Preacher: Gordon Jeff
Readings:
Ezekiel 37, 1-14
Romans 8, 6-11
John 11, 1-45
The fifth Sunday in Lent is, of course, known as Passion
Sunday. Not, obviously, anything
erotic, but from the Latin verb ‘to suffer’.
We are given this opportunity to look in advance, as it were, at how we
might understand something of the meaning of Good Friday.
Now in 2,000 years there has been a tremendous variety of
ways in which Christians have understood their faith, and Good Friday is no
exception.
Other than in the most narrow-minded of Christian circles
there has seldom been any pressure for any one particular understanding of Good
Friday to be accepted. Indeed, in my
own days of theological college just down the road in Wells, we were presented
in turn with each of the theologies of the Atonement – of Good Friday – and the
strengths AND the weaknesses of each theory were offered to us, and in a very
adult way it was left to each one of us to discover what made the best sense to
us.
This morning, then, I’d like to offer one way of looking at
Good Friday, not, please, to dismiss the other ways, but because when I came
across this no less than 51 years ago, it was what finally enabled me to feel I
could join the Christian family. I’d
had, and still have, difficulty with some of the traditional theories, and I
know from many people who have come to talk to me over the years that I’m far
from being alone in this. So, please,
this is only one way of looking at Good Friday.
I think I have referred to this before, but in one of the
side chapels of Wells Cathedral is a medieval carving which is rare and
unusual, because at the time when it was carved it would have been regarded as
heretical. It’s quite a small carving
of a traditional God the Father holding before him a small crucifix, with the
figure of Jesus on it. But on the
Father’s face is an expression of profound grief.
Now traditional theology used to hold (how did it know, one
asks?) – traditional theology used to hold that the Creator could not suffer,
the Creator was above any pain. To suggest
that God could experience pain was called the Patripassian heresy.
This so-called heresy has long since been abandoned – how
could a loving God not suffer in the face of all the cruelty and
suffering of the world?
Let’s begin from a key text from St John’s gospel, which you
must be tired of hearing from me, but I’m not apologising! In the Prologue to his gospel John writes
of the ‘Light which enlightens everyone who comes into the world’.
In other words, the Light, the Spirit of God, of Christ, already
dwells in potentiality in all creation.
This is not pantheism, which claims that everything is God, which
the church has always rejected – but it is pan-en-theism, i.e.
something of God in everything, with which the church is happy, and
which accords with John’s gospel. That
is why anybody or anything can astound us with a sense of beauty, wonder, awe
or glory – here is that which is of God in that person, creature, place or
situation.
But on the negative side, if there is something of God in all
creation, what happened on Good Friday gives us a glimpse of suffering which
implies God’s pain as well.
Good Friday showed us something of God sharing our human suffering. And if there is something of God in each of
us, then God continues to share in the pain and suffering of the
world.
One of the great novels of the 20th century,
which I’m sure some of you will have read, is Helen Waddell’s ‘Peter Abelard’.
Abelard, a theologian of the Middle Ages (1079 – 1142), is
of course best known for his affair with Heloise and the tragic results of that
affair, along with a set of very powerful letters, which have survived. But I’d like to take up the story from
Helen Waddell’s novel, where Abelard is living in disgrace in a forest with his
young friend Thibault. (I’ve had to
shorten it a bit)
Abelard and Thibault hear a terrible cry in the woods. At first they think it is a child in agony,
but then they discover that this terrible cry comes from a rabbit caught in a
cruel trap.
I quote from the book:
‘Thibault held the teeth of the trap apart, and Abelard
gathered up the little creature in his hands.
It lay for a moment breathing quickly, then in some blind recognition of
the kindness that had met it at the last, the small head thrust and nestled
against his arm, and it died.
It was that last confiding thrust that broke Abelard’s
heart. He looked down at the little
draggled body, his mouth shaking.’
‘Thibault,’ he said, ‘do you think there is a God at all? Whatever has come to me, I earned it. But what did this one do?’
Thibault nodded.
‘I know,’ he said.
‘Only – I think God is in it too.’
Abelard looked up sharply.
‘In it? Do you mean
that it makes Him suffer, the way it does us?’
Again Thibault nodded.
‘Thibault, do you mean Calvary?’
Thibault shook his head.
‘That was only a piece of it – the piece that we saw – in
time. Like that.’ He pointed to a fallen tree beside them
sawn through the middle.
‘That dark ring there, it goes up and down the whole length
of the tree. But you only see it where
it is cut across. That is what
Christ’s life was; the bit of God that
we saw.’
‘Then, Thibault,’ said Abelard slowly, ‘you think that all
this,’ he looked down at the little quiet body in his arms, ‘all the pain of
the world, was Christ’s cross?’
‘God’s cross,’ said Thibault. ‘And it goes on.’
‘The Patripassian heresy,’ muttered Abelard
mechanically. ‘But, O God, if it were
true. Thibault, it must be. At least, there is something at the back of
it that is true. And if we could find
it – it would bring back the whole world’.
….And the key phrase in that, ‘Christ’s life was the bit of
God that we saw’, with that wonderful image of the fallen tree trunk, where we
can see the rings only where the tree is sawn across, but the rings go through
the whole length of the tree.
This seems to me to be an immense help in our attempting to
minimise the pain you and I might cause to any part of Creation – when I
cause pain, not only will other people suffer, not only other creatures
suffer, indeed, not even only myself, but we add to the weight of God’s
Cross.
I don’t know whether this helps or not, but may it be that
when you or I or anyone suffer, we are in some way ourselves, like that little
rabbit, taking on our share of the weight of God’s Cross? For myself, I need some kind of rationale
in those times of pain or stress, anxiety or suffering.
Contrariwise, I like to think that every act of kindness, of
self-sacrifice, not only helps other people, not only helps Creation, not only
builds us up ourselves as bigger people, but also somehow diminishes that
weight of God’s Cross.
As you and I try, with God’s help, to live good lives, that
Indwelling Spirit is released to work through us, so that our selfish little
self diminishes, and we begin to become our true Selves, through whom that
Light can shine brightly.
So that while I have no intention of downplaying those more
traditional approaches to Good Friday which do seem to speak to some people, I
hope that what I’ve been trying to say this morning might speak meaningfully to
some of you.
And all being well, I hope on Easter morning to try to look
at the even more
positive side of all
this.