Our Representative: A Homily for Good Friday

 Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on Good Friday, 29 March, 2024.  

Readings for this day:  Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42

What would our service and our church look like on this day to someone who were to experience Christian worship for the first time?  What conclusions would that person draw about our faith?

Recently in the Anglican Digest, an American bishop, the Rt. Rev. Brian Burgess, described an old childhood friend who had reached out to him and wanted to reunite on the weekend of Easter, the Triduum as we call it.   Since the Bishop could not take time off work, he invited his old friend to come and visit him at church, and so his friend, who was totally unfamiliar with Christianity, arrived at a Good Friday service to find the church “stripped, cold, and bare”.

Bishop Burgess wrote that he was grateful that his friend came on this particular day in the church year.

“Now if I had pick one service, one observance of our Calendar that speaks to those who are unchurched and who have quite difficult career paths to navigate, I would choose Good Friday.   I say that because we lose sight of the essence of Easter when we have no concept of what it is we are being saved from.   We can become distracted from the cross of Christ.  … The goal of our Christian lives is our death and resurrection in Jesus Christ.”

Notice that the Bishop did not write, “the death and resurrection in Jesus Christ”.    He is surely correct to say “our death and resurrection in Jesus Christ” because if today, Good Friday, is about what happens to Jesus on the cross, then it is also about us.   How exactly we are involved is a mystery to be sure.  Theologians speak of how the crucifixion is about Jesus atoning for our sins, but how this happens is a mystery which no one theology of atonement can satisfactorily explain.

The American priest and theologian Fleming Rutledge, whose writings I quoted frequently during Epiphany this year, has written a massive and learned book on The Crucifixion which is essential reading.   This year as I reread it, one passage stayed with me.  Rutledge mentions that the novelist Joseph Mitchell, who was himself a Christian, described a last conversation with her sister at her deathbed.   His sister asked him “what does Jesus’ death on the cross a long time ago have to do with my sins now?”   Mitchell recalled how he struggled to find words, and finally he said “Somehow, he was our representative” (Rutledge 6-7).

He was our representative.  Our second reading from Hebrews might lead us to doubt that, since it stresses Christ’s reverent obedience and submission to God’s will.    But the essential thing the author of Hebrews and Joseph Mitchell agree on is that Christ is our representative, in the same way that a priest represents his or her congregation.     And, on the cross, Jesus represents us and our sinfulness in a way that we cannot.

What can I say about sinfulness that the world does not already teach us?   Every day we learn that sinfulness is both enormous and seemingly intractable.    The UN tries to end the war in Gaza, and yet the various sides refuse a ceasefire for their own reasons, and millions slide into starvation.   Missiles crash into apartment blocks in Ukraine, and yet politicians talk about freezing the conflict rather than solving it.   Homelessness and gross disparities in wealth increase in our prosperous country, and yet no party seems to have any real answer.

The cross teaches us that these are our problems are sin, sin originating from within the human heat, for it was humans, seemingly righteous humans, political humans, that nailed Jesus to the cross.    The cross teaches us that without God, sin has no definitive answer.  

It is popular for many in our church today to see the cross as an instrument of political oppression, that Christ is the victim of this oppression, and that we are called to resist oppression and embrace a vision of social justice.   Indeed, God’s call is a call of social justice, for Jesus said at the start of his ministry that the kingdom of God has come near.    But, we can only enter the kingdom of God through the cross, for unless we healed of our sin, our attempts at justice will always just be social projects, subject to the whims and trends of the world.

Tomorrow night, at St Luke’s, we will witness a baptism, and be reminded that through baptism we share in Christ’s death as we die to our sins and rise with Christ, regaining what was always dreamed for us in the heart and mind of God.   Today, we can see that same salvation as we look to the cross, the place where we are healed and transformed.

I leave the last word to that great Anglican poetic and mystic, John Donne, who wrote:

“We think that Paradise and Calvarie,

Christ’s Crosse and Adam’s tree, stood in one place.

Look, Lord, and finde both Adams met in me;

As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,

May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.”

