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Looking On Reflections around the cross
Inspire 2004 ISBN 1 58582 269 2
In this little book we join the crowds in and around Jerusalem in what would later be known by Christians as ‘Holy Week’. The year is probably AD 33. They see a Galilean enter the city on the Sunday, watch him executed on the Friday and hear the rumours about what happened next. We hear the reactions of a visiting Egyptian diplomat’s wife, and of a Pharisee; of a boy sent to bring a donkey back, and of a pilgrim from Galilee and her teenage son; of Salome and a centurion, of a civil servant and a shopkeeper; of Matthew the Scribe; and of a gardener’s labourer. Then we listen to a woman from Emmaus and to Jesus’ youngest brother as they look back on what have become, by then, distant events. We look at and listen to what they have to say about this Galilean – Jesus of Nazareth – and what his life, death and resurrection might mean. At the end of each chapter there are, in most cases, some Bible references which relate to the meditation for you to follow up if you wish. There is always a reflection, usually in the form of a short question, and a prayer. The prayers in chapters 4 to 10 are only slightly changed from those used in Truro Cathedral on Good Friday in 2002 when the seven reflections in those chapters formed the Three Hours Devotion which I was honoured to lead. I have retained the plural form in those and all the prayers, for even when we are praying by ourselves we are not praying alone.
Contents
PALM SUNDAY 1 Faustina – wife of a visiting Egyptian diplomat Faustina is the wife of Andronicus, a senior official in the Egyptian Department of Trade. He is attending an international conference at Caesarea, the Roman administrative capital of Palestine on the Mediterranean coast. She has gone on a sightseeing trip to Jerusalem. I love Jerusalem. I really do. There’s something real about it. None of that urbane and cultured boredom of Caesarea, where everything is new and everything works and there’s no sense of history. Caesarea just feels like what it is, a prestige project to curry favour with Caesar. But Jerusalem’s different. It feels different from the minute you get here. You push and shove through the narrow streets, or at least your guards do, and you get the impression the crowds jostle you all the more just because you’re a foreigner with a bodyguard. Wonderful old buildings crowding in, and everything dominated by Herod’s new Temple. That really is magnificent, even though it’s still not quite finished. There’s noise, and colour, and the smells, of course, no Roman sewerage system here. And when you get a whiff of what comes out of the Temple on a hot day … that would never have passed the public health inspectors back home. But I love it, always have, and this must be my fifth or sixth visit now. I love the excitement of it – because somehow Jerusalem’s not just exotic, but exotic with an edge. There’s a sense of danger. We’re only a couple of hundred miles from home, but it’s a different world. Jerusalem just doesn’t feel like part of the Roman Empire at all. And I’m surprised that the ambassador let us come at this time really, with one of their big festivals so near. Anyway, we’ve had a good three days and I’ve shown some of the others – well, those who wanted to get off the beaten track and away from the minders a bit – a few things they don’t tell you about in the guide books. Andronicus should do this sort of thing more. But that’s the trouble with diplomats, they only meet other diplomats and only see what their hosts want them to see. But if you talk to the slaves a bit, you’d be surprised what you can find out and where you can get to, though I won’t tell husband everything we’ve done. He’ll have enough to think about when he sees the shopping bill. We know plenty of Jews at home in Alexandria, of course, for we’ve had a lively Jewish community there for centuries, but I think Egyptian Jews are different. They look as if they are part of the Empire, well, most of the time anyway. They are as educated and cultured as anyone else, and most of them seem quite at home in our modern multi-cultural world. True, there have been disturbances lately, but there always are with anybody when the state gets heavy-handed about taxes. But here they are different and know that they are different, and I like that. At least it’s honest and real, and they aren’t forever talking in whispers lest someone hears them say a word out of place. Some of them really hate us, us Romans I mean, and you can understand why, from their point of view. After all if you are the Chosen People and you live in the Promised Land, it must be irksome to be governed from Rome and pay your taxes to support the likes of Andronicus and me. On the other hand, we’ve never tried to stop them worshipping their One God, like the Greeks did once and came to regret it. But it does make Jerusalem an interesting place, as they say. It might be a tiny little city well off the beaten track, quite a backwoods when it comes to culture and civilisation, but worlds meet here and you can almost feel the friction. And we’ve had a bit of excitement during our stay. I got pushed right out of the way when that little crowd came in yesterday, chanting and waving branches. Very exciting, even if it only lasted five minutes. Don’t know who it was, but I heard the slaves talking after supper tonight that whoever it was had gone into the Temple and made a bit of a fuss. Anyway, it’s back to respectability and boredom at Caesarea tomorrow. At least the baths work. Faustina is quite right about Jerusalem. It was small and it was different. As cities went it wasn’t very big, its population was probably around twenty-five thousand, a quarter of that of Corinth. As provinces went neither Judea nor Galilee were very big or populous either. Both were the size of a medium-sized English county. The population of Galilee was well under half a million, with that of Judea half of that. And, in terms of the Roman Empire, Jerusalem and Judea really was out of the way and unimportant. It could be a nuisance, and it had to be treated carefully, but as potential nuisances went, it was a minor one. The Jews, of course, didn’t see it like that. The Romans might run the province of Judea from Caesarea, with the procurator, Pontius Pilate, only coming to Jerusalem when he had to, but for the Jews of Judea, Galilee and dispersed through much of the Mediterranean world, Jerusalem was the centre of the universe. It was the City of David. The Temple, despite being built by Herod whom most Jews despised, was God’s Holy Place. It was a place of pilgrimage and of intense devotion. Jews the world over prayed for the ‘peace of Jerusalem’. She was right too, to say that the Jews saw themselves as God’s Chosen People, chosen by the One True God, and unique in his sight. Only a minority of them were actually living in ‘the land God promised to Abraham’ but for them all, dispersed or at home, Judea was God’s Holy Land; they were his Chosen People and he was the One True God. Faustina knows a little bit about the internal politics, but as an outsider the differences between parties like the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Essenes pass her by: but she is astute enough to have picked up that some of these religious groups felt strongly enough to support direct action against the Romans. But she doesn’t know much about the lives of ordinary Jews, in Jerusalem or in the countryside, and they were, as far as we can tell, ordinary enough. Most of them were preoccupied with making a living and surviving all the everyday crises of life in the first century, much like all ordinary people everywhere, but there was an undercurrent of discontent. Some commentators on the Gospels might over-egg the pudding and suggest that Judea and Galilee were buzzing with messianic hope, that the Jews were waiting eagerly for the coming of the Messiah, that the synagogues were full and that much praying for that was being done. For most Jews at the time that is probably a bit of an overstatement and life was generally much more mundane, but feelings could easily be aroused. But Faustina has introduced us to a key place – Jerusalem. It was more than a city, it was an icon, a symbol in brick and stone. She has also introduced us to the key players in an unfolding drama: the man who led the procession, the Romans, the Jewish people and their leaders, and their One God. Reflection Jerusalem was a strange place to Faustina – strange but intriguing – and Jerusalem at the time of Jesus is a strange place to us. This story takes place in a land far away and a time long ago – and in many ways it is very difficult for us to enter such an ancient, and in many ways alien, world. What are you looking for as you visit this strange place in this old, old story? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the life of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the mystery of his self-giving love, of a life offered and a love poured out. We praise you for a love which is new every morning, as refreshing as the dew and as sure as the sunrise, though like those for many people on many days, un-noticed and un-remarked. We pray for a world in which life goes on, for good or ill, momentously for some, routinely for most, painfully for many; but for the majority in Britain and western Europe today, indifferent to the life or death of Jesus, unaware of your eternal love and high calling to humanity, preoccupied with its own anxieties, commitments or distractions. We pray for those known to us who are oblivious to the grace and glory of God seen in Jesus Christ … Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
2 Sameel – sent to bring the donkey back Sameel is a boy from Bethphage, a village between Bethany and Jerusalem.
What do you say, mum? What’s that I keep singing? It’s what we sang this morning, me and Peter and James and John and all the others. Simon the Zealot taught it us and we started to sing it as soon as we got to Zechariah’s Tomb. Then we sang it all the way into the city. Right to the Temple steps.
Sorry, mum. What’s that? How do I know their names? Well, I was there, wasn’t I? Right in the middle of them all! You know Beera, wouldn’t walk in a straight line if someone didn’t keep a firm rope on her halter. So that’s what I was doing, leading our donkey with Jesus riding on her … How do I know why he couldn’t steer her himself? Perhaps he’s never ridden a donkey before. I dunno. Anyhow, she’s our donkey and I led her. That’s what dad sent me for, wannit?, to look after her and bring her back? … I dunno, perhaps he didn’t trust Galileans to keep their promises? Anyhow, it was great.
What? No, Jesus didn’t say much. He just sat there and looked around. Got a bit upset when we came over the rise and he saw the city first, I think, but after that just sat there and waved to the crowd a bit as we went into the city … I dunno, there was about thirty or forty with us, coming behind, and another couple of dozen in front, and folks stopped and watched as we went past and some of them tagged along to see what was happening … Yeh, the police looked at us a couple of times but they didn’t do anything … Them palm branches? Yeh? Well when we got to Zechariah’s Tomb Peter told everybody to start waving them, just like we do at Tabernacles, and they carried on doing that all the time, and sometimes putting them in front of Beera for her to walk over. I didn’t think much of that, for she doesn’t like people dashing in front of her, and I had trouble stopping her shying once or twice. Some idiots even put their cloaks on the ground, dunno what that was about.
