St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Discernment Acts 12:24-13:5a

 

The Holy Spirit is evident again in this morning’s eucharistic reading from Acts Chapter 12 as the guiding light and force of the early Church. So much is he the agent that the Acts of the Apostles might be better named the Acts of the Holy Spirit. In today’s reading we hear about the gift of discernment granted from the Spirit as a group of leading Christians were offering worship to the Lord and keeping a fast. We read how the Holy Spirit said, ‘I want Barnabas and Saul set apart for the work to which I have called them’. After prayer and laying on of hands the two were, we read, ‘sent on their mission by the Holy Spirit… to Cyprus’.

God has not changed 2000 years on. Our faith and expectation of God is something of the variation from the apostolic era. To give an example of how the Spirit’s gift of discernment remains in operation among Christians here is the story of how a significant community ministry was born in a south London parish. A young man was going to Church Sunday by Sunday and stepping over the tramps that slept in the Churchyard. It was a part of London with a good number of street folk who'd come to see the Churchyard as a safe haven. As this Church member passed these men and women week by week God eventually gave him a burden of prayer for them, which he carried into Church and offered up at the Eucharist. One Sunday he had the idea of running a lunch club for the vagrants and he persuaded his fellow worshippers.  This ran for some months.  Then the organisers advertised for helpers in the local community and received hundreds of enquiries. One man's vision discerned from God got accepted by his Church and became the instrument for Christians and non-Christians working together in the service of a local need.  Many of the non-Church folk got drawn into the life of the Church in the process. It all started from one man's discernment - isn't that encouraging?

How often we sense the Holy Spirit ourselves when we go out of our way to help others, joy in the midst of empathising with and maybe alleviating hardship being endured by others. Such joy provides evidence of the presence of God in the midst for, as the Psalmist writes, in God’s presence there is the fullness of joy. (Psalm 16:11) It’s not how much we do that matters so much as how much love we put into the action. To live in the love of God is the clue to discerning the best form of service to others. Each day I look back at what I’ve done or failed to do and confess to God. Very often the sins I confess are opportunities I’ve lost because my attention’s been elsewhere and very often on myself. Discernment is a gift of the Holy Spirit whom we welcome day by day, hour by hour - God’s love pouring into our hearts - but do we? Or do we get so filled with a self-serving agenda that God’s love gets blocked out?

A practical suggestion. Start making a morning offering to the Holy Spirit. Sit on your bed and say ‘God I thank you for the gift of this new day and give myself to you. Send your Holy Spirit to use my gifts to God’s praise and service’. 

I find that such a prayer sweeps the day up into God’s hands so that, as I keep my attention on him, I discern what’s important and get on with it. Living with Holy Spirit discernment and empowerment is actually very simple if we set our hearts upon the Lord. 

We live in one place and time relatively ignorant of where and when to serve. God sees all space and time and the needs that cry out. 

The Holy Spirit rejoices to enlist those who give themselves day by day to his service and helps them discern where they can make a significant difference. 

Give yourself to God and he will give you to others!

St John, Burgess Hill Easter 4 Jesus Prayer 28.4.21

‘The name of Jesus itself, has made this man strong’ Acts 3:16. 

How can I live a simpler Christian life? 

Is there a summary of faith that’s clear, memorable and portable?  

A biblical aid to praying at all times?  A means of Holy Spirit empowerment which can bypass a distracted mind? Is there an instrument of Jesus Christ useful to carrying his worship into life and vice versa?

The Jesus Prayer of Eastern Orthodoxy, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ is such an instrument. Thoroughly biblical, carried forward by the faith of the church through the centuries, it stands as a unique gift and task.

It’s based on the prayer of the tax-collector from Luke 18. This so-called Publican’s prayer is there contrasted by Our Lord with the ostentatious prayer of the Pharisee. The man would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast saying ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’. From this prayer the Jesus Prayer is built, a simple repeated prayer for quiet individual use with capacity to empower and lead into simplicity of life.

I have come to believe there’s nothing new in Christianity, just the need to enter the day by day newness of Jesus. That newness refreshes me day by day through attending Mass and through reciting ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ in an aspiration to carry my Communion forward obedient to the biblical injunction to pray at all times. The Jesus Prayer is inhabited by Jesus who is an effective reminder that God is love and has mercy on us frail mortals.  

It’s a prayer discipline in use across the Christian world since the 5th century and preserved to this day across Eastern Orthodoxy from where it is spreading as a blessing to us in the western Church. 