A Meditation For Good Friday

This was part of a series of dramatic monologues that people in my parish were asked to come up with for the Stations of the Cross yesterday.   Each Station was presented by a voice of someone who was present there, and was followed by a meditation and a prayer.  This was mine, and there were many that were much much better.

 

Second Station  Jesus Takes Up His Cross

 

John 19:13-17

 

 When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge’s bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, ‘Here is your King!’ They cried out, ‘Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!’ Pilate asked them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but the emperor.’ Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

 

 

My name is Pollo.   Sergeant in the tenth century, second cohort, Third Legion.   Twenty years service, marched clear across the empire and back three times in that.   Seen a thing or two, I can tell you.

 

I remember because it was Passover, lots of strangers in Jerusalem, things were on edge and the high mucky mucks in the Palace wanted extra security.  So me and my lads drew extra duty, out in the crowds, watching things and then when they arrested that fellow, Jesus, well, it was all a mess, wasn’t it?

 

I had trouble with the new recruits, cuz they was all nervous, with the crowds shouting and all.   And Pilate, him mucking around being indecisive, and asking the crowd what they wanted, this Jesus or Barabbas. I wouldn’t have done it that way, no sir.  I would have had me lads wade into the crowd, swords out, settle them down, show em Rome was boss, that’s my style.  Anyway, that was above my pay grade, wasn’t it.

 

So it was decided, like, and Centurion Quintus, he brings this Jesus over to me, and says, Pollo, here’s your man, get him up the hill smart like, and I saluted and said yes sir, like you does.  Now I could see that Pilate’s guard had roughed him up bad, which was a problem for me, since he still had a way to walk and him being all messed up, well that was my problem now. Wasn’t fair,  was it?    So I says, Right, sunny Jim, there’s your lumber, get hauling.  It wasn’t the whole cross, see, just the beam that they nailed the arms to, the poles were fixed in the ground.  Our lads what did the crucifying, they were pros, they could get twenty men raised up high in a morning and still have time for dice and wine.  

 

Now normally, they’re all Boo hoo, I have a wife and child, have mercy but this Jesus was quiet, just stood there, quiet, like a lamb, which was odd, so I looks at him, and I thinks, hang on, he’s that same bloke what I saw on the donkey, a week ago, when he came into the city, the crowds all adoring and welcoming him, like.  That wasn’t half strange, seeing how they all turned on him, and what was more, he didn’t look like a king, but he looked, I dunno, special, like.  Different, y’know?  I says to him, Well, your highness, where’s your people now?  Not much of a king, are you? And I meant it as a joke, like, but it came out all sad, sympathetic, like, and he just looked at me, then he turned to his cross, like he had his duty, same as me.

 

I could see him trying to lift the wood like a good un, but he was right played out and finding it hard going.  Normally I’d give a fellow a taste of the whip, or have the lads tickle him with spears to get him going, but none of us wanted to do that.  Now me, I’m a simple soldier, can’t explain it, but it just seemed, well, wrong.  Even Glavus, my youngest soldier, he was even wanting to help this man, can you believe it?  Back in ranks, i shouted, and I could see I had to something, and quick.  We had to get him up the hill and onto his cross, because those were our orders, weren’t they?  We was following orders …

 

 

John 19:13-17

 

 When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge’s bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, ‘Here is your King!’ They cried out, ‘Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!’ Pilate asked them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but the emperor.’ Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

 

 

Meditation

 

For the Romans, the cross was part of a system of brutality and discipline that made their empire work.  The men who ran the empire, like the soldier Pollo, had their orders and they did their duty.  

 

Two thousand years later, the world still works that way.  Some men made nerve gas and put in bombs, other men loaded the bombs onto planes, and other men dropped those bombs on a village because they had their orders. Then as now, rebellions have to be crushed, power has to be reestablished, kings must protect themselves.

 

How does Good Friday challenge these earthly systems of power.  By lifting the cross to his shoulders and taking it on himself, what does Jesus say about how God’s power works?  As Christians, and as the Church, how does Jesus teach us how to live in a world of earthly power?

 

Prayer

 

Gracious God, thank you for your son and for his willingness to lift the cross on our behalf.   Teach us how we as your people can also embrace the cross, and show the world how your love and grace are the source of your power.