Reading from John chapter 19: 38 - 42

After all this, Joseph of Arimathea (he was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, because he was intimidated by the Jews) petitioned Pilate to take the body of Jesus. Pilate gave permission. So Joseph came and took the body.

Nicodemus, who had first come to Jesus at night, came now in broad daylight carrying a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. They took Jesus' body and, following the Jewish burial custom, wrapped it in linen with the spices. There was a garden near the place he was crucified, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been placed. So, because it was Sabbath preparation for the Jews and the tomb was convenient, they placed Jesus in it.

Reflection

Drink deep of the chalice of grief and sorrow,
held out to you by your dark angel of Gethsemane:
the angel is not your enemy,
the drink, though sharp, is nourishing,
by which you may come to a deeper peace
than if you pass it by,
a ‘health of opened heart’ …

From a slow accepting of our wounds, life within us begins to move outward, bitterness waning, compassion growing …

True prayer is the source, the prayer that comes not from the mouth, but as from the lips of wounds …

Hidden in that prayer is both the crucified Christ and our fellow-sufferers, those whom, in intercession and compassion, we need in order to be ourselves.

There is no higher aim

than to reclaim

another, blinded by life’s pain,

to help him see again.

Seek love in the pity of another’s woe,

In the gentle relief of another’s care,

In the darkness of night and the winter’s snow,

In the naked and outcast — seek love there.

Jim Cotter

Prayer

O Jesus, stretch forth your wounded hands over your people to heal and to restore, and to draw us to yourself and to one another in love. Amen.

A journey to the human heart’: A Reflection for Good Friday  

‘Going to Pilate, Joseph asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate ordered that it be given to him’ (Matthew 27 v 59)

At the end of the agony and the death of Jesus, there is stillness… 

From St Matthew’s Gospel, the dead body of our Lord is taken down and the first rites of burial are completed.  The body is placed in a new tomb, with honour and – as far as the authorities are concerned, with some anxiety. Why? Principally as a result of fear towards the disciples of this prophet of Nazareth, who people have followed, some of whom have even given up everything for. Last weekend, we recalled the shouts of Hosanna and now he is dead. The other bodies of those killed that day were of course thrown on the dunghill to be gnawed by the dogs and crows. Nobody would want to steal them and want to tell more stories about them.

The events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are for those of us who frequent churches, a penitent moment in the year; a time of reflection and silence.  In many churches, during the service last night the place will have been stripped down, and the place this weekend,  given over to cleaning, and flower arranging. For in these events, it is as if the place goes back to its beginning, and now will start again. 

The Very Reverend Keith Jones, Dean of York and one point a spiritual director to me shared a story with me one Good Friday that when he was a parish priest in Ipswich on this day he used to go with dustpan and brush and sweep out the sanctuary of the church – a ritual that he felt was right. However, there is in this a cheerful sense of new beginnings all around, as if to say “There, that’s all over” now we can get on with Easter and enjoy it. Families come together, and it’s a long weekend, and for the first time in weeks it’s not an affront to see Easter eggs and Hot Cross Buns together in the shops.    

For us who have given up something for Lent, we can decide to give it up for one last time and then resume our indulgence with a better conscience on Easter Day.  Before we enjoy the special flavour of Easter where jubilation will breaks over us, we pause to consider the finished work of God.

I would like to share an alternative, or less common Good Friday message in that sense:  some of this might be too catholic for you, but please stay with me. It is believed by ancient writers that Good Friday was not the end but that Jesus still had work to do and that while Our Lord body‘s was laid in the grave, he went and preached to the souls in the underworld.  In the First Epistle of Peter, it says that the people he went to in particular were the neighbours of Noah, who were swept away in the flood without the benefit of Noah’s ark.  Now these people, according to the belief, had been very wicked – and “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually”. Nevertheless, measure this with today; they had no churches or chapels, no guardians of public morality to help them, like arguably we have now.  So, it could seem on the surface that this seemed unfair.  And so now, to put everything right, Jesus goes to give them, at last, a chance of responding to him.  I have to say this strikes me as a rather curious and quaint idea.