The Jesus Prayer states the simple good news of Christianity, provides Holy Spirit empowerment to bypass distracted minds, links worship and life and resonates with the faith and prayer of the church through the ages. 

We live in times when many find themselves burdened by anxiety or mental distraction and are seeking help from Buddhist type mindfulness exercises. If only they could enter the spiritual discipline Christians have built from faith in the holy name!  The Jesus Prayer is a ‘God-given mantra’.‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’. Repeating that sentence brings power to bear upon the soul besides helping us as Christians in relating worship to life.

I knew of the Jesus Prayer for thirty years before I welcomed it as the gift and task it is to help us ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  As a priest leading worship, attending to people’s joys and sorrows and the stresses and strains of church life I have found the Jesus Prayer an invaluable aid and this is because of the simple message it holds before me - that God loves me and all that is, minute by minute, day by day and for all eternity.  

In the early years of the Church, when there was heavy persecution, if a Christian met a stranger in the road, he sometimes drew one arc of a simple fish outline in the dirt. If the stranger drew the other arc, both believers knew they were in safe company. The early Christians used the secret sign of the fish because the Greek word for fish ‘icthus’ was an acronym for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour’, the earliest creed and the shortest statement of Christian faith. The Jesus Prayer is a short expansion of that personal creed. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God’ implies the historical figure of Jesus is universal Lord and Son of God. 

Behind the statement is a conviction that the invisible God has in one human life at one time and place made himself visible, supremely by the Cross, showing us his love to be witnessed to every generation. 

God who made all and loves all desires to claim all - starting with the human race made in his image.  The first clause of the Jesus Prayer affirms the good news Jesus brings to our lives, news that we come from God, we belong to God and we go to God. ‘The eternal God is our refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms’ (Deuteronomy 33:27 NIV)

It’s that faith I express when walking, for example.  ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ I repeat. Time outside helps get me out of my mind into my body and that’s especially welcome when I’ve been sitting around at home with the family or on the computer. Exercise helps our bodily well being - s an aside here, I commend my new book ‘Fifty Walks from Haywards Heath - a handbook for seeking space in Mid Sussex’. Walking can be deep thinking time but it can also be a conscious coming back into the Lord’s presence.  As I recover repeating the Jesus Prayer it flows with the movement of my legs just as its pace fits the natural rhythm of breathing in and out. 

‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ 

As the prayer centres me I become aware again of God’s love present alongside me in Jesus, of a dispelling of negative preoccupation and an outward focussing upon those around me wherever I am.  The Lord uses the discipline of continuous recitation to turn me out of myself in loving intercession towards my neighbours. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God’ I repeat the Jesus Prayer under my breath, and find myself emphasising the second phrase ‘have mercy on me a sinner’.  The phrase ‘have mercy on me a sinner’ echoes our repeated call for mercy at the eucharist.

To show mercy is to treat others as better than they are. In the Jesus Prayer we are not so much asking the Lord repeatedly to demonstrate mercy to us but affirming and celebrating that quality and allowing it to brush off on us and make us more fully his instruments of forbearance. 

The great thinker Simone Weil writes ‘that two great forces rule the universe: gravity and grace. Gravity causes one body to attract other bodies so that it continually enlarges by absorbing more and more of the universe into itself. Something like this same force operates in human beings. We too want to expand, to acquire, to swell in significance. …Emotionally, Weil concluded, we humans operate by laws as fixed as Newton’s. “All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.” Most of us remain trapped in the gravitational field of self-love, and thus we “fill up the fissures through which grace might pass.”’ 

The choice to live for God is a choice to live under grace and mercy and not under compulsion. It is an ongoing choice which the Jesus Prayer can facilitate. The beauty of the Prayer is its being a continual reminder both of God’s mercy towards us and of our call to imitate it in our dealings towards others and towards ourselves. It is a reminder true to the action we’re part of this morning in the eucharist as we see that mercy before us in Christ’s body broken and his blood poured forth, mercy we all the better carry out with us after Mass through the quiet discipline of reciting the Jesus Prayer.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us!

We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!

John Twisleton’s paperback ‘Using the Jesus Prayer’ (BRF) is out of print but the book is available on Kindle. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00P1HYON6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Friday in Eastertide 16.4.21

 

It’s Easter season when we celebrate as in this morning’s Gospel from St John Chapter 20 the risen Lord passing through doors closed out of fear to meet his friends.