O yeh, palm branches reminds me, we also shouted ‘Hosanna’ and ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’ and ‘Hosanna in the Highest’, like we do at Tabernacles as well. That was Simon the Zealot again, running up and down like a cheer leader at a camel race, and that really got some of ’em going, that did. They did that once just near the check point at the bottom market, and I saw the police coming out then, but when they saw there must have been a couple of hundred of us and only six of them they stopped.
Why was I so late back? … Well, you shouldn’t have worried. I am nine! Well, after we got to the Temple steps they had a sort of argument about what to do next. Peter and Simon the Zealot wanted to carry on around the city, but Jesus wanted to go into the Temple. So that’s what they did … Of course I did. I wasn’t going to miss the fun. I fastened Beera to a post and told a little kid to keep an eye on her – but you won’t tell dad that will you – and I went inside. Well, into the courtyard, you know, the one where they sell things … I know kids aren’t allowed in there, but Jesus let everybody in. And there was a bit of a fight. Jesus threw some of the tables over, let some sheep loose and got quite angry, and the others joined in. Scary that bit, so I got out, got Beera and got home. Yes, I have brushed her down and made sure she’s got water … yeh … yeh.
Mum? Mum? But what did they mean about that Jesus? He isn’t a king is he? … Okay, okay, I’ll go to sleep. On Palm Sunday many churches celebrate the Triumphant Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, some even with real donkeys. The journey to Jerusalem is over - the almost secret journey, in which Jesus has been avoiding crowds, avoiding any kind of confrontation with enemies and making little contact with sympathisers. It is as if he was determined to arrive in Jerusalem and not in any way have his journey cut short before he could do so. But once he’s there, all secrecy, all anonymity, all caution, is thrown to the wind. In a carefully stage-managed and pre-arranged demonstration, Jesus enters Jerusalem. It is a demonstration designed to challenge both Roman and Jewish authority. The crowds sing ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, ‘Save us now, O Son of David’ and there would be no mistaking the political implications of that for Church or State. And in the Gospel story, the crowd demonstrates its commitment to this new king by bowing down as he passes and placing in front of him their homage of palm branches and cloaks. There is another point being made in this demonstration too. There were those at the time who were wanting to raise not only their voices but their fists, and wanting to lay down not only palm branches and cloaks but the dead bodies of their Roman occupiers. But the Gospel writers are careful to point out that the real king comes lowly and humble, riding on an ass; not on a war horse but on the king’s beast of peace, a ceremonial animal not a military one. Matthew adds a distinctive contribution to the Palm Sunday story. He and Luke put on one day what Mark leaves for the following day, the event we traditionally call the ‘Cleansing of the Temple’. All three agree that he throws some people out - but Matthew, and Matthew alone, adds that he then invites other people in. Out go the traders and accountants; and Matthew quotes a Bible verse which suggests that this ‘cleansing’ is about getting priorities wrong and all that sort of thing. Then, having emptied the Temple, Jesus fills it. In come the blind, the lame and the children. That was not allowed. This probably took place in the Court of the Gentiles, an open courtyard in which adults, Jew and foreigner, were allowed but children were not. Neither was anyone with a physical blemish, disability or deformity. Why does the blind beggar beg at the gate of the Temple? Because he is not allowed inside. This restriction had come about because the old prohibition against priests who had any physical deformities offering sacrifices had been extended to include anyone at all. So the blind and the lame and so on were marginalised, excluded, kept outside. The children too, because they were not yet of age. But what does Jesus do? He includes those who have been excluded. He allows in and welcomes those who the religious authorities had kept out and did not welcome. That, of course, is of a piece with the way the Gospels tell the whole story of Jesus. They picture him as someone who has time and welcome for those for whom few other people had time or welcome: lepers, children, women, sinners, tax-collectors and so on. So here, in the late afternoon of Palm Sunday, Jesus brings into the Temple those who had formerly been kept out. In taking on the Establishment like this, the scholars say, Jesus made a statement for which he would pay dearly. Bible reading Matthew 21.1-17; Mark 11.1-11; Luke 19.29-46; John 2.13-22 Reflection
What does Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, which was both triumphant and humble, mean for you? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the life of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the mystery of his self-giving love, of a life offered and a love poured out. We praise you for a life which opened closed things up, gave new possibilities in old places, renewed what had gone stale with freshness and energized the tired with new vigour. So we pray for the closed things and the old places, for the stale and the tired in our lives, our churches and our communities; that they might be opened up, renewed and energised by your Spirit as we pray, ‘Save us now, O God’ … Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
3 Tobias – a Pharisee on retreat in the Temple Tobias is a Pharisee from Bethsaida in Galilee, a farmer by trade. I still don’t know what to make of the man: but I certainly didn’t expect to see him here, and certainly not making that statement by coming here riding on a donkey, and then throwing his weight around in the Temple. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes now. He has always preached that God’s kingdom is near, but I hadn’t taken him to mean that we were about to have a revolution and set up a new state, though I do know some who thought he meant that – the New Age is near, freedom and food for all – that sort of thing. No, I had taken him to mean that God was God, and that each of us needed to let God really rule in our lives and our communities, much as we Pharisees believe, though he put it a bit differently. Renewal starts within and transformation comes about gradually – that kind of thing. In fact, that was one of the infuriating things about him, he was a very gifted teacher, always finding new ways of saying things and really making you think, but at the end of the day you were never quite sure what he really meant, what it was that you were supposed to be thinking and doing. ‘Parables conceal as much as they reveal’, as my old friend Nahman says. And at least you can’t accuse us of that, pedantic we might be sometimes, but we Pharisees mean what we say and say what we mean, and say it plainly. Not that Jesus didn’t do some plain-speaking sometimes, especially when he was criticising us, and I never thought that was fair. Of course we have some bad apples in the barrel, but not all of his disciples are exactly Grade One are they? He was always too quick to call us hypocrites, I thought, for most of us are just quietly and sincerely trying to love the LORD our God, with all our heart and mind and strength, which is a text I have heard him quote more than once too. We don’t deny that our lives aren’t all they could be, and that’s in fact what we Pharisees are trying to do, to ‘live more nearly as we pray’, to grow in grace and in the knowledge and love of God, and to do it where we are, seven days a week. We’re not Essenes, looking for holiness by going off to live in the desert, separating yourself completely from real life and its temptations and compromises: but at least we are looking for it. That’s why I became a Pharisee, because Moses says that we must be holy, just as the Lord our God is holy. That’s what being a Pharisee is about. That’s why we join, and study, and pray, and have our meetings to build each other up, because we want to be faithful to God, and live as he wants us to live. And that’s what I thought Jesus’ teaching was about too. I’ve heard him often enough now I could preach his sermons for him: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ - beautiful; You are salt and light – interestingly put; keep the spirit of the Torah rather than the letter – so no anger, no lust; God wants inner integrity and not public piety, even though it means costly love – giving your coat to anyone who asks, praying for your enemies, sitting loose to your possessions, trusting in God – hard, very hard, but absolutely right. I’ve no problem with summing up the Torah and the Prophets as ‘Do as you would be done by’ and I know no other Pharisee who has either. I know his hard line on divorce goes against the grain of some of our more liberal members, and some of our stricter members say he is too friendly with people whose lives are far from what they ought to be and are not bothered about it – ‘Friend of Tax-Collectors and sinners’ as they say – but I’ve always thought the two balance out really. He loves God, that’s obvious. He teaches that God is love, well so do we. He lives unconventionally, well so did Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, to say nothing of John the Baptist. I really don’t know what to make of the man: but I certainly wouldn’t like to be in his shoes just now. Tobias is quite right in what he says about the teaching of Jesus outside of the parables, that there is nothing in the rest of the teachings of Jesus that can’t be found in the Judaism of Jesus’ day. True, he had a distinctive style and a memorable way of saying things, but what he taught about God and about the meaning of life was taught by others before him and contemporary with him. As a teacher, Jesus was gifted, arresting and challenging, and also entirely orthodox. Tobias is also right about the parables which Jesus used as his distinctive teaching method. They are vivid and imaginative, but not always easy to grasp, and what the ‘parables of the kingdom’ really mean is as much a puzzle today as it was to Tobias and his friends. What did Jesus mean when he said that God’s kingdom was near, and that it was like a mustard seed, or a sower or ten bridesmaids with lamps? Did he mean that the long hoped-for new age of political and economic freedom was coming very soon? Or did he mean that each of us should acknowledge God as our king and live by his kingdom values in all the details of our lives? Or something else? Equally committed Christians and equally learned scholars still disagree. What Tobias does not mention is anything about what Jesus taught about himself, about who he was and where he fitted in to God’s scheme of things. Did Jesus believe that he was the Messiah, for example? And if he did, what sort of Messiah did he think God had anointed him to be? These seem obvious questions to us, and for many who read the Gospels the answers to them seem just as obvious as well. But if you look more closely, especially in the first three Gospels, you do see a reluctance on Jesus’ part to talk about himself. All the Gospel writers are quite convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, even the Son of God, and the Fourth Gospel goes further still and speaks of Jesus as God Incarnate: but whether Jesus himself thought or talked in those terms at all is an important and open question. Jesus was a gifted teacher, but that didn’t get him arrested. He taught about God, and not about himself. The Gospels, on the other hand, first and foremost teach about him, about who and what he was and is. The messenger has become the message. And the only explanation for that changeover lies in what happened in the week after Palm Sunday. Bible reading Matthew 5.1 – 7.28 – the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ Reflection