Yet on the other hand, this grows out of a striking realization.  It is, that whatever happened on the hill of Golgotha in Jerusalem which we remember today sometime in what we call the AD 30s, it had universal repercussions. How odd to think of the wicked people who laughed at Noah for building his ark!  But if you could think that Jesus’s death had implications for them, what about all the countless people of history who have never heard of the death on Calvary, those who have no idea of what Christianity is about, and have died in their generation.  Of course what has happened has some implications for them.

There are, I know, some Christians who are very tough minded about salvation. Why? Because, they can consider that the heathen have simply had it, along with un-baptised children, and the people next door who never go to church and the people who go to the wrong church down the road: especially them.  We all know those kinds of people. What a lovely feeling I suspect it gives them, to think that the Lord in his mercy has chosen to save them,  as he saved Noah in his ark!   The difficulty for many of us is that such tough-mindedness strikes us as immoral and because rigid and I would agree. This is not, conversely how the first disciples saw it in the early church.  They rather saw in this death as a surge of love and forgiveness being made to all sorts, even the most remote and unexpected.  They saw a universe in need, and God reaching out to draw all those who will respond to himself.

So better to say that the reason we call this Friday Good is because God has also reached out, and does reach out, and will reach out patiently, so that the human race may have a surer and surer hold on faith, hope and love.  It is not that the world is full of evil, but that the good is so scattered, and thus so goodness and promise is squandered. 

Through our readings, hymns and reflections tonight, we have seen not only the courage and love of Our Lord Jesus, but also the readiness of hearts then and now to receive him and treasure him. So, what indeed about us – you and I gathered here tonight?  We too have mixed motives and puzzled interest in these events.  We are not all good, but also not all bad either.  Here, with the work of Christ presented before us, God calls us to imitate what a human life should be.  He wants our lives to make proper sense, to be stronger in generosity, and more joyous.  There is something of heaven now if you will take it! Let him cleanse the rooms of your soul, and drive out the darkness!  Let your ageing, and your dying, be no cause of fear because of the life you share with Christ which is stronger than that.  Let your small mindedness and meanness of spirit be swallowed up in thankfulness and happiness – not of the specially churchy version of those things, which look bogus at 200 yards, but simply the truth about life.

A life shared with Christ does not guarantee us of a parking space, freedom from illness, late trains, or even losing your credit card.  But Christ was on the cross for you and me, that we should bear these and all other ills with the greater peace; and should live with our neighbours more lovingly and with our world more respectfully.  So on Easter Day in this place, I hope that we will come together again and turn from evil and follow him who by his death has brought us into a new life.

The collect for Good Friday

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold us, your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

Reading from Luke 22.23—34 and 54—62

Within minutes they were bickering over who of them would end up the greatest. But Jesus intervened: "Kings like to throw their weight around and people in authority like to give themselves fancy titles. It's not going to be that way with you. Let the senior among you become like the junior; let the leader act the part of the servant. "Who would you rather be: the one who eats the dinner or the one who serves the dinner? You'd rather eat and be served, right? But I've taken my place among you as the one who serves. And you've stuck with me through thick and thin. Now I confer on you the royal authority my Father conferred on me so you can eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and be strengthened as you take up responsibilities among the congregations of God's people.

"Simon, stay on your toes. Satan has tried his best to separate all of you from me, like chaff from wheat. Simon, I've prayed for you in particular that you not give in or give out. When you have come through the time of testing, turn to your companions and give them a fresh start."

Peter said, "Master, I'm ready for anything with you. I'd go to jail for you. I'd die for you!"

Jesus said, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Peter, but before the rooster crows you will have three times denied that you know me."

Arresting Jesus, they marched him off and took him into the house of the Chief Priest. Peter followed, but at a safe distance. In the middle of the courtyard some people had started a fire and were sitting around it, trying to keep warm. One of the serving maids sitting at the fire noticed him, then took a second look and said, "This man was with him!" He denied it, "Woman, I don't even know him."

A short time later, someone else noticed him and said, "You're one of them."

But Peter denied it: "Man, I am not."