All across the land doors are still largely closed through justifiable fear of infection yet the risen Lord finds his way through to open hearts. Then, through those open hearts, by their intercession, to many others bringing peace beyond understanding.

It’s my practice to spend the first hour of the day with the Lord. At this season my heart feels deeply the call to intercession. I’ve got my circle of acquaintance on an alphabetical sequence Sunday to Saturday. Sometimes, as I pray, the Lord lights up one or two names in front of me and gives me a task - that of contacting them in the way best for them in these circumstances. This means a text, e mail, online message or phone call later in the day.

People don’t like being preached at. They rarely dislike being prayed for. When I message my friends I say something like ‘I was thinking of you this morning in my prayers and will keep remembering you, as this morning, every Friday’. At first I thought this was too much like spiritual showing off, John Twisleton telling everyone he’d got a prayer list and he used it! I’ve come through this because it’s been the Lord’s invitation to do so and in social isolation the reminder others are praying for you is precious.

It’s precious because the risen Lord through our prayer and messaging reaches through closed doors into troubled hearts to say what he first said at Easter: ‘Peace be with you’ (John 20:19-22)

That peace is a gift of the Holy Spirit breathed on the first disciples in conjunction with sending them out. ‘As my Father has sent me, even so send I you’. In a profound sense that sending is from one heart to another. Just as we gain solace from friends who give ear to our own troubles so we are sent to others to give ear to theirs allowing the peace in us to flow to them.

Our prayer for others is immune from lockdown, as is our capacity to listen and speak to others indirectly. By devoting ourselves to regular intercession we focus away from self and are more disposed to the peaceable anointing of the Holy Spirit.

We can never underestimate the spiritual power released. As St Seraphim of Sarov wrote, ‘acquire the peace of the Spirit in your heart and thousands round you will find salvation’. 

More at https://elucidatingcontroversy.blogspot.com/

Wednesday in Eastertide 14.4.21

 

This morning we continue with the Acts of the Apostles, capturing the remarkable dynamic lent to the church in the wake of the resurrection. The apostles are imprisoned ‘but during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, brought them out, and said, "Go, stand in the temple and tell the people the whole message about this life”. Christ is risen and puts into gear this life - the eternal life he promised Nicodemus in today’s Gospel: ‘for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3:16). As believers we possess that life, sealed by baptism and confirmation, divine life gifted from out of the tomb, revealed over forty days and from Pentecost sent deep into the hearts of believers by the Holy Spirit.

‘The message about this life’ is rooted in the event we celebrated ten days ago. Christianity takes us beyond this world but it does so from the axis of time, from history, that of Christ and that of our own. In sharing ‘the message about this life’ we begin with the events arguing for their historicity. In weighing up the New Testament accounts one problem is that the references to the tomb are in the Gospel accounts written at least 20 years after the first letters of Paul which give little reference to the tomb save reference to Christ’s burial. Paul’s witness to the resurrection builds from his later encounter with the risen Lord Jesus which he associates with those of the apostles at Easter. So central is the resurrection to Paul’s thought that Acts 17:18 relates ‘he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection’. Just like the angel bidding the apostles in today’s reading Paul hands on a message of divine life. Opponents of Christianity see this preaching as built on Paul’s subjective visionary experiences and not on the history of Jesus. The Christian defence is to point to Paul’s many repeated references to Christ’s dying and rising as the objective side of the personal relationship believers enter into. This is linked to our subjective dying again and again to sin and rising again and again to new life in the Spirit. Death and resurrection is the pattern of Christian experience because it was the experience of Jesus. 

On Easter Sunday we renewed our baptism vows with this in mind, turning afresh to Christ as Saviour and inviting the Holy Spirit into our lives afresh. ‘The message about this life’ which is Christianity is inseparable from the ongoing drowning of our old sinful nature and our ongoing receipt of the new nature given by the Holy Spirit. As we prayed in the Collect, ‘grant us so to put away… malice and wickedness that we may always serve God in pure ness of living and truth’. So be it! More at https://elucidatingcontroversy.blogspot.com/

Holy Trinity, Cuckfield Easter 2 with commemoration of Prince Philip RIP 11th April 2021

Introduction to eucharist

On Classic FM yesterday Alan Titchmarsh said the room lit up when Prince Philip entered. Despite his sharp side the Duke of Edinburgh had a great spirit and possessed deep Christian faith. In yesterday’s Times obituary there is this quote from him: ‘Religious conviction is the strongest and probably the only factor in sustaining the dignity and integrity of the individual’. On this last of the eight days of Easter Octave we will be making a solemn commemoration of his passing at the end of the eucharist, standing in silence for a minute then listening to the National Anthem. As we begin this Easter eucharist we recall our own sharp side - no one of us is free from sin - and take a moment to entreat God’s mercy, so we also may better light up the lives around us.