(Horatius Bonar, Hymns & Psalms 792, verses 1 and 6) What would you think if I said that this favourite old hymn of mine by a Moderator of the Church of Scotland in Queen Victoria’s time expresses the beliefs and aims of the Pharisees beautifully? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the life of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the mystery of his self-giving love, of a life offered and a love poured out. We praise you for the community of faith to which we belong, which claims that unknown traveller, Abraham, as the beginning of our journey with you. We praise you for the gifts of stories of faith, teachings to live by, psalms to sing and sermons to remember that are ours in ancient Scriptures; and for all those who have kept those things alive for us and tried faithfully to live them out. We pray for those who teach the faith today, for those who struggle to see you in new discoveries and new truths, and for those who cannot or will not change their ways of thinking when you do your new things and teach your new ways. Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
GOOD FRIDAY 4 Shalimah – a pilgrim from Galilee Shalimah, a middle-aged woman from Galilee, is standing on the path a hundred yards from Golgotha, the Place of the Skull. I can’t look. I won’t look. Please don’t make me look. I can’t stop the noise of the hammers in my ears, but I won’t watch as they lift him onto that upright. I won’t. I can’t. Why, O God, is this happening? Why is this happening to him? It wasn’t like this in Galilee. We loved him there. He was our prophet, one of us. Yes, he had strong words to say sometimes, but mostly he just loved us. Mostly he was there with us and for us, and he gave himself unstintingly to us. And God’s spirit was so obviously with him, blessing him. Above all he had God’s gift of healing, healing hands, a healing touch. I know that for a fact, and so does everyone, not even his enemies would deny that. I know it for a fact because my husband was one of those lepers that he had time for; he touched him clean and the leprosy went. He showed himself to the priest, like Jesus said he should, and the priest pronounced him clean. All because Jesus of Nazareth had touched him and prayed for him. That’s why Jesus was so popular back home, healers always are and there weren’t many others as good as he was. Every time he came into the area the word would get round and crowds would gather, bringing the sick to him – sick in body, mind or spirit it didn’t matter – and he would pray for them, touch them, bless them. And that gave him quite a following at home in Galilee, but not only because he was a healer, but because he was a good teacher too. God is our loving heavenly Father, that was his message, ‘Abba’ he would call him: a father who cared for all his children. That’s why we came to Jerusalem for Passover this year. We don’t come to the Festival every year but Jesus was coming and so we made a pilgrimage of it. We followed him down, my husband, Hoshea our son and me. But we didn’t expect this. Not this. Jesus arrested and crucified. I know in the past that Jerusalem has stoned the prophets and refused to listen to those God sent to it, but we didn’t think it would be like that this time. Jesus is different. He’s not wild like old John the Baptist used to be, shouting at everybody all the time: ‘Thou shalt not this’ and ‘Thou shalt not that’. He’s … nice, friendly, strange sometimes, but not hard; he enjoys parties, plays with the children, he listens and cares and heals. And he wasn’t coming to cause trouble. Only last week when we arrived – was it only a week ago? It seems an age away - he looked over the city and wept for it. I remember the words he said, that he wanted to gather the people under his wings ‘like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings’. That’s all he wanted, and now look, there he is, hanging on a cross, in agony. Jesus, our healer. With nails through his hands, those kind hands which did good to all, which blessed and healed. Jesus, Jesus, you came in the name of God, the God of love and peace, the God of healing and mercy. You welcomed outsiders in, you lifted up the fallen, you cheered the faint, you healed the sick. Even the healers amongst the Scribes and the Pharisees accepted that you had a genuine gift and certainly that’s what we saw. But a ministry of healing and care and kindness and compassion shouldn’t be ending like this. Our gentle teacher shouldn’t be hanging there. Our gentle teacher - crucified. Why, O God? Why are they doing this to him? Why? What Shalimah sees is not an unusual sight in first century Jerusalem, under Roman occupation. Three more executions. Three more public executions by crucifixion, the Romans’ preferred way, designed for maximum effect: the total humiliation of the victim, usually an enemy of the state, the maximum of pain, a good number of options for the skilled executioner to vary the length of time it took from merely a few hours to several days. All in all, a first class system, neat, simple and painful. And reasonably effective as a deterrent. What Shalimah sees is not an unusual sight anywhere, an innocent man dying at the hands of the state. It ought to be a scandal, a crime against humanity of the first order, but sadly it was not then and is not now. Innocent people die too frequently today to be noticed, except maybe by members of Amnesty International or in the exceptional case which makes the headlines of the world’s news media. And innocent people died too frequently then too. And in that sense Jesus is just another innocent victim, whose death is no more painful and no less pointless than any other of the nameless and numberless martyrs to politics, religion, race or economics down the millennia. And what Shalimah says is agreed by modern historians. When they try to get back to the Jesus of History, to the man of Nazareth, his message, his deeds, they get back to a figure Shalimah would recognise. They agree that the bottom line is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Galilean prophet - a ‘holy man’, a ‘charismatic’ - with recognised healing gifts – gifts which were not unusual in his day and which are not unknown in ours. He was not an ordinary holy man and healer, but an exceptional, above average, noteworthy one, who, had the circumstances of his death and its after effects been different, would have been remembered and honoured in his own Jewish religion. But many of these historians go on, as we must go on, to ask another question
Bible reading Matthew 8.1-17 and 9.18-38 Reflection Does this picture of Jesus as the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time painted by modern historians surprise or disturb you in any way? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the cross of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the mystery of his death, of a life taken and a love given. We praise you for that life lived among us and for us, for the Healer and Prophet of Galilee, for his deeds there of kindness and of healing power, for his affirmation of the worth of each human life and for his demonstration of your eternal loving-kindness which holds and guides us even now. In his name we pray for the healing of our world, its open sores of poverty, its obesities of wealth, its wounds of international violence and terror, and its unhealed scars of ethnic and religious conflict. We pray too for those in trouble, need, anxiety and sickness who need your healing touch in body, mind or spirit; in the quietness of our hearts and in the presence of your suffering love, we name those known to us before you …. Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
5 Hoshea – Shalimah’s teenage son Hoshea is Shalimah’s teenage son, past his bar-mitzvah now, and by law a man, an adult. He stands looking on as she does. My mother cries. Cries for a healer, cries for a friend, cries for a gentle preacher man. Let him hang there, I say; let him hang there, for he’s let us down, let us all down. Of course he was a healer, we knew that, but some of us thought he was more than that. Of course he was a prophet, we knew that, but some of us thought he wasn’t just a prophet - we thought he was ‘The Prophet’, The Prophet who was to come in the name of God in the last days, to bring old things to an end and make all things new. That’s what some of us thought. Why? Because that’s what he said, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand’, when I do all these other things do you not see that the Kingdom of God is at hand? And we thought he meant it. We really thought he meant it, the boys in the village and me. We thought he had come to announce the day when God would set his people free. We thought that was what he was about; and when he said, ‘Follow me’, that’s why we followed. We thought we were following Messiah. We thought we were following the Son of David. And that’s why I came to Passover this time. And only last Sunday we came into this city and we sang - I was there, I was in the crowd that went before him, I laid down my cloak and I sang like everyone else – we sang ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna! Save us Lord! Hosanna!’ We thought, or some of us thought, we were coming to this Passover to be delivered. We thought the long exile of our own nation in our own land was over. We thought he was going to lead us out from under the fist of the Romans. To freedom. To glory. It’s been a long time coming but we thought it was coming now. We’ve been oppressed for centuries, by the Romans now, by that half-breed Herod and his litter before, before that by our own people - God help us - that corrupt house of the Hasmoneans. But we thought the time had come, we thought this man was the Son of God, our liberator and we were ready. O yes, we were ready. Simon said so, Simon the Zealot, from our village, one of Jesus’ ‘Twelve’ - The Twelve - the twelve new Sons of Israel, the twelve new leaders of a new nation and Simon the Zealot from Betharan one of them. Went to school with Simon’s brother, and my name’s down in Simon’s unit. Wonder what he thinks now, he’s not standing round this cross watching; he’s gone, like I’m going to go. Let him die. I thought there was something funny last Sunday when he came out of Bethany on that donkey not on a horse. I knew it had been arranged. Simon told us that one of the disciples had gone to make arrangements, but it should have been a horse, not a donkey. We should have seen it coming then, because in the rest of the week he hasn’t done anything. Okay, okay, he went into the Temple, that was good, lashed about at the traders, threw some people out, turned over the tables of the money-changers – at least that means I’ll go home with more money in my pocket than when I came - that was a good sign, that made us think – ‘Yes, This is it! But it wasn’t. What did he go and do next? Let the blind and the lame and the children come to him in the Temple, that’s all – it might be breaking the law but it’s hardly the stuff of revolution - and he taught, he taught, he taught. Judas I think was the most worried of them all. That’s why he led the guards to him in the garden thinking that if he brought them into the garden where we were sleeping Jesus would have to defend himself. He’d have to let us draw our swords, he’d have to fight and once that fight had started who knows where it would finish. But he wouldn’t let us draw our swords. ‘Put your swords away’, he said; so let him die, I say, let him die. He’s not what we wanted. He didn’t raise the standard of God the King over the Temple, we couldn’t shout our war cry ‘A sword for the Lord and for Jesus’, he hasn’t blown the trumpet call to arms. He’s not what we thought he was going to be. He’s no saviour, no liberator for us. Let him die. Ironic really, he wouldn’t fight them, but they’re crucifying him as a terrorist anyway. Serves him right. Hoshea was not alone in thinking these thoughts. Revolution was in the air, though even the revolutionaries themselves didn’t agree on what form it should take or how it would come about. But the view was widespread that things couldn’t go on as they were, that the times were ripe for change, that old things had to end and new ones begin. ‘The End of the World’ is nigh was one of the slogans, and when they said that the sun would be darkened, the skies rolled up like a garment, the mountains and hills flattened and the stars fall from heaven they didn’t mean that the world would actually end. These earth-shattering events wouldn’t actually shatter the earth at all, only those institutions, systems and people which represented the old order and the old ways. The sun would rise as usual after the revolution, but on a better earth. There would be a new Israel, and God would be its king. There was a widespread hope for a new Moses, a Messiah, to lead them out of their Egypt into a new Promised Land. Hoshea and the revolutionaries thought along these lines, and many ordinary Judeans and Galileans were sympathetic. And the Romans and the Jewish authorities who were in bed with them, knew what was going on too. There was quite a list of crucified Messiahs and freedom fighters in the Jerusalem garrison’s execution register. Execute first and ask questions later was the unwritten order, and shoot to kill was the policy on patrol. They had put down Palm Sunday as pilgrims getting a bit over-excited, but the Temple incident had been serious. They could not have a popular Galilean prophet doing that sort of thing, not least during Passover which was the most nationalistic festival of them all. He would have to go, for the sake of public order. He should have known better, and if he’s not guilty of being dangerously innocent then he’s guilty of insurrection, either way, his death was inevitable. Wrong person, wrong place, wrong time. And that is, putting it bluntly, the historian’s explanation of the death of Jesus. How much Jesus himself identified with any kind of revolutionary hope is one of the hardest questions scholars have to answer: on the one hand he did use the loaded expression ‘The Kingdom of God’ in his key message, on the other he seems to have deliberately avoided making any kind of public claim to be the Messiah. Both Hoshea and his mother followed this man. What is beyond reasonable doubt, is that he was crucified by the Romans as an enemy of the state. Bible reading Matthew 26.1 - 27.26 Reflection Hoshea and those like him were disillusioned with Jesus because he did not approve of the use of violence to achieve freedom. Should violence and terror ever be used in the name of God? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the cross of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the mystery of his death, of a life taken and a love given. We remember a real life lived in the real world, with its conflicts of expectations, its violent political tensions and its deep need for peace; and we praise you for our Lord’s chosen way of reconciliation in overcoming evil with good. In his name we pray for the peace of our world, for the peace of Jerusalem and for peace in the Middle East; for peace in those areas where violence is making the news and for peace in all those other places of ongoing conflict which so soon disappear from our headlines and our memories. We pray for those trying to be peace-makers, and for those who are determinedly war-mongers, for the work of the United Nations, and for all those who remain the nameless victims of war …. Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
Salome, the wife of Zebedee and mother of James and John, is sitting near the foot of the cross with Mary, Jesus’ mother and others of the women who have followed him from the early days. The men have gone. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Their courage and bravery, if that’s what it is, isn’t the sort of courage and bravery that would hold them here. Watching. Waiting. Just being here in this awful place, at this awful time. But that’s what we do, isn’t it, we women? We watch. We wait. We’re there. And we are all he has now, as we sit here. His mother, God rest her soul, me and the others. We followed him too, just like the men did, not that anybody other than Jesus ever noticed us, except when the meals weren’t ready on time. They didn’t count us, the Six, or give us a title like ‘the Twelve’: but he knew us, he called us, he valued us just like he valued so many other sorts of people that no-one else did. He spoke to us, he had time for us, he didn’t dismiss us, or just use us; he treated us like human beings, made in the image of God, blessed by God and affirmed. I suppose that might be one of the reasons why the Scribes and Pharisees found him so difficult to cope with. His ways were not their ways, and their ways being the old ways were obviously the right ways. But his ways were so … open, that’s the only word I can think of. He didn’t put barriers up against people, or boundaries around things. So he welcomed us women among his followers, spent time with ordinary women like Mary and Martha, and more colourful ones like Mary Magdalene. And the children, that was different too: I remember the upset when he took that scruffy little village child and put him down in the midst of the disciples and told them that each one like him mattered eternally to our heavenly Father and that if they didn’t turn round and become like little children they wouldn’t get very far in the kingdom of heaven. They didn’t like that. You could make quite a list really. I suppose welcoming the lepers was the most shocking; maybe not, maybe it was his parties with undesirable characters, that certainly was shocking. You could have cut the atmosphere in Jericho with a knife that afternoon he invited himself to tea with Zachaeus – none of us could take that really, the man was a chief tax-collector, very successful, very rich, which meant that he must have sucked up to the Romans even more than usual and then bled his fellow-Jews white. Hateful little man, we all thought, but after Jesus had accepted him he certainly was changed, he’s reportedly the only honest tax-collector in Judea and all his old cronies think he’s letting the side down. I know that sort of thing upset people, though Jesus rather liked the way they insulted him – ‘Friend of Sinners’ – he took it as a compliment – but you’d have never thought it would come to this. Despised and rejected, for being too free with the love of God, is that it? Is that why we’re here? That’s the question I keep asking, What has my Lord done to bring him to this death by crucifixion? This is the death of a traitor, a revolutionary, a brigand and he was none of those things at all. A bit of a social radical, yes; not too much time for some of our stricter conventions, yes; maybe a bit too quick to see some good in some people where there really wasn’t any, yes – though he wouldn’t agree with that – but none of those things deserve this. ‘Jesus of Nazareth – the King of the Jews’, written on that board in three languages, intended to mock him, I suppose. But I think it’s true, he is our King, or if he isn’t our real king we won’t get a better one. I know his kingdom is not of this world, and that he’s not going to set up a new state, though I know that’s what many of the youngsters wanted him to do and why they’re so angry with him for letting them down as they see it. I thought that’s what it was about once, too, and even went to ask for seats on his right and his left for my two boys – though I blush to think of it now – but he explained that it wasn’t going to be like that. His kingdom wasn’t going to be our usual sort of kingdom, defended by armies and ruled by force, his was a different dream, a better vision. Different? Better? It might have been, but we’re not going to see it now, are we? It’s back to Capernaum for me, to Zebedee and his boats, to keeping his accounts and washing his underwear. But it won’t be the same as it was, we won’t let it, he’s started something that won’t be that easy to stop. He’s shown us things we won’t forget in a hurry. Some things matter, some things don’t and he’s shown us which is which. Look, even as he hangs there, his arms are held open: like they always were, hands swift to welcome and arms to embrace. He loved us, that was what was so special about him, and he insisted that God loved us too; he saw the best in us, and he didn’t let the worst have the last word about us. And they’ll never be able to take that memory and that love away from us. Never. Never.