About an hour later, someone else spoke up, really adamant: "He's got to have been with him! He's got 'Galilean' written all over him."

Peter said, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about." At that very moment, the last word hardly off his lips, a rooster crowed. Just then, the Master turned and looked at Peter. Peter remembered what the Master had said to him: "Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times." He went out and cried and cried and cried.

Reflection

Peter seeks to be the perfect disciple. He fails, and is absolutely desolate. But Jesus told him he would betray him. Peter is not ready, or rather it is not necessary for him to make such a stand. He fails to hear Jesus telling him so. Perhaps Jesus’ words should be read as less of a prediction and more as a gentle warning: ‘Don’t do this to yourself, Peter’.

In our discipleship, are we like Peter, striving to be the perfect disciple? So busy trying so hard, relying on our own resources, that we fail to hear the words of Jesus to us: ‘Do not do this to yourself; it is not what I require’?

Peter’s time came. His faith was tested: we are told in the Acts of the Apostles he had to change his mind and be open to God in a dream. And tradition tells us he was ultimately tested when he too faced crucifixion.

And we too face our own tests of faith. They will come; we don’t need to create them for ourselves. We don’t need to seek to prove we are the perfect disciples. Instead we need simply and prayerfully to be open to the wonder of God’s grace working in us now. God loves us and knows us as we are, and if we let him he will use who we are now to his glory.

Ray Gaston

Prayer

O Jesus, stretch forth your wounded hands over your people to heal and to restore, and to draw us to yourself and to one another in love. Amen.

A reading from John chapter 13

After he said these things, Jesus became visibly upset, and then he told them why. "One of you is going to betray me."

The disciples looked around at one another, wondering who on earth he was talking about. One of the disciples, the one Jesus loved dearly, was reclining against him, his head on his shoulder. Peter motioned to him to ask who Jesus might be talking about. So, being the closest, he said, "Master, who?"

Jesus said, "The one to whom I give this crust of bread after I've dipped it." Then he dipped the crust and gave it to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot. As soon as the bread was in his hand, Satan entered him.

   "What you must do," said Jesus, "do. Do it and get it over with."

No one around the supper table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that since Judas was their treasurer, Jesus was telling him to buy what they needed for the Feast, or that he should give something to the poor.

Judas, with the piece of bread, left. It was night.

When he had left, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man is seen for who he is, and God seen for who he is in him. The moment God is seen in him, God's glory will be on display. In glorifying him, he himself is glorified—glory all around!

Reflection

If we believe that Jesus knew all along what was going to happen, and if we believe that Judas was a mere puppet having to take his allotted role because he was part of the great plan laid down in Scripture, then I fear there can be no hope for us. This would mean that we are programmed, controlled, without freedom to grow or develop. It would also mean that we are quite beyond each other’s reach, unable to choose intimacy or separation, closeness or distance, love or indifference … So Jesus leaves the upper room and goes out into the night, his heart breaking for Judas and weighted down with sorrow at the apparent indifference of the others to Judas’ plight. It was as if they had been paralysed by the apparent powerlessness of his own love: if Jesus could not keep Judas within their company, what hope had they? For Jesus, I suggest it must have felt very different. Why was it, he must have asked himself, that nobody, not even John whom he loved so dearly, had been able to say to Judas: ‘We love you, you are one of us: where are you going? what are you intending to do?’ Why was it that not one of them had seen that Jesus’ impotent love needed the expression of theirs to regain its power? Why had they not been able to see that being truly human is impossible on your own?

Brian Thorne

Prayer

O Jesus, stretch forth your wounded hands over your people to heal and to restore, and to draw us to yourself and to one another in love. Amen.

A reading from 1 Corinthians
 
The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It's written, 

   I'll turn conventional wisdom on its head, 
   I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can't begin to compete with God's "weakness."

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That's why we have the saying, "If you're going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God."

