round their necks – name and crime. It was part of the Roman’s weaponry of fear, a warning to others. Not for Jesus though. The irony is that Pilate names him as the very thing the Jewish authorities most abhorred about him. They wanted him killed for his claims. Now Pilate rubs their noses in it. Silence Hymn: Drop, drop slow tears Meditation 6 Lord Jesus, your mother and your dearest friend stayed with you to the bitter end, yet even when racked with pain you ministered to them: John 19, 25-37 Organ interlude The Christ is born in Bethlehem and there is so much commotion in heaven and in earth that Mary ‘treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart’. At the Temple Simeon greets the holy family. They bring with them Christ, the light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of Israel. Mary is amazed about what they are saying about her son. All of these, references to the sheer delight and anticipation of a mother – all the hopes and expectations. How will he grow up? Who might he look like (not likely to be Joseph)? What will he do in life? How do all these strange events add up and what do they mean for my boy? Simeon tells here the answer, though she may well have to ponder this yet further, ‘a sword will pierce your own soul too’. The old man not only foretells with some ominous prophecy the future of the child, but also in some way his destiny is linked to hers. She will be the grieving mother standing at the Place of the Skull, looking on as her boy hangs there covered in blood and sweat, overcome with exhaustion, pierced by nails, gasping for breath as he hangs on the wood of the cross, the tree of execution. Into the woods my master went, Out of the woods my master went, Mary stands. Not upright and proud I would suggest, but broken, heart broken at the spectacle of injustice and cruelty unfolding before her tear sodden eyes. Every scratch and cut and laceration on his body she feels etched into her own body and soul. The woman suffers with the man; the mother suffers with the son. It has always been so. In Northern Ireland in years gone by for every dead Irishman and soldier and policeman, there is a part of a mother which dies. It was pressure from mothers which to a large extent forced the politicians round the table and which resulted in the Good Friday Agreement. No political training; not powerfully influential; just mothers grieving for the pointless loss of their menfolk. We see it on our screens in Gaza. It is not our way to wail when we mourn. There is the British way of doing things. But these mothers wail for the sake of tragic loss, for life ripped out of their hearts as if a Caesar were being performed on their wombs. According to the synoptic tradition Jesus meets women – women who are wailing for this terrible happening. Those women would look like the mothers of Gaza would look. Jews, yes, but Arabs. Here is an irony in itself, and highlights aspects of the schizophrenia of the Middle East – their common roots obliterated by the hard hearted religion of men and the vagaries of history conducted by men. The artist Grunewald captures this moment in his great painting called the Isenheim altarpiece. The pock marked agonized son on the cross, set against the blackness of human misery, and at the foot of the cross, Mary, his mother, swooning backwards, hands wrung out with grief, as she is supported by Mary of Magdala. Others were there. Well, there was a crowd, and we can only hear about the people that were of importance to the gospel writer. Two other Mary’s. Yes, there was the Magdalene, and there was Mary, mother of Clopas. Women are centre stage to this moment. The disciples seem to have evaporated into the mists of fear or denial. But the women are there at the end, and it will be women who are there at the new beginning. Silence Hymn: Were you there
Meditation 7 Lord Jesus, Lord of life, you became nothing for us: John 19, 38-42 Organ interlude The Jewish author Chaim Potok in one of his books, tells of Asher Lev. He is born into a strict Hasidic Jewish family. As he grows up he realizes his skills and gifts in art. Not allowed at home. In particular he has a penchant for the human body. Over many years this has a terrible effect on the relationship between father and son. He gains reputation as an artist and eventually he persuades his parents to come and view his exhibition in New York. They enter the exhibition chamber – it is dominated by a large painting of the crucifixion. Anathema in so many ways to his strict father. And the face on the crucified body – well of course it was his mother’s. I read into this that the young and gifted Asher Lev found his religion too dry and dogmatic for his spirituality to flourish. He needed the cross because in religion we need a God who in a sense is part and parcel of the pain and anguish we experience in the world. The God whose son can die on a cross is most surely that, and Asher Lev is in a sense a secret follower of the Crucified one – not through a doctrinal adherence to Christianity, not credal, but through harsh experience and reality. He is not the only ‘secret follower’. There have been, are, and will be many such Asher Lev’s. Some may even attend a service such as this on Good Friday, and not attend any other worship in the year. You know God in your heart. The church may not recognize this, but there is good news for you as well. God knows the secrets of our hearts. God knows who the secret followers are. There are those in the gospels who are secret followers. If only we knew more about them. However the very need for secrecy prevents the gospel writers form telling us too much. We know a good deal about the twelve who are called. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know more about the 70 in St. Luke’s gospel, whom Jesus sends out to do mission work. This is the only oblique reference to a wider group of good news workers. I would love to know how Jesus prepared them for this task. What training was given – if any – and what was the outcome of spreading the good news through others. Other references clearly indicate great crowds of people following Jesus and hanging on his every word. He feeds 4,000 of them, 5,000 of them. For us, the point of interest is usually about how Jesus fed them, but just think of it in another way – what impact did they have as they went to their homes to tell of what this prophet had done. No need to guess why Annas and Caiaphas had to be rid of him. The ripple effect must have become a torrent. Then we have elliptical references to individuals who are named, but who cannot be too public in their support for Jesus – Simon of Cyrene, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, who came to Jesus in the safety of the night. In my last parish we had a Malaysian priest on the staff. It is illegal to proselytize in Malaysia, which is predominantly Muslim, But Fr. Paul told of meetings at 2.00am in the morning when Muslims gathered in the churchyards of the Anglican churches to hear stories told of Jesus, and to discuss the faith. He spoke in terms of hundreds being involved in this. As a means of advancing the gospel, this is surely a better way than any tub thumping and injudicious talk of having to convert these people. On one of my visits to Cameroon we had a Muslim driver. There was no attempt to convert him, but he came into the churches with us and reported that he had never known that God’s love could be so real, and that could be joy in being faithful to God. We only did it as it is – it was for him to experience it. Loved by fellow worshippers; loved by a God who had come among us. The loved one – the beloved one – the beloved disciple. Open to misinterpretation of course, there is this disciple known by the gospel writers to be the beloved, the agapetos. He has followed the one who loved HIM to the place of his execution. From his cross Jesus sees both mother and the beloved. He commends them to each other’s care. A new relationship is born out of crucifixion – a new community is created around the crucified one. This community is not based on blood ties as so many ancient and even present day cultures are, but in faith and in love. That is the Christian community. John and Mary wait with baited breath to see how long Jesus can survive this aweful ordeal. Anyone who has sat by the bed of a dying person knows how one breathes every breath with them, wondering if this one will be the last. From his cross, Jesus says ‘it is accomplished’. In Greek it is the same word as means ‘perfect’. So Jesus is saying, it is now perfected. And he gives up his spirit. The letter to the Hebrews (12, 1-2) reads, ‘so let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith’. It is accomplished, finished, perfected. Now you and I simply await the joy of new life. That is the gift of Good Friday. Silence Hymn: I cannot tell (Bible quotations throughout are from the RSV; prayers from Times and Seasons passim from p238 C Archbishop’s Council)
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