Sermon

‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe’ (John 20:25). 

Thomas’s question chimes deep into lockdown experience. Refusal to believe in the face of tragic circumstances. For us those circumstances are parallel with the death of close friends through COVID and a wave of depression deadening those we love. All of us share this morning to some degree the sadness of the Queen and Royal Family. Though I rejoice to stand with you in Holy Trinity for the first time in months to celebrate Easter my joy is qualified by that reality akin to that of Thomas, bereaved and in that upper room lockdown. 

Yes, it is heartening to read evidence of people turning to religion to give shape and meaning to their empty lives. As the Duke of Edinburgh said, faith sustains our dignity and integrity. By contrast cynics see the current turning to faith as evidencing desperation to find escape from an awful scenario. The assumption is that religion is about escape from reality – and, yes, the brutal realities we’re living through seem to demand escape. 

What does Easter have to say to cynics and pessimists? Is what I’m about as a Christian otherworldly escapism? How does the Easter good news engage with the reality of human suffering and how can it best impact the loss of hope around us? We celebrate the eucharist this morning alongside the Paschal Candle into which five pins are pressed to represent the wounds of Christ in commemoration of today’s Gospel. ‘Jesus said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.' Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!' (John 20:27-28) 

How did the risen Lord deal with Thomas’ pessimism? He pointed him to the wounds he still carried from his crucifixion. In other words ‘you can be sure it is I, Thomas, and you can lay hold of sure and certain hope in the face of all in your world that would confound you’. The Jesus raised at Easter is the same Jesus killed through awful suffering upon the Cross. That’s why the Church adorns its Easter candle with nails. As the priest says, piercing the candle with five studs at the Easter Vigil: ‘By his holy and glorious wounds may Christ our Lord guard and keep us’. 

The Paschal Candle is a triumphant witness, standing tall, that says God is above death. It is also a reminder that God is not above suffering. That should be very important to us as witnesses to Christ in a world so lacking hope. The God and Father of Jesus, expects nothing of us he’s not prepared to go through himself. This is the ground of hope we cling to as Christians, hope that isn’t just out of this world – though the resurrection is all of that - but hope rooted in human reality. Again following the media coverage of Prince Philip’s death I recall Nicholas Witchell’s observation of how the Queen’s Christian faith would be an important consolation in her loss.

What we are about as Christians IS an engagement with otherworldly consolation, that’s absolutely true. Christianity is a metaphysical religion, it’s beyond (meta) the physical because of Christ’s resurrection. Yet it’s rooted in human reality for God revealed the resurrection by sending his Son to die for us. The five wounds of Christ on his arms, legs and side are the great symbol of this human reality. They engage with our sorrows, for he is and he remains for us, as Isaiah prophesied, ‘a man of sorrows acquainted with grief’ (Isaiah 53v3). 

If I am talking about Christian hope this morning I am talking not about a shallow optimism but resurrection faith firmly rooted in Christ as the suffering Saviour from all eternity. Second century Bishop Melito of Sardis in an Easter sermon wrote of how Christ’s sufferings should be seen in the suffering of holy people right back through the Old Testament: ‘He is the Passover of our salvation. He was present in many so as to endure many things. In Abel he was slain; in Isaac bound; in Jacob a stranger; in Joseph sold; in Moses exposed; in David persecuted; in the prophets dishonoured. He became incarnate of the Virgin…buried in the earth, but he rose from the dead, and was lifted up to the height of heaven. He is the silent lamb, the slain lamb, who was born of Mary the fair ewe. He was seized from the flock and dragged away to slaughter’.  

In Christ’s sufferings we see human suffering in a new light. I can’t speak too well myself, my sufferings have been slight in life so far, but I’ve been close to women and men of God who say so, who say God in Christ comes close in suffering. I think of Ursilla telling me how important and helpful the holding cross was she’d been given at the Hospice. Or when, the day before he died, as he lay on his bed, Colin welcomed anointing on his head and hands by sitting up and stretching his arms right out, as if on the Cross with Jesus. I think of Tom, of marking the cross in holy oil on him before he died marking this Easter week, like the Easter Candle, with a sorrowful Cross for his family.  No wonder Péguy said a Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ. Life is a vale of tears.