Reflection

Perhaps like people who cower away from the light, lest their own sins are exposed, we cannot bear to be in the presence of total Love, so we destroy it. The jealous, small-minded childishness of wanting to destroy what we cannot be and cannot have. Or is it the weakness of Jesus we despise, the weakness that reminds us of our own, which we try constantly to conceal and deny? His total humanity reveals our inability to be human. God lets himself be pushed out of the world onto the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This is the foolishness of the cross to which Paul refers: this absurdity that the story of a supposedly broken, defeated and executed prophet, healer and lover of humanity becomes the story of God’s saving action in the world and potentially of God’s saving action in us all.

This is standing with Christ, accepting the foolishness of the cross as the way of salvation — that in this vulnerable Messiah is a truth that needs to be lived and made known.

It is in accepting our brokenness and our vulnerability, acknowledging our confusion and our sense of loss — in that lies the seeds of resurrection hope. We are not perfect, and neither will we be perfect, but the way of love is not about perfection but about forgiveness and healing. It is about being weak enough to lament the realities of the pain of our world, the realities of our own sorrow and confusion, and then again and again turning back to the light and welcoming through love what it reveals. It is in accepting our brokenness that we know we are loved, and we learn again what we were made to be and what we can seek to become.

Ray Gaston

Prayer

O Jesus, stretch forth your wounded hands over your people to heal and to restore, and to draw us to yourself and to one another in love. Amen.

A reading from Mark chapter 10 

From there he went to the area of Judea across the Jordan. A crowd of people, as was so often the case, went along, and he, as he so often did, taught them. Pharisees came up, intending to give him a hard time. They asked, "Is it legal for a man to divorce his wife?" 3Jesus said, "What did Moses command?"

They answered, "Moses gave permission to fill out a certificate of dismissal and divorce her."

Jesus said, "Moses wrote this command only as a concession to your hardhearted ways. In the original creation, God made male and female to be together. Because of this, a man leaves father and mother, and in marriage he becomes one flesh with a woman—no longer two individuals, but forming a new unity. Because God created this organic union of the two sexes, no one should desecrate his art by cutting them apart."

When they were back home, the disciples brought it up again. Jesus gave it to them straight: "A man who divorces his wife so he can marry someone else commits adultery against her. And a woman who divorces her husband so she can marry someone else commits adultery."

The people brought children to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. The disciples shooed them off. But Jesus was irate and let them know it: "Don't push these children away. Don't ever get between them and me. These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom. Mark this: Unless you accept God's kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in." Then, gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them.

Reflection

I am the woman who anointed Jesus. I am unnamed, as many women of my time are unnamed and unnoticed. But not by Jesus — he speaks to us, takes us seriously , argues with us , unselfconsciously accepts us — he is different from the other men. I’ve been following him for a while, inspired by his teaching. I have felt that he is increasingly troubled, struggling with something he knows he must do or face. Many of his women followers have noticed this change in him. He has become more annoyed with his inner circle’s failure to comprehend what he is trying to tell them. I and some of the other women decided we needed to tell him, needed to let him know, that we could see his pain, his fear, the struggle he is going through, and although we are not sure, we too fear that it is his life that is at stake. We decided to act and to reach out to him. We bought nard and decided that we would anoint him — we would acknowledge him as our King. And also tell him that if he fears he will die, we know that fear too, we lovingly prepare him for facing death.

Our law says that for us to do so would make him ritually unclean, but we know in our hearts that Jesus would pay no heed to such nonsense. We know too that we were casting ourselves in the role of prophets by doing so, but has he not taught us to speak out, to say what we feel? We gathered the money together — some of the women following him are quite wealthy — and we bought the perfume — it cost the equivalent of a labourer’s wages for a year. It was easy to get to him at Simon’s, because Simon the leper is part of our group of women, healed lepers, possessed and others who meet together sometimes to talk about Jesus’ teaching — the inner circle of men around Jesus find us a bit odd, and I think threatening.

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We are the men at the table, and all we have to say is: who does this woman think she is?! She has broken the law, and spending all that money on poncy Roman affectations is disgusting when so many are poor. Does she think she’s some kind of prophet? We know Jesus is our Messiah and our King — we don’t need her to tell us that with her pseudo-ritualism — but what is Jesus going on about death and burial for, if he’s the Messiah who will triumph? He won’t make many friends or get many good Jews following him if he carries on behaving like that and letting women touch him in that way — can’t he see people think it’s odd and unclean? He’s too familiar with the women.

