Sermons Online ...
Sermon - Responding to the Suffering Christ - 6th April 2007
Saint Aidan’s West Epping 8:30am
We humans were made for relationship.
In Genesis, in the world God made good, the first thing described as not being good was that the man was alone: without human relationship his life was incomplete. By creating Eve, God provided a partner who would fill the gap in his life, who would share his life. We were made for relationship: relationship with other people, relationship with God. Sin is an attack on relationship: often our relationships with other people, always our relationship with God. To put it another way, sin is a rejection of love: a refusal to relate in love, a refusal to accept love, which is meant to be the defining characteristic of our relationships.
The cross was a very lonely place for Jesus. He had been abandoned by his friends, attacked on so many sides, estranged from his Father as he bore the sin of the world. Jesus experienced the full power of what sin is all about. And yet so many people played their part in that wonderful tragedy, that terrible miracle. For it is indeed a shocking evil, and yet the source of immeasurable blessing.
Think of the characters of the passion. Judas the betrayer: even he could have been forgiven, but he found no way to repent and come back to God. Peter the coward: so sure of himself, yet when the heat was applied, he melted right away. But he was wonderfully redeemed. The disciples who hid themselves away from the dreadful drama. Caiaphas the high priest, corrupt to the core, but going through the motions of religion. Pontius Pilate, the weakling of a governor: he knows he should release Jesus, but gives in to the demands of the crowd, to maintain peace and hang on to his position. The soldiers who are so brutalized that they can beat Jesus in an appalling way, and calmly gamble for his clothing as he hangs in agony on the cross: they don’t care, they’re not interested. The bystanders who react with mockery or concern or disinterest or fear. Only the three women and John come close to the cross.
But it is the centurion of Matthew and Mark who realizes the truth: that this executed criminal is in fact the Son of God. And it is the respectable wealthy religious Joseph of Arimathea, the sort of person who was so often taken to task by Jesus, who summons up the courage to seek and gain permission to provide a decent burial for Jesus.
It’s quite a collection of people, isn’t it? And of course there are others: Herod the curious cynic; Barabbas, in whose place Jesus in a sense died; the thieves on the crosses, dying with Jesus; Mary and John. But the point is essentially the same. Jesus, the “man for others” as he has been called, died for all these people. He did battle with sin and evil. It looked as if they had triumphed. But in fact the victory belonged to Jesus. He so identified with us even in our sin that the Bible says that he took our sin upon himself - indeed our reading from Isaiah prophesies this very thing. He endured hell, where there is no such thing as love, that we might come to know the perfect love of heaven.
Good Friday demonstrates the love of God as no other day: it reveals the depths to which God’s love for us reaches. It opens up to us forgiveness and reconciliation, despite the awfulness of sin. Through the death of Christ, the way is opened up to a restored relationship with God. But how do we respond?
This question of our response was raised for me in an intriguing way by the picture for April in the calendar by Michael Leunig, the Australian cartoonist. Some of you may have a copy, distributed at the end of last year with the Herald. In the cartoon, there is a man settled back on his couch watching TV. The picture on the screen shows Jesus hanging on his cross. The man is very relaxed and comfortable, a cigarette in one hand, a can of beer in the other. He has already had a few cans, which are now lying on the floor. But what is so intriguing is the position of this man. With his outstretched arms and body, this man himself forms the shape of a cross.
Intriguing indeed! Some might see it as provocative or even offensive. At first when I saw it I felt a bit uncomfortable myself. I am not sure what Leunig means by it: he is a man of deep spiritual interest, although I do not know that he would call himself a Christian in the traditional sense. To me, this picture shows a man completely disconnected from the picture on the screen. He sees a man suffering dreadfully, but to our viewer it is just relaxing entertainment. Here is a suffering Messiah, but to our viewer he is not much more than wallpaper. With all the distractions of today’s world, it is a very contemporary reaction to the death of Jesus. To be vaguely aware of it, and not really respond at all.
And yet the man fails to see that he is connected. He is oblivious to the correspondence between Jesus and himself, even as he lounges there. Yes, there is an identification between the Christ on the cross and us in our broken humanity. But we can fail to see it, We can fail to take any notice, just like those soldiers on the first Good Friday.
So how do we react to the Saviour who died on that first Good Friday to bring us forgiveness and salvation? We know we must not let it wash over us as if it were of no significance. Nor can we simply reject his death for us.
This Good Friday may we allow our faith to be renewed - our acceptance of all that he has done for us. Let us never forget that whatever mistakes we have made in the past, the cross deals with them for us. Through the cross, God’s love triumphs over sin, hate, indifference and death.
Through the forgiveness that the cross brings, we are restored to the relationship with God for which we were made. We receive the love of God in all its fullness. May we open us to that love, that forgiveness, as we trust in Christ our Saviour. And as we respond in faith to his sacrificial love, may we receive that love and allow it to fill our life.
We were made for relationship. As we are restored through Christ to relationship with God, may we allow that relationship to guide us in our daily lives. May his love overflow, so that we not only love God more and more, but that more and more we live out what it means to love our neighbour as ourselves. Amen.