That’s what he was about, and that’s what he’s about now, even as he hangs there, and we won’t go back to the old ways before he showed us that. We won’t. Salome is quite right, there was something deeply unconventional about Jesus of Nazareth. That seems to be bedrock of history stuff about him too. There was actually nothing new about his teaching at all, he was a good Son of the Covenant, who knew that the Lord was a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. What was unusual about him, if not even unique, were the conclusions he seemed to have drawn from that theology. Some of these conclusions he expressed in bold teaching in parables, like the Parable of the Two Sons, where the father is clearly the hero and the prodigal son the foil, but the elder son is the villain, turning the established and expected roles upside down and so exposing how easy it is for good people – like the elder brother – to get things seriously out of balance. And some of them he expressed in action, notoriously his meals with ‘publicans and sinners’ (as the old Bible translation used to call them), which really did turn conventions on their heads. And he did it all in the name of God – living out what it means to live in God’s kingdom, or walk in God’s ways. But Church and State combined against him, they made sure he paid the price for such extravagant generosity in loving. Bible reading Matthew 27.27-56 and Mark 15.40-41 Reflection ‘He’s shown us things we won’t forget in a hurry’, says Salome, ‘Some things matter and some things don’t, and he’s shown us which is which’. What would be in your list of those things that Jesus has shown us really, really matter? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the cross of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the mystery of his death, of a life taken and a love given. We praise you for a life of extravagant but genuine care, of hands swift to welcome and arms to embrace, of an unconventional love which broke barriers, welcomed outsiders and deeply challenged the comfortable. In his name we pray for your Church throughout the world, and for your churches in this area, for our renewal in unity, mission and service, and for those who bear the heavy responsibilities of leadership and who must make hard decisions for a future yet unknown. In the quietness of our hearts, we bring our own prayers for our church …. Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
Centurion Jason of Naples was in charge of the garrison of the Italian Cohort stationed in the Antonia Fortress in Jerusalem for that year, AD 33. I don’t like these occasions, even at the best of times, and with executions during Passover one must be particularly careful. These Judean Jews are a volatile bunch; it only takes a spark to set off a blaze. And there’s no doubt where their sympathies lie, after all, the only reason why we crucify these people is because they are enemies of the state. Enemy of the state means friend of the crowd. So it’s triple the guard. But I like this one even less. Two of these guys, what do you expect? They swear at you, they fight against you, they spit at you; even as they hang there on their crosses they curse you. At least I don’t have to stand guard. But that other one, that other one was different from the first minute I saw him. I watched the men last night toying with them, as they do. Crown of thorns, royal cloak, give ‘em a reed for a sceptre, the usual game with those who want to be King of the Jews, then put ‘em on a cross and see what they make of that for a throne. But that one was different. They were mocking him, laughing at him, they enjoy that with the more religious ones, and he didn’t say anything. They usually get at least one of those ritual curses out of the religious prisoners. But this one just looked and let it happen. When they scourged him, he just took it. And what was that he said when they were banging the nails in his wrist? Something about God forgive them, ‘Father forgive them’, I think those were his words, ‘for they don’t know what they are doing’. Praying for forgiveness for them in that pain and agony, that’s something. No swearing, no cursing, no bitterness. Strange. His followers are around, or at least their women are, and that’s par for the course, and he’s spoken one or two things to them but he hasn’t sworn at us. I think I heard him crying out to God, ‘God, where are you? Why are you letting this happen to me? Why have you forsaken me?’ heard him say something like that a while ago, but nothing at us. He’s not the first martyr we’ve done, or the first holy man, and he won’t be the last, but there is something different about him. I find him strangely impressive. I find his Jewish faith impressive too, runs in the family I suppose. Uncle Ignatius up in Capernaum, another centurion, that runs in the family as well, has even built them a synagogue; and when I’m at home in Naples I sometimes go along to their synagogue there. I think this Jewish faith has a lot to commend it. The only thing is, though, that these Jews are just so much trouble: I find their religion quite attractive, but the people themselves much less so, but then I suppose that’s true of every religion, isn’t it? The theory might be okay, the beliefs might be fine, but it’s what some of the people get up to in the name of it that worries me, maybe even worries their God as well. But this man is different. I think if I was his God, I would be rather proud of him actually. He is dying well, dying bravely, dying as if death will not have the last word. You could almost say that he’s dying as an example, ‘Greater love has no man than this, than he lays down his life for his friends,’ or his convictions, that kind of thing. But with this one there might even be something more, it’s as if he is thinking that this very act of dying is a victory, not a defeat. For there hasn’t been much of the defeatist about him so far. It’s as if he is fighting a battle – and dying secures the victory. Now when I think about it, Rabbi Yitsak back home in Naples does talk about battles sometimes, the battle between Good and Evil, between Light and Dark, between Life and Death. Is that the battle this Jesus thinks he is fighting at this very moment, I wonder. And, do you know, if it is I wouldn’t mind having a wager on the outcome. He will die, sometime this afternoon, of course he will, but I somehow don’t think that in this case it will be a victory for death. I think the last words they’ll say about this man’s death will be that he died well, that he died believing, that he died safely in his God’s love. That would mean, I think Rabbi Yitsak would say, that the last word lies with Life, not Death; with Good, not Evil and with Light, not Darkness. And I would want to say, Yes, Amen, to that myself I think. The Nicene Creed says that ‘for our sake (Jesus) was crucified under Pontius Pilate’. Part of that presents us with an undeniable and incontrovertible historic fact – that Jesus was ‘crucified under Pontius Pilate’, by Jason or someone very like him. The other bit, which says that this was, ‘for our sake’ says a lot more. It attempts to make sense of that tragic death. Shalimah, our middle-aged pilgrim from Galilee, can’t make any sense of it at all. She is just appalled as she looks on this crucifixion scene, all she sees is a good man, a Healer blessed by God, dying to no purpose - Why? What has my Lord done, what makes this rage and spite; he made the lame to run, he gave the blind their sight. Her son Hoshea saw a failed revolutionary, ironically being executed as a terrorist by the very Romans he had in the end chickened out of fighting. Salome, wife of Zebedee and mother of James and John, one of the women sitting near the foot of the cross, sees a good man, a loving and caring saintly man, dying as an example of what it means to go on loving and giving right to the end, in a world where to love goes against the grain. Centurion Jason has seen something else which later theologians would pick up on too. He sees that there is a war being fought at every level in the universe, between Good and Evil, between God and his Enemy, whatever name we use for that force which opposes the creativity and goodness and energy we call ‘God’. And he sees that the cross of Christ is a crucial battle in that war, that it is in fact the decisive battle, and that the future of creation depends upon its outcome. And significant numbers of Jews in Jesus’ own day would have agreed with Jason on the first part of that at least, that there is an eternal struggle being waged between God and Evil, and if you think the Book of Revelation in the New Testament is strange, bizarre and weird, then you should try some of the other examples of such thinking from roughly the same period, which makes Revelation look very tame indeed. This way of looking at things might sound very fanciful to some, and quite distasteful to others, especially to those who may have come across those contemporary Christians who are particularly keen on ‘spiritual warfare’: but at a time when battles and war are powerful images in our society – Lord of the Rings? Harry Potter? Many a computer game? – perhaps such images should not be dismissed too readily? At the very least they provide one way of thinking about how this tragic death might be ‘for our sake’. Bible reading Mark 15.33-39 and Luke 23.32-49 Reflection Do you find this conflict language of good versus evil, light versus darkness, and life versus death a helpful way of thinking about the death of Jesus and about spirituality today? If so, why? If you don’t, what is it about it that you find unhelpful? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the cross of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the mystery of his death, of a life taken and a love given. We remember a real life lived in one particular place and earthed in one particular community and one religion, yet which recognised faith in God outside of that religion and goodness in the lives of people of other Faiths. In his name we pray for people of other faiths, who name God with other names and follow him along different paths; for those who are oppressed by dominant religions which do not tolerate them and for those which seek dominance and claim exclusivity for their own way; and for all people of faith who suffer at the hands of organised religion; for a new spirit of mutual respect, understanding and exploration between faiths, We pray for those people of other faiths living near us now, Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
8 Alexander - Principal Secretary to Caiaphas Alexander is the Principal Secretary to Caiaphas the High Priest. He is nowhere near the cross, but in his office in the Temple complex. He is a troubled man. I have every sympathy with Caiaphas, I really have. He has a quite impossible job. He’s not a bad man, he does his best, he’s honest and he tries: but his position is impossible. As far as the Romans are concerned he is a Jew, the leader of the Jews in Judea – any problems with them in any way, shape or form, they hold him responsible. As far as the Jews are concerned he is a Roman lackey, and if the Romans do anything which offends them he gets the blame. But he tries hard to keep the peace, and I know just how hard that is. I see how much effort he has to put in to prevent the Romans doing some of the things they would really like to do, and how that heavy-handed Pontius Pilate ever got to be Procurator in what must be the Empire’s most sensitive spot I’ll never know. I think they think poor old Caiaphas’ Greek is limited to ‘Cool it, cool it, that’ll only make matters worse’, and the Romans don’t like to hear that. On the other hand he is for ever saying to our hotheads that if they don’t cool it he can’t answer for protecting them. It’s a thankless job. He’s caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and Judea is the very devil of a ship to steer straight. I know he thinks he acted for the best about that Galilean. He saw him as a liability we were best rid of. I respect his logic. If it means that one man has to die so that peace is preserved, well so be it, but I think that in this particular instance he was wrong. Yes, Jesus was becoming a problem. The Romans heard about that demonstration on Sunday, and we only just managed to convince them that it was only a few pilgrims getting over-excited. The Temple incident was more serious, but it was after all in our own Temple and we could have hushed it up. I know the Romans could see what was going on, but they were too far away to hear what was being said. We could have told them it was an