All in all he’s behaving very strangely, and we don’t understand what he wants of us or what he is talking about half the time.

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I am Judas, and I am disappointed and angry. I thought this guy was really going to take on the Romans and get them out, but he’s just another religious weirdo riding on the back of the people — my Zealot mates were right. And accepting the gift of nard that was imported from India by the Romans! Why didn’t he sell it and give the money to the poor instead, or put it in our kitty? As treasurer I know we need it, but no, instead Jesus praised her for doing it. So much for being on the side of the poor. I’ve had enough.

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I am Jesus. I am tired of trying to explain to the Twelve about how I feel things are going to unfold. They don’t seem to hear. I increasingly feel that I am going to have to die soon: God is calling me to face this possibility. And I am scared, and feel so alone with it. That is until she came forward — Mary, part of that interesting group of women, healed lepers and possessed who worry the Twelve with their radical unorthodoxy. Peter says they go a bit too far and are doing my cause no good.

But she understands, and through her touch and her action she has let me know. I feel she is saying to me ‘No, you are not mad to feel and think what you do — I can see too where all this may lead, I can see the burden you bear — let me reach out to you … I do understand.’ It is such a relief, and it is beautiful.

I worry for Judas, though: he is so bitter and angry. I’ve noticed he has been distant with me lately. He is full of so much anger and hate, he still can’t forgive the Romans for what they did to his family. O God, please don’t let him come to harm; bring him healing for his wounds; don’t let his bitterness destroy him.

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The possible feelings surrounding this group are complex and the above is merely speculation. But there is no doubt that the woman has understood Jesus. Intuitively she has responded to what Jesus has been saying — it is she who understands what he believes is going to happen to him. And lets him know through lovingly anointing him — communicating through touch what perhaps is impossible or too risky to speak out about in words.

She has done a beautiful thing for him.

Ray Gaston, drawing upon Women Believing by Ruth Musgrove

Prayer

O Jesus, stretch forth your wounded hands over your people to heal and to restore, and to draw us to yourself and to one another in love. Amen.

Entering Jerusalem on a Colt 

When they were nearing Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany on Mount Olives, he sent off two of the disciples with instructions: "Go to the village across from you. As soon as you enter, you'll find a colt tethered, one that has never yet been ridden. Untie it and bring it. If anyone asks, 'What are you doing?' say, 'The Master needs him, and will return him right away.'" They went and found a colt tied to a door at the street corner and untied it. Some of those standing there said, "What are you doing untying that colt?" The disciples replied exactly as Jesus had instructed them, and the people let them alone. They brought the colt to Jesus, spread their coats on it, and he mounted.

The people gave him a wonderful welcome, some throwing their coats on the street, others spreading out rushes they had cut in the fields. Running ahead and following after, they were calling out, 

   Hosanna! 
   Blessed is he who comes in God's name! 
   Blessed the coming kingdom of our father David! 
   Hosanna in highest heaven!

He entered Jerusalem, then entered the Temple. He looked around, taking it all in. But by now it was late, so he went back to Bethany with the Twelve.

Prayer for Palm Sunday

Almighty and everlasting God,
who in your tender love towards the human race
sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
to take upon him our flesh
and to suffer death upon the cross:
grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility,
and also be made partakers of his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen 

We are at the beginning of Holy Week. If we want to truly be Christian, this week ought to be a time when we share in a special way in the passion of Christ. We do this, not so much by indulging in pious feelings, but by bearing the burdens of our life with simple fortitude and without ostentation. For we share by faith in the passion of our Lord precisely by realising that our life is a participation in his destiny. We find this difficult, because so often we fail to understand that the bitterness and burdens of our own life do — or should — give us a mysterious share in the destiny of all human beings … If we were aware of this … we would understand that his passion is the unique acceptance of the passion of humankind, in which it is accepted, suffered, redeemed, and freed into the mystery of God.

Karl Rahner