Friday: The Way to Calvary

continuing this week's reflections by Ray Anglesea


Lord, our master, whose glory fills the whole earth, show us by your Passion that you, the true Son of God, triumph even in the deepest humiliation: Introduction, St John Passion: J.S. Bach, composed for the Good Friday Vespers Service of 1724, St Nicholas Church, Leipzig.


The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu writing in The Times 2 at the start of this year’s Holy Week (Monday 18th April 2011) spoke of a world “where governments that seemed impregnable are being overthrown.” We think of the unrest and turmoil in the Middle East, civil war in Libya, the Ivory Coast, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Korea and, of course, Jerusalem. I am reminded in our Morning Prayer Old Testament readings from Lamentations this week how “lonely sits the city (of Jerusalem), how like a widow she has become, a city that weeps bitterly in the night, who has no one to comfort her, her friends have become her enemies.” The Archbishop comments are a stark reminder that the Christian gospel is no philosophical theory or mere symbolic story; Christians are on the front line. It is a gospel of salvation that has at its heart the execution by barbaric torture of a particular man in a particular place at a particular point in time, this year represented so graphically for me by the crucifix Lam’a Sabach’thani (Matthew 27 v46) in Durham Cathedral, by the Russian Sculptor Kirill Sokolov (1930-2004). In his obituary in The Guardian it was reported that “Sokolov regarded life as essentially tragic; he saw art as a kind of salvation.” The sculpture gives powerful and poignant expression to the suffering of people at the hands of oppressors.

What we remember on this Good Friday is all of a piece with the intense fighting around the city of Misrata, Libya. Reports on the news channels indicate that hundreds of people have been killed and 1000’s injured since late February. Golgotha, the place of the skull, where nails smashed through the wrists and feet of Jesus, the field teacher and healer from Nazareth in Galilee, stands for the skulls of every war and every genocide. Betrayed by his friends, self-preserving denial, making sport with prisoners, the mockery of crowds, spectators drawn to a spectacle, the soldiers doing their duty and dicing for his clothes, a mother in agony and a knot of women helplessly looking on – it all happens time and time again – “where human rights are perverted in the presence of the Most High (Lamentations 3 v35).

Jesus was put to death in an occupied nation. His crucifixion was the direct consequence of his challenge to the religious authorities of his day. It was no less a convenient way for a jittery Roman governor, nervous of trouble at Passover time, to get rid of a potential threat. The cocktail of the crucifixion - as I was reminded last night at the Cathedral’s compline address given by the former Bishop of Salisbury; Rt Revd David Stanclifffe - was a mixture of religion and politics. Yet although this event anchors it in history we are compelled to look deeper to see why the Cross is the mark of Christian identity and the disclosure of what God is like.

The gospels mark the ministry of Jesus with predictions of his passion. Sacrifice and suffering are at the very heart of who he is. As the 19th century novelist Dostoevsky affirmed, “loving humility is a terrible force: it is the strongest of all things and there is nothing like it.” Jesus proclaimed the coming of the kingdom, or rule, of God, a kingdom that was neither pursued nor established by the ways of violence and power. His kingdom as he tells Pilate in John’s gospel is “not of this world.” Only if it were would his servants fight.

And yet the bible tells us there is a fight, a fight of a cosmic order of which Jesus is a part, which to me in more enlightened times I find unfathomable. The ministry of Jesus is seen as wrestling with the powers of evil of and engagement with that engulfing darkness, named as sin and death, of which I can understand. When Judas goes out to betray Jesus, St John with all his layers of Gospel meanings notes that it was night, and at the crucifixion, the culmination of this struggle, the gospels record that there was darkness over the land.

Jesus came to do his Father’s will, showing that will to be a love going to the uttermost, reaching out into the very darkness of hell, plumbing the depths of human sin, betrayal, abandonment and rejection. In a costly work of reconciliation Jesus defeats the power of darkness and establishes peace. That peace is the reconciliation of a sinful, fallen humanity, caught in a web of the worship of false gods, and driven by selfish desires, with the God who made men and women in the image of his love that they might reflect his likeness.

Today is “good” only because of Easter. The passion story which comes to a close today would be vastly different without the Resurrection. It is the hope kindled by the Easter encounters with the Risen Jesus that makes all things new, a theme that I was reminded of at a dear friend’s father’s funeral today held in the very old 11th century Norman church of St Helen, Kelloe. In the light of Easter we see that love’s redeeming work was indeed done through the cross, not apart from the cross. There the fight was fought and the battle won. It was from the darkness, silence, death and the hell of the utter apartness from God that Christ rose in triumph.
And the Easter good news of the Cross and resurrection has been found to bring hope and life in the most appalling situations, in refugee camps, on battlefields and in the most abject human misery. Today we remember that even if we go down to hell God is there, and in that love going to the uttermost, we do indeed find our peace.

Rest in peace, sacred body, for which I weep no longer, and bring me also to my rest. The grave that is yours and holds no further suffering, for me opens Heaven and closes Hell. The Conclusion, St John Passion. J S Bach, composed for the Good Friday Vespers Service of 1724, St Nicholas Church, Leipzig.

Psalm 27
Colossians 1 v 19+20