attempted theft which led to a bit of a fracas. We could have done that. But no. The Galilean had to go. I think Caiaphas has fundamentally misjudged Jesus. He is a prophet, that’s clear, a healer, a Rabbi and a good one at that and he’s orthodox. He has not actually said anything that I have ever heard - and I’ve taken a bit of an interest in the man – which anyone could label as heresy. Some of his followers might not be so orthodox, but he’s basically a Pharisee and that’s why he falls out with the other Pharisees so much. After all, you only fall out with your friends don’t you? Yes, a pretty orthodox Pharisee is Jesus ben Joseph. He defends Torah, he might sometimes takes a more liberal view of it than some, but that’s a big debate among the Pharisees that’s still got a way to run. He believes in God’s Torah, that his law, his guidance, his teaching is the way to live, that it is God’s great gift to us. I have heard him say all that myself. I heard him again only the other day. What is the greatest commandment? someone asked him. And he gave them two: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and, Love your neighbour as yourself. That’s orthodoxy. Scribes have said that for centuries. The difference with this Jesus, though, is not in what he teaches but in what he is. There’s something about the man that has an integrity that not many Pharisees or the rest of us have got. It’s not just that he practises what he preaches - he does that - but somehow there is a wholeness about him. It isn’t something on the surface but in the depths of his being. He’s a good Jew, and I think Caiaphas was wrong in handing him over to be crucified. You shouldn’t get crucified for being a good Jew, a loyal Jew, a faithful Jew with a vision for the renewal of our nation and the renewal of our faith. Nor should you get crucified for being honest, for being good, or for having integrity. But maybe that is why he was crucified? Maybe that’s why he has enemies? Maybe it’s because human beings can’t stand too much goodness; that we can’t cope with too much integrity, that it makes us uncomfortable; that it shows us up and exposes those things within us that didn’t ought to be and we don’t want to see? Maybe that’s why he hangs and suffers there this afternoon. Is he actually too good for this world, so we push him out of it? Because he’s too real? Maybe all the other stuff is just an excuse, that what we are doing to him on that cross out there this afternoon is what we always do to goodness and integrity and honesty and love - we push it away? Alexander may or may not be right about Jesus making enemies because of his transparent integrity or his extravagant goodness as Salome put it: but he’s quite right about Caiaphas and his motives. In fact, of all the Bible’s explanations for why Jesus died, this one of Caiaphas comes nearest to that usually given by the secular historians who ask the question. For the good of all and the safety of the Temple etc etc, this turbulent Galilean had to go. Public order demanded it, letting him go round Jerusalem protesting and demonstrating at Passover time when nationalistic fervour was at its height and Roman nerves at their most taut was just asking for trouble. And that’s what Jesus got. An outspoken Galilean prophet - and Alexander underestimated just how outspoken Jesus could be, even if he wasn’t saying anything particularly new – an outspoken Galilean prophet doing what he did in the Temple when he did it, was just asking for trouble. But saying that raises another question: did Jesus know that this would be the likely outcome of his visit to the city? And the answer to that question must be yes, given the circumstances; for it would have been obvious to anyone that someone doing what he did in the Temple was doing something very dangerous indeed. Whether or not Jesus planned that Temple incident in advance, we have no way of knowing, but few historians doubt that the incident took place. Whether Jesus thought it would precipitate a confrontation and that was what God wanted, we have no way of knowing either. Nor do we know why Jesus took the risk, for the Bible stories look at all this from the other side of Easter, with resurrection hindsight, and for them Jesus was the right person in the right place at the right time, and his death was the will of God for him and for us. It may be though that there was some kind of compulsion or sense of destiny that drove him there, and that that might be another place to look to make sense of the agony of Good Friday. Bible reading John 19 Reflection Do you think that goodness, integrity, honesty and love inevitably get crucified given the way the world is? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the cross of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the mystery of his death, of a life taken and a love given. We praise you for Jesus the Jew, a true Son of the Covenant and child of Abraham, for his commitment to his spiritual legacy, for his vision for the renewal of his people in faith, hope and love and for his delight in your Torah. In his name we pray for your ancient people, the Jews, for their peace and wellbeing. We ask your forgiveness for the anti-semitism which your Church has played its part in generating in the past, and for vigilance in guarding against it now and in the future. We pray for the Jews living near us now, and we pray for the nations of Israel and Palestine, that their struggles and hatreds may be resolved in peace …. Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
9 Michael – Purveyor of Unblemished Lambs, Goats and Pigeons Michael is a priest, and a theologically very literate one: but like most priests of the time he had to have a day job. His was as a stallholder in the Court of the Gentiles in the Temple in Jerusalem. He was proud of his stall with its gilt lettering on the awning: Michael – Purveyor of Unblemished Lambs, Goats and Pigeons, and he was grateful that his stall was at the other side of the courtyard from where Jesus had started overturning the tables of the money-changers and turning the sacrificial animals loose. He also was a follower of Jesus, and had been for some time. His son would eventually write the Letter to the Hebrews. It was a truly horrible sight there at Golgotha with those three crosses. I suppose crucifixion always is, but I find the sort where they use nails and draw blood is the worst sort. Strange, that, because as a priest I am used to handling blood. But it was there, when I was watching him and seeing the blood that light began to dawn. There wasn’t a lot of blood, like there is when we sacrifice the animals, certainly not enough to smear on the sides of the altar like we do in some of the services: but it was that slowly dripping blood which made me realise what might be happening here. I’ve followed Jesus now for the best part of two years. I know him to be a good and holy man. There’s nothing about him that I have ever seen that is blemished or spoiled or flawed. It was a good man who I saw hanging there, an innocent man, pure and clean just like the lambs and goats and pigeons I sell on my stall for the sacrifices in the Temple. And as I saw the blood that parallel just came into my mind. What was happening on that cross, it seemed to me, was that a sacrifice was being offered: but on a hill not in a temple, and on a cross not on an altar. And this time the sacrifice wasn’t of a goat or a sheep or a pigeon which had no choice in the matter, but was an offering of himself, by Jesus, freely made; here Jesus was offering himself as a willing victim, offering himself to God in consecration and dedication, making the supreme sacrifice of offering his total life to God. That started me thinking. Then I kept coming back to the blood. There’s not always blood in our sacrifices and we can have a sacrifice of incense or cereals without any blood at all, so blood isn’t exactly essential to a sacrifice, even for the two sacrifices for sin: but it is the usual way, and when it is sprinkled on the sides of the altar those who have confessed their sin see it as the sign of absolution that their sin is forgiven and their guilt is taken away, that they are now washed clean. And as I looked at that blood of Jesus on the cross, it began to make sense. Is that, I wondered, what Jesus is doing on the cross? Was he offering himself to say to us that our sins are forgiven and our guilt is washed away? Like he’d said to so many people in other ways while he was alive? I haven’t worked it through yet, but so far it’s the only way I can see of making sense of this innocent death. But it’s a dangerous idea though, thinking of the death of Jesus as a sacrifice because not everybody understands sacrifice in the way we do. When the pagans make their sacrifices, for example, they make them to appease their angry god or gods, to make their gods look favourably upon them instead of unfavourably, to make their gods change their minds and bless them instead of curse them. I’d hate to think that anybody would think of the sacrifice of Jesus like that because that’s not how we think about God at all. We don’t think that our God’s mind needs to be changed, to love us instead of hate us. We believe that he loves us all the time, even when we are going wrong and doing wrong, and that he is ready to forgive us long before we turn to him and ask for forgiveness. We start from that lovely old psalm,
That says it all. For us God is ever more ready to forgive than we are to repent. And he’s given us the sacrificial system so that we can use it to say sorry and then to know and feel our sins forgiven. And that’s just what Jesus taught us too, that God loves sinners. How much more does our Heavenly Father love us, than even the best of human parents love their children – how often have I heard Jesus say that? Ours isn’t a God who needs to be appeased, whose mind needs to be changed, that’s the way the pagans think of God not us. So as long as we avoid that serious misunderstanding and see sacrifice as God’s gift to us, as a way in which we can say sorry and then know and feel our sins forgiven, then maybe that’s a bit of a help in understanding what’s happening here? It’s almost as if Jesus is calling to us from the cross for the last time, to turn away from our sins and discover the forgiveness of God. I really do think there’s something worth thinking about here. And Michael is right on both counts. On the one hand, this idea of the death of Jesus as a sacrifice would turn out to be a very helpful one in understanding the events of the first Good Friday. But on the other hand, it would also prove dangerous and be seriously misunderstood. There is one popular Good Friday hymn I personally cannot sing, and I know others share my reservations. It is the popular one by Mrs Alexander - There is a green hill far away. Even if we make allowance for the fact that she wrote it as a children’s hymn, its imagery is too wrong to sing. There’s nothing wrong with,
Michael the priest and Purveyor of Unblemished Lambs, Goats and Pigeons could sing those words easily enough, until he read the next verse, which shows what Mrs Alexander really meant,
That pictures Heaven as a fortress with a locked gate, locked on the inside, with God determined to keep it that way. He is only persuaded to open it and let us in, and then grudgingly I sense, when his son dies to pay the price of our admission. That does not square at all with the generously loving God of Psalm 103 or with the picture of the father of the Prodigal Son running to welcome him home and then killing the fatted calf for a feast. As for me, I’ll stay with Michael and the Bible rather than Mrs Alexander. Reflection It’s a dangerous thing to question a favourite hymn. What do you think about the picture of God painted in ‘There is a green hill’? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the cross of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the mystery of his death, of a life taken and a love given. We give you thanks for a sacrifice once offered, the sacrifice of a life lived for you and for others in commitment and dedication; and the sacrifice of a death without hate or fear, a sacrifice which speaks to us of an eternal love, generous in forgiveness and unwavering in support. In his name we confess our unwillingness at times to bear the cross, our wavering discipleship and our fitful commitment. Help us, as we think on his sacrifice, to offer you our sacrifices: of praise and thanksgiving, of worship and service, of commitment and dedication, with good intent and with our whole heart, and in the knowledge that what you call forth from us you will yourself enable …. Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
