Good Friday: The Celebration of the Lord’s Passion
Friday, March 29th, 2024
ISAIAH 52:13-53:12; PSALM 22; HEBREWS 4:14-16, 5:7-9; JOHN 18:1-19:42
See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up,
and shall be very high.
Before Julian of Norwich was granted her visions, and while she was still in bed thinking she was about to die, she had herself “propped up, leaning back with [her] head supported by bedclothes.” Julian wanted her gaze to be fixed upwards toward heaven.
The priest that had been called in to see her, however, had other ideas. “The parson,”she tells us, “set the cross before my face and said, ‘Daughter, I have brought you the image of your saviour. Look at it and take comfort from it, in reverence of him who died for you and me.’”
Julian wasn’t so sure. “It seemed to me that I was alright as I was,” writes Julian, “for my gaze was fixed upwards into heaven where I trusted I was going.” She consented, though; after all, even a meddlesome parson can occasionally be right. So she fixed her eyes on the face of the crucifix. And thus her shewings, the revelations of divine love, the visions she would reflect upon for the rest of her life, began with a darkening of everything around her apart from a light shone on the crucifix, a light “for all [human]kind,” she tells us.
And everything other than the cross became ugly to her. The visions would continue almost right away with blood—“red blood trickling down from under the crown of thorns—hot and fresh, plentiful and lifelike.”
The cross can be a difficult thing to gaze upon. And like Julian, we might rather look toward the bliss of heaven than to the suffering of others, including the suffering of Jesus. But if we were to just look away, we would have a much harder time learning the ways of love—and the way of Christian kindness.
Over the years, as Julian reflected on the visions that began with the training of her eyes on the cross, she would learn to see God first and foremost through Christ crucified. It was through Christ crucified that she would see God as Trinity. In her gaze upon the bleeding Jesus, God as Trinity filled her with joy: “For Trinity is God, God is the Trinity. The Trinity is our maker, the Trinity is our protector, the Trinity is our everlasting lover, the Trinity our endless joy and our bliss, by our Lord Jesus Christ and in our Lord Jesus Christ. … where Jesus appears the blessed Trinity is always understood, as I see it,” she writes.
Including on the cross; there, where Jesus appears in suffering, so the Trinity is understood: there, understood on the cross, is not just a suffering man, but the God who makes, protects, and loves. Here on the cross Julian sees God incarnate.
André pointed out this week that I preach on kindness often, and he’s right. For me, the interest in the kindness of God comes from Julian. As Janet Soskice puts it, writing on Julian: “Christ is ‘our kind’, a human being like us, and by extension ‘our kin’.” And so the kindness of God in Christ is not at all the same as being nice. The kindness of God, in becoming our kind, human kind, is an expression of the deepest of solidarities, of God with us in Jesus.
The cross, in this way, is an expression of just how far God’s kindness goes. God, being of one kind with is in his humanity, is a kindness even up to death, even death on a cross.
When Julian sees all of God’s work in Christ revolving around the cross, and the crucifix upon which she gazes, she is in good company— she is in the company of St. John the Evangelist, author of the 4th Gospel, and whose voice we heard so clearly today. John, too, sees the cross as the hinge upon which the whole world turns, where Christ is lifted up and exalted. There is no looking away from the cross; instead we gaze upon it for the sake of our own healing.
John, in describing Jesus being lifted up and exalted on the cross, uses the same word he would have read in the Greek version of Isaiah, where we read of the suffering servant: “[M]y servant shall prosper,” we hear in Isaiah; “he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high … so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance … He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity …”
But this suffering servant does not only suffer with us; the suffering servant suffers for us. “[H]e has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases … he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”
As we hear the story of the crucifixion of Jesus, John would have us keep this passage from Isaiah in mind, and that Jesus on the cross does not simply suffer with us, but also suffers for us.
And so the cross is two sorts of kindness: it is an act of kindness that expresses God’s own solidarity with us in our own suffering; and an act of kindness that expresses God’s own work undertaken for us, accomplishing something we cannot do on our own, bearing and extinguishing our sin on a cross that makes an exchange, a cross where a sacrifice is made for us, and where we are reconciled to God.
Perhaps we hear all this most clearly when we read Hebrews the way that God’s kindness with us, and God’s kindness towards us, come together: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.”
There is no suffering that God does not know in Christ, including the depths of your own; our suffering at the hands of others, the suffering of failing bodies that brings us pain, the suffering that comes with the loss of the ones we love, and above all, suffering for the sake of our own love of God. This God in Christ, suffering on this cross, is as weak as we are and as tested as we are, as much a failure as we are. This is God with us on the cross.
But being without sin, he is able to accomplish something else, too. Without sin, he cannot be taken up by the clutches of death, and is able to lead us, now, reconciled in him, not to death, but to life. Being without sin, Jesus is more than with us on the cross; without sin, as the blameless and innocent sacrificial victim that reconciles us to God, Jesus can also be for us on the cross.
And in both of these—Christ with us on the cross, and Christ for us on the cross—we find an expression of God’s loving kindness: a kindness both with us, and a kindness towards us.
The Revd Cannon Dr Preston Parsons
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.