In our second reading Saint John the evangelist ‘declares to us the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us in Jesus Christ… who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world’ (1 John 1:2, 2:2). Elsewhere in Revelation the evangelist predicts the risen Christ’s return ‘Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him’ (Revelation 1:7). The wounds of Christ are a source of hope to believers, though they will be troublesome to those who pierced him and that includes you and I through unrepented sins. That scripture is the basis of Charles Wesley’s Advent hymn ‘Lo he comes’ that enters imaginatively into the sight of the risen Christ coming to be judge of the world: 

Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears;

cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshipers;

with what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars! 

Indeed it will be - that is our sure and certain hope, which should help us bring all pessimists to Christ’s Cross. We Christians are saddened by suffering but our sadness is saved from despair by that very Cross and by the out of this world resurrection truth we’re celebrating in these great days of Eastertide!

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Easter Sunday 4.4.21

 

‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ (Mark 16:3)

The question of the women chimes deep into lockdown experience. When will we get out of this trial? It's a weight upon us with so many dimensions: physical, emotional, spiritual and social. The economic consequences have been dreadful through loss of employment and income. The loss of close friends through COVID and a wave of depression deadening those we love has been harsh. Though I rejoice to stand with you in St Wilfrid’s for the first time in months to celebrate Easter my joy is qualified.

‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’

Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome came to complete the burial rite for Our Lord.  Sabbath restrictions had ended so they were free to do so. The stone was lifted for them - not only the stone but the legalism of Sabbath and the Sabbath itself. Within a short time this gave way to gatherings like this ‘early on the first day of the week when the sun had risen’. The Lord’s people now gather on the Lord’s day - Sunday - on account of what those women experienced. The Lord’s people gather on the Lord’s day around the Lord’s table and, yes, today, most joyfully in the Lord’s house. Well done all who worked hard with Arthur, Derek and this morning, Fr Mike, to get us back in style! ‘This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it… this is the day Jesus Christ vanquished hell, broke the chains of death and rose triumphant from the grave’.

‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’

For those with a weight of intellectual questioning we can offer no proof of Christ’s resurrection, only strong evidence. That is the case for any past event. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus stems from the faith of the church and an accumulation of evidence. Christianity stands or falls on the event which has a documented history captured by the impressive list in our second reading: ‘I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles’ (1 Corinthians 15:3-7).

‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’

The women approached the tomb with a question expressing outwardly the weight inside of them, upon their hearts, through the loss of the one they loved. 

In lockdown we share aspects of bereavement with them this morning, asking where is God in all of this. Our annual Holy Week celebration is grand reminder that God expects nothing of us that he is not prepared to go through himself. Christianity is inseparable from suffering and, this morning, the supernatural working through it.

On Easter Sunday we are gathered to One uniquely qualified to lift hearts from despair. ‘A Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ’ wrote Charles Peguy. The pandemic is a tremendous weight. We and many in our circle are in bereavement, frustration, depression, loneliness, anxiety and confusion. By allowing the Cross into this darkness, by welcoming afresh the mystery of Christ’s love at Easter, there can be transformation. Burdens lifted. Intercession gaining a spring in its step. Discernment coming afresh. Grace to accept things we cannot change. Courage to make changes we ought to make. All is grace - this is made clear to us on Easter Sunday - all is grace! The gracious God and Father of Jesus does what we could never do or earn or even imagine. God brings all that is out of nothing, Jesus from a Virgin womb and life out of death!

‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’

One weight I feel upon my own heart is the fact this feast of feasts is being celebrated around seven altars or tables in Haywards Heath this morning. Yet I have suggested to me an image of uplift in this scenario. The three women approaching the tomb represent three church sisters, Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal. On Wednesday morning fifty faces were on zoom convened by St Wilfrid’s to an ecumenical stations of the Cross offered for Haywards Heath. They came from our two Churches, our fellow Churches of The Ascension and St Richard’s and from the Baptist, Methodist, Roman Catholic and Ruwach Pentecostal Churches. We went around the fourteen stations of the Cross hearing thoughts and prayers in turn from the three great traditions, Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal. The Holy Spirit seemed to be upon us as seven Haywards Heath churches came to kneel at the foot of the Cross. This morning we stand up again recognising afresh that we live best as Churches knowing our individual need of mercy. Whether we are Catholic, Anglican, Protestant or Pentecostal we stand in the same place when it comes to Holy Week.

‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’

It is you, Jesus, you who have done this, are doing it and will do it for us as individuals and churches! There is no knock down proof of a past event but that of Christ’s resurrection invites three questions. Is the evidence for it trustworthy or is it not? Is Jesus the Son of God or is he not? Are you and I destined for eternal splendour or not? As Alexander Schmemann affirms: ‘The only meaningful thing in life is what conquers death, and not “what” but “who” - Christ. There is undoubtedly only one joy: to know him and share him with each other’. May such joy, qualified by the pain we share, lift us so lockdown eases in both its inward and outward aspects.  ‘This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Alleluia!

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Good Friday 2.4.21

As we prepare to unveil the Cross in the liturgy of Good Friday may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts unveil the truth of Christ crucified.

Some of you have been following the talks earlier in the week and maybe the social media discussion about God and the Cross which followed posting the sermons online. That discussion has ranged over how God has a sameness to us whilst being profoundly different from us. Love is his sameness, holiness his difference. My Facebook friend Chris put this comment on one of the talks I posted: ‘It is a very challenging question of Christian's when asked..."Why do you worship someone that insisted on a human sacrifice for him to forgive the people. If he was such a divine and noble figure… surely he would have just forgiven them anyway. The lesson that seems to come from this account is that forgiveness will only be given after sacrificial and excruciating punishment’.

This was my answer to Chris: ‘When people outside Christian circles debate with us about the Cross we find common ground in a perception that the world needs putting right by forgiveness. To get beyond the stumbling block of divine love willing suffering requires a vision of God with loving sameness to yet holy difference from us. Attaining such a vision can follow scrutiny of Christian basics where there is readiness to take seriously what God might have said of God, history and the future through scripture and the community of faith. Faith seeming to contradict logic brings an invitation to seek the understanding beyond reason the Holy Spirit supplies seekers’. On the same conversation thread Bishop Lindsey added in a simpler way: ‘The minute you take your eyes off the crib when you gaze on the cross, your doctrine of the atonement becomes mystifying rather than a mystery. ‘God was in Christ...’

It takes God to understand God and God to explain the Cross. I can speak, as I am doing, but no words of mine can provide a reasoned base for Good Friday. God speaks of it in his word today. ‘He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account. Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (Isaiah 53:3-6).

The loving action of God in sending his Son to suffer goes back to the design of creation and its intended redesign in Christ to make eternal friendship with God possible by dealing with what breaks that friendship. 

Jesus died in our place to live in our place. He accepted the just penalty for sin, in the face of God’s holiness, on our behalf. This has become a transformative power in our lives as Christians. When we come repeatedly to the Cross our sinful nature is repeatedly put to death and the life of his Holy Spirit repeatedly gains power within us. That nature will rise again and again to our dying day but the death of Christ reveals its number is up - the decisive victory over sin, death and the devil has been achieved though we remain in a ‘mopping up operation’ in the wake of that victory.

The conflict of those two powers, one life-giving and the other death-dealing, is evident to faith. Priest poet Raneiro Cantalamessa writes: ‘In the Alps in summer, when a mass of cold air from the north clashes with hot air from the south, frightful storms break out disturbing the atmosphere; dark clouds move around, the wind whistles, lightning rends the sky from one end to the other and the thunder makes the mountains tremble. Something similar took place in the Redeemer’s soul where the extreme evil of sin clashed with the supreme holiness of God disturbing it to the point that it caused him to sweat blood and forced the cry from him, “My soul is sorrowful to the point of death… nevertheless Father, not my will but yours be done.”’ 

Holy Week is an invitation to climb down to the level ground at the foot of the Cross where all are on a level due to sin. As we seek forgiveness for our pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice and sloth, sin’s power over us is broken. As a priest privileged to hear Confessions I see again and again people coming to that level ground before the Cross and being lifted up by the loving forgiveness shown there for them as individuals. ‘Go in peace, the Lord has put away your sins’. I heard those words for myself earlier in Holy Week. 

The pandemic has opened new dimensions of suffering through bereavement, frustration and depression. On Good Friday we recall how the Cross stands tall for us as Christians in all of this, giving us grace to accept the things we cannot change and help to be witnesses of the love of God in our situation. Our best resource as believers, and indeed as human beings, is the sense we have of our need for mercy. That mercy is displayed from the highest place on this holy day. 

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world!