Matthew is a Scribe, or rather an apprentice Scribe. He too is a Galilean but is studying at the Scribal Academy in Jerusalem. He has watched the events of this dreadful week unfold, and has the beginnings of an idea of what was going on. Eventually he would write a Gospel. I saw him first when they brought him out of the Governor’s Headquarters. Obviously another crucifixion party, but a bit risky on the eve of a Passover I thought. He’d obviously been flogged, which they did sometimes, and he had something on his head, which turned out to be a kind of wreath of brambles, and that looked nasty. He had trouble carrying the bar of the cross, so they forced a slave from the crowd to carry it for him, or at least I assumed then that he was a slave, got to know him well later, of course. I don’t know why, but I thought I’d follow them – I usually avoid these things at all costs, but this time I went along. There was the usual small crowd of friends and family hanging back, and the equally usual gawpers and mockers. I didn’t know who it was at the time, of course. When they got to Golgotha, where the execution posts are – awful place - they offered him the drugged wine to kill the initial pain, but he wouldn’t drink it. So they banged the nails into the wrists and hauled the cross onto its upright - that must be agonising with all the weight on the nails - then they quickly finished the job with the pin through the feet. Dreadful. They put up the charge board over his head, and that was the first I knew who it was – Jesus. I’d heard a bit about this latest self-styled prophet from home, but hadn’t really taken much notice until that week. Some of my fellow students and I had watched the demonstration with the donkey on the previous Sunday and we had all talked about the fracas in the Temple courtyard, but I hadn’t taken that much notice. Galileans are a bit volatile, and coming to the city has strange effects on some of us, especially the religious ones. I’d put him down as another John the Baptist, and assumed that the Temple Police would send him packing after a day or two sleeping off his religious enthusiasm in the cells. But they hadn’t arrested him then, and for several days he had been teaching in the Temple, and I must confess I had listened to some of it, and it made me think. But the powers that be obviously took him much more seriously than I thought, for there were senior Temple personnel keeping an eye on him now, even on the cross. I learned later that they had been instrumental in arresting him. Well actually they were doing more than looking on, they were joining in the ridicule that every crucified person gets, and I really didn’t think they should have done that. Not for his sake, of course - I didn’t particularly care about him at that time – but because it just wasn’t the sort of dignified behaviour I would expect from senior priests. They, and the others mocked him, taunting him over his alleged claim to be ‘The King of the Jews’, for that was what the soldiers had written on the charge board. He didn’t shout back, or swear at them or anything. Just once he called out, and someone gave him a drink on a sponge on a stick. Then he died. It was all over in about three hours, and that’s no time at all for a crucifixion. And that’s when I realised I had been standing there watching for all that time. And I suppose that’s what started it really, the train of events that led me to where I am now. An elderly follower of the man. Still a Scribe, though they call us ‘Teachers’ or ‘Rabbis’ now, but a Teacher of the new Way. A Christian, as they call us now. Well, just to finish the story off, I gather that Joseph of Arimathea - and that was quite a surprise because he was a big noise in the Council then - came later on, took the body down and put it in his own tomb. Which was supposed to be the end of that, of course, though things did turn out rather differently, but that’s another story. We have just listened in as Matthew the Scribe described the death of Jesus. But when we read what he wrote in his Gospel, we get something rather different. We get a very richly textured picture, full of meanings in every word, and it is not a photograph. It is not a snapshot of the Good Friday scene, it does not record what we would have seen had we been standing by and looking on. Had we been standing by and looking on, we would have seen nothing out of the ordinary at all, nothing other than three crosses, three dying men, a sullen crowd, some bored soldiers and a few grieving friends and relatives. But this is what Matthew pictures in his Gospel:
(Matthew 27.45-56) What Matthew is doing in this amazing painting is looking through that Friday afternoon, which for most of the people of Jerusalem was just another ordinary Friday afternoon, and seeing what it meant. And for him it means a great deal. He paints darkness – and he’s not picturing the weather and natural darkness – he’s talking about the darkness of God’s awesome presence, his powerful, challenging and saving judgement and the ‘End of the World.’ By the darkness Matthew indicates that God is in these goings on in an indescribably special way. The cross might be the dark work of sinful people with many and varied reasons to want rid of this man – but it is not an end, or a defeat or a failure; it is the great new beginning, the victory which marks the ultimate success of Jesus’ life and work and, above all, the sign of God’s blessing. That leads him into the mention of Elijah, the long-dead prophet who was expected to return before the great Day of the Lord – not the cosmic end-of-everything sort of end of the world, but the closing of the old age and the dawning of the new. The ‘Cry of Dereliction’ – ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’ from the beginning of Psalm 22 reminds us of the pain of the Suffering Servant who hangs despised and rejected, alone. But Matthew expects those who look at his painting to know that that psalm moves from lament to thanksgiving, from suffering to victory and ends on a triumphant note of praise for deliverance from death. And the really alert ones would know that the vinegar on a stick image comes from another psalm which does exactly the same thing. He paints the curtain of the Temple rent in two, and there is nothing in the Old Testament about that at all, but several popular books of the time are about the journeys of special saints through the veils into heaven and of the visions they saw on the way. Not so, says Matthew, God has himself drawn those veils back and we see him face to face, as he promised we would. We look on him and live: the day of blessing has arrived. And so to the centurion in the bottom left hand corner, looking on, believing. Matthew doesn’t quote those Old Testament passages about the gentiles flocking to Jerusalem in the latter days and climbing up to the Temple mount to be enlightened by God’s Torah, his teaching and guidance and law. He doesn’t labour the point, just adds that detail to his picture. And last of all, but unmistakable, he paints an earthquake and dead men walking – the clearest sign of all of what he means, and the clearest indication to readers of this strange passage who don’t quite know how to take it that they are not supposed to take it literally. An earthquake and dead people walking the streets is his picture of the ‘general resurrection of the dead on the Last Day’. So what is Matthew doing in this word-picture? He is not reporting what happened on the first Good Friday. He is confessing his faith in Jesus Christ. He is giving, using the conventions of his day, his view of the meaning of the death of Jesus. He sees Jesus as the Messiah, the King of the Jews, words used in mockery by the soldiers and the Church leaders and written as the charge against him over the cross. He sees this death as the sign and the moment of the coming of the Kingdom of God in power, not as many hoped and expected such a day would come – and they still do – but just as really, just as truly. For him it is these events of Good Friday which speak most profoundly of the Victory of God, of God’s love demonstrated in the depths of human hopelessness, and of the hope in which those who glimpse this may live. Matthew lived in our world and knew its pain. He knew that darkness, death and evil are present and powerful. But he knows that they are not the full picture, and that that full picture must include God and Jesus of Nazareth. In that faith he paints his picture, insisting in it that the last word does not lie with death but with life, not with evil but with good, not with darkness but with light! Why so? Because that is what he had seen in the Jesus he had come to call the Christ, in his life and through his death. Reflection
(Timothy Rees, Hymns & Psalms 36, verse 3) Does this verse throw helpful light on the cross, the reality of evil, the love of God, and Christian hope? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the cross of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the mystery of his death, of a life taken and a love given. We praise you for a life which did not end in defeat, though the powers of death had done their worst, but which in its earthly ending continues to speak of the sure and certain hope of your love and your eternal purposes. In his name we pray for your encouragement in our living and dying; may we live as those who believe that the last word lies not with death but with life, not with evil but with good and not with darkness but with light; and in living by this good news, may our lives continue to serve your good purposes for your world …. Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
EASTER DAY 11 Manasses – a gardener’s labourer Manasses lives in Jerusalem and works in the orchards outside the Garden Gate of the city. All I know is the damn thing’s empty. They put the body in on Friday afternoon, just as I was packing up to go home for Sabbath. I saw ’em do it. In fact the boss asked ’em what they was doing, ’cos we weren’t expecting no funeral. And we was a bit surprised when they said that he’d bin crucified, ’cos normally they don’t bury them sort. Anyhow, just before knockin-off time on Friday they put the body in there, in that tomb belonging to some rich chap from Lydda way. I saw ’em. I watched ’em. They put it in there and closed it up, temporary-like, and the boss said it was ’cos they needed to come back after Sabbath and lay ’im out proper. Now it’s Sunday, and it’s empty. What a fuss. The thing’s gone … No, I haven’t a clue where it’s gone, or why it’s empty, but gone it has and empty it is. Maybe somebody come along and took it away, but why would they do that? I dunno. No idea. It’s a first class tomb, that is, ordinary folk can’t afford that sort of thing. It’s over in the council necropolis for the likes of you and me, so his friends aren’t going to shift him there, are they? No, I wasn’t here on Sabbath. I was home like everybody else. But the place was supposed to be guarded, the boss said that. He was some sort of prophet or summat, ’parrently, and the Temple police were supposed to be around in case of trouble. They were certainly here when I went off on Friday afternoon. Yes, I’ve heard the talk. Boss’s wife says there was an angel come and rolled the stone away and carried the body off to Abraham’s Bosom: but her would, she’s like that. The Temple’s putting it around that his mates come and took the body away, an’ the police here this morning weren’t happy with that at all, said it made them look right pillocks. Could be grave robbers I s’pose, you do hear of them taking bodies sometimes. But as for him getting up himself, pushing the stone back and walking off somewhere ’cos he wasn’t really dead, well, say what you like about the bloody Romans, but at least they’re efficient. Have you ever heard of Romans messing up a crucifixion, or anything else come to that? So all I know is that when I turned up this morning the tomb was empty and there was a fuss on, women cryin’, police messing about and the boss getting it in the ear, though he’d been home Sabbath same as us … Of course it was the right tomb, what d’you take us for? Besides, there aren’t that many tombs to get mixed up here are there? No, I’ve no idea what happened. No idea at all. But take it from me, the damn tomb’s empty. Jesus was ‘crucified under Pontius Pilate’. That is a fact. But the first Christians did not believe that that was the end of Jesus or of his story. What happened next is incredible to believe, and hotly disputed. According to the stories in the New Testament, some