Good Friday
The Passion Gospel for today is that of Saint John, which is markedly different from Matthew and Mark, the two 'extremes', not unnaturally, being bridged by Luke.
In the Gospel of Mark, developed by Matthew, Jesus is a sorry and taunted figure but in John's Passion Narrative, right from the beginning, Jesus is in control of events. Instead of the hurry of Mark through the Passover ritual, John sets down a great discourse covering five Chapters. Instead of a cursory arrest, Jesus holds the soldiers at bay until he is ready to be taken; instead of being a plaything of sadistic authoritarians, Jesus goes all the way with Pilate until the temporal ruler gasps out "What is truth?"; and in this Gospel the Cross is not a tree of shame but a triumphal throne. This Gospel is the root of the concept of the victorious Christ, of Christ the King.
It seems to me rather impious to preach on Good Friday when most of us simply lack the appropriate words to match the events. Most of us, including me, are just not good enough to preach on Good Friday but we judge that our ill formed words are useful to people who are incapable of handling silence. But as we are dispersed, some words of comfort might be appropriate.
First the bad news. There is no way in which we can begin to understand the true depth of earthly sinfulness. Even as we look around at our degradation of our planet, at civil war in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, intermittently in South Sudan and Mali, and never far away in the Central African Republic and the so-called Democratic Republic of the Congo, as we look at child exploitation, people trafficking, human slavery, political oppression, torture, and the rule of madmen, even if we add all that together, and all that we do not know specifically but know implicitly, we still cannot reach an approximation of the extent and power of evil.
It is only when we make such feeble but astonishing calculations that we can begin to understand what it means for the death of Jesus to save us from our Sin. Certainly this death means that we, individually, will be saved from what in almost all cases are tiny individual sins, sins which we spend too much time thinking about, making the Crucifixion too personal to us, thereby trivialising it, but the most important aspect of the Crucifixion is that it saves the world from collective Sin of commission and omission. The death of Jesus is the point at which, to use a contemporary phrase, God takes back control.
This, I think, is what puzzles both us and those who look quizzically at Christianity: how can we live as Easter people in the knowledge that we shall be saved while living in a world of palpable wickedness? The problem is that many of us and our secular critics are, deep down, Pelagians; we wonder how we will be saved when the world is so wicked. Or, alternatively, we think we will be saved because we set our trivial sins before God so that the blood of Christ might wash them away. But the death of Jesus has much larger significance.
And here, bringing the good news, I venture into controversial but essential theological territory (Bentley Hart), although I am inclined to think that inclusionism and particularism in respect of salvation are more matters of temperament than sound doctrine. The death of Jesus, as he promised in his own words, is an objective event; it did not happen because we believe it, it happened because Jesus as God in history, determined it should happen, not in forensic detail but in general terms; Jesus died to free Israel from its Sin, as Scripture ordained and, in doing so, he died to save his followers - us - from a time of testing so that we would not suffer from the consequences of the erroneous use of free will. This was a cosmic event to free the world, whether the world wanted to be free or not and whether the world knew it had been freed or not. The answer to the age old philosophical question as to whether a tree falls if nobody sees it falling is that of course it does; to argue otherwise is narcissistic. Likewise, Jesus has saved the world whatever anybody thinks about it, whether we like it or not.
What makes a Christian difference is not that we are saved but that we are fortunate enough to know that we are saved; that is the good news which we are charged to share with others which is why Christianity should be fundamentally joyful instead of being heretically judgmental, with clerical power brokers saying who they think will be saved and who not.. There were no gate keepers at the Eucharistic precursor of the feeding of the five thousand.
There might seem to be a contradiction between the specific salvation in reference to the Jews and to the followers of Jesus on the one hand and the cosmic event of the Crucifixion on the other but that arose, I think, because what started out as universal was commandeered by the particular, Christ the King of the World was forced to wear the smaller crown of the King of Christians, and then certain kinds of Christians and, in our own lifetime, certain kinds of kinds of Christians. Christ's control of events in John's Gospel has been, if you like, over-mediated by the Church he left as his gift.
Outside our houses where Good Friday worship is offered, the question will be why such a triumphant, controlling God will 'allow' so many to die prematurely, randomly or undeservedly. The uncomfortable answer is that God made us to live on the earth and Jesus died so that heaven and earth should be united but God did not make the earth nor Jesus die to save us from the exigencies which form our condition. There might be worlds where everything is perfect, denying the exercise of free will, of our capacity to choose to love; and there may be worlds so cruel that they are beyond our capacity for compassion; but the world in which we live provides scope for love and compassion and it is the place in which Christ's triumph should be celebrated.
The Cross has not freed us from accident, nor unforeseen setbacks nor unfortunate events which appear to be arbitrary but it has confirmed the triumph of love whose victory we were created to affirm and proclaim, the common news for the common man.