of his followers claimed that after they had seen him crucified on the Friday afternoon, he actually met them three days later on the Sunday, and on and off for a few weeks after that. They didn't say they had seen a vision of him, but that they had met him. Their stories didn't tally, and they had all sorts of questions about it all, but they obviously hadn’t doctored their stories to make a neat fit. One thing is certain, that within a few years of his death his Jewish followers were calling him their Messiah and even their Lord. They didn't quite say that he was God, but they came very near to it, which is amazing given their unique Jewish faith in only one immortal and invisible God. Within a relatively short period of Good Friday, say fifteen years or so, his followers were saying some pretty remarkable things about him, such as that he was the Messiah, the Lord, the Son of God, and that he is risen and ascended in power and glory and seated at God's right hand. This fact needs to be accounted for. A third fact is closely linked with it and similarly demands some explanation, the fact of a crucified prophet having any followers at all twenty years on, let alone a rapidly growing number worldwide. The New Testament accounts for these three facts quite simply. It is all because of the resurrection. It is because ‘God raised Jesus from the dead’. Paul puts it very clearly - No resurrection, no Christianity! For Paul, and for the New Testament as a whole, the resurrection is the historical event on which the Christian faith is founded. Without the resurrection Jesus would be remembered, if he would be remembered at all, as nothing more than another rejected prophet. Without the resurrection the crucifixion would be remembered, if it would be remembered at all, as just another martyrdom. What makes Jesus remembered, what accounts for the titles given to him and what explains the remarkable growth of the Christian Faith in the first century is the resurrection. Christianity is Easter Faith. The first Christians were Easter People. The question of what actually happened is almost impossible to answer, but the New Testament insists on two things, the first that the tomb was empty and the second, that Jesus ‘appeared’ to a number of period over a period of time. Both facts are hard to take in, and both have been much argued over in many places from pubs to lecture halls. Some New Testament scholars claim that both ideas are much later than the first Easter, and come from the second generation of Christians who didn’t really understand what they had been taught by the apostles, who actually hadn’t talked about a physical resurrection at all. Other scholars find that kind of theory even more difficult to believe than believing in a physical resurrection. The arguments still go on. My sympathies go with the latter group. I can’t understand the resurrection of Jesus, but I do take the New Testament stories of the empty tomb and the appearances seriously. I can’t see them as late inventions based on a misunderstanding - I’ll say more of why later – and I can’t answer any of the questions that Manasses was being asked about what had happened and so on, and neither could he. But if the opponents of the earliest Christians, and opponents they soon had, had been able to produce a corpse that would surely have killed off any belief that Jesus had risen from the dead and discredited any preaching that he had. But they didn’t. Because they couldn’t. Because the body was not there. If we accept that the stories are true and that the tomb was empty, the fact that the corpse had disappeared proves nothing of course, other than that the tomb was empty and that the corpse had disappeared. There might be any number of explanations about what had happened to it. But the New Testament stories about the empty tomb do demonstrate one thing, that for them talking about Jesus being raised from the dead meant talking about something happening to his corpse, however hard it was to talk about that or to understand it. Bible reading Matthew 27:62 – 28.15; Mark 15.42 – 16.8; Luke 24.1-12; John 20.1-19 Reflection What would you think if they found the bones of Jesus? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the resurrection of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the joy-filled mystery of Easter, of a life restored and a love given anew. We pray for your Church throughout the world at this time, for the churches in this area and for our church at … We pray that you will confirm and strengthen us all in Easter faith, and hope, and love, in the name of our Risen Lord. Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
12 Judith – who runs a Guest House in Emmaus It started off as an ordinary day. When the Sabbath guests had gone I tidied their rooms and got them ready for anyone else who might arrive. I knew cousin Cleopas and his wife, Hannah, were coming that night on their way home to Galilee. They had come up with Jesus the week before and were spending Passover in the city, before calling with us on the way home. So I had laid supper ready for them, for I knew that they had wanted to spend as much of their last day in the city as they could and wouldn’t be arriving until late afternoon. I was worried about them, of course, for we’d heard what had happened to Jesus and we knew they’d be very upset, which they were. They arrived with a stranger. Cleopas told me afterwards that this stranger had met them on the road, and that they had talked about everything that had gone on the week before, from the time Jesus had entered the city, through that awful Friday to the strange goings-on in the garden that very morning. And Cleopas said that this stranger had explained it all from the Holy Scriptures. Then, and this is when it became a day like no other, just as the stranger broke the bread at supper Cleopas and Hannah recognised him. It was Jesus. And as soon as they recognised him, he disappeared. Well, they put their shoes back on and rushed back to the city; just left me standing there and the meal on the table. They came back at teatime the next day and told me the rest of the story. When they got back to Jerusalem, the others told them that Jesus had appeared to Simon. And no sooner had Cleopas told them what had happened to them, but Jesus appeared again. They were terrified, thinking that they were seeing a ghost, but it seems that Jesus said he wasn’t a ghost, invited them to look at the crucifixion wounds and touch him, and just to prove that he wasn’t a ghost, ate some fish off the table. He then gave them a Bible Study on what had happened and what it was all about, told them to wait in the city after he had gone for God’s power to fill them, walked with them out to Bethany where as he was blessing them he was taken up into heaven, like Elijah I suppose. That was the story Cleopas told us. And it’s the story he’s told everybody, all down the years. And I know he told it to that nice Dr Luke who came round doing his best to research it all. But even he couldn’t explain what had really happened, or even put all the pieces of the jigsaw together, because there were other pieces besides Cleopas’s bit. Other people have told different stories over the years, saying that Jesus appeared at different times and to different people, not just on that one day, but for weeks after, and in Galilee as well as here; and saying that he didn’t finally leave them on the Mount of Olives until just before Pentecost. I don’t know what really happened. I didn’t take that much notice of the stranger who came in with Cleopas and Hannah, and I didn’t see him go. I know what they believe happened, and I know that they have been followers of Jesus as Lord and Messiah from that weekend on. I know I’ve put up others of his followers over the years who’ve all had their stories to tell; and I really don’t know what to make of it all, one way or the other. Judith, wise and non-committal, is being very sensible. She is being asked to believe the incredible while at the same time being told stories about it which do not add up. She doesn’t ask what actually happened, and if she had it would have been a question that was impossible to answer. The New Testament itself tells a variety of stories, and as with most really important Bible stories it isn’t really in the business of giving the sort of information that would satisfy an impartial historian, if such a person were to exist, which I doubt. And if we ask smaller questions about what happened, the New Testament is equally unhelpful. For example, if we want to know who discovered that the tomb was empty we can’t find a simple answer to that. Each gospel tells the story of the tomb being found to be empty, but none agree on who did the finding. If we want to put the events of the first few weeks after Easter in order and make a diary of who saw Jesus, when and where, then that too proves to be impossible, for the stories do not tally. If we want to know what the risen body of Jesus was like, then we are faced with conflicting pictures. In some Jesus's body is as real as yours and mine: he tells the unbelieving Thomas to touch him and see that he is real, and he says to all the disciples that he is no ghost, as we saw: but in other stories he comes and goes when doors and windows are locked and Cleopas and Hannah did walk with him to Emmaus without recognising him. And even if we ask where – Jerusalem and/or Galilee - these meetings took place, we end up with confusing and conflicting answers. We could, of course, and many do, simply dismiss the whole thing. First, on the grounds that dead people just do not come back to life. Not here and now, nor then and there. And secondly, on the grounds that the stories themselves are so confused that it’s impossible to have any idea at all about what might or might not have gone on in or around Jerusalem in the days immediately after the death of Jesus. If we have suspicious minds, we might wonder why we are being sold these tales, and what profit was there in getting people to believe this stuff in those far-off days. If we have even more suspicious minds, however, we might wonder why, if it was all a Christian plot, they couldn’t get their act together a bit better and make the stories tally? There are many unanswered and unanswerable questions about the first Easter, but two things do seem to stand out. First, that the tomb was empty. And second, that all the different stories agree in insisting that disciples met Jesus after they had seen him die. Bible reading Luke 24.13-53 Reflection
Is this old chorus just another ditty, or is it saying (however badly) something very important? If so, what do you think it is? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the resurrection of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the joy-filled mystery of Easter, of a life restored and a love given anew. We confess to you, God of grace and God of glory, that our lives are not always nerved by Easter Faith, and that neither we nor your Church can always be described as ‘Easter People’. We acknowledge our ‘Holy Saturday’ experiences, as well as our occasional denials and betrayals: but we thank you that Jesus still comes to us with his ‘Peace be with you’ and his gift of new beginnings. Grant us, and those for whom we pray that peace …
13 Jonas – Jesus’ youngest brother Jonas was born when Jesus was already working with his father in the carpenter’s business, and was a teenager when he left home to become an itinerant rabbi. Now middle-aged he is the leader of the Christian synagogue in Capernaum. Opinion was always divided about him in the family, after he left home, that is. Before then he was the eldest brother and all that that means in our culture, but nothing more. I know that all sorts of strange tales are circulating about his birth and his boyhood, some of the wilder ones of which we are trying, unsuccessfully, to stop; but as far as we were concerned his was an ordinary life. Until, when he was thirty or thereabouts, he met up with John the Baptist and left home. We saw him from time to time after that, for he made his base here in Capernaum and we would sometimes come here to visit relatives or on business. Sometimes his wanderings took him near Nazareth, though after his one and only attempt to teach there he never went back into the village. We all went, at different times, to listen to him and to see what was going on, and that’s when our divided opinions really began. None of the family dispute the basic facts. That Jesus was one of those people we now call a ‘Rabbi,’ though that term was only just coming into use in his day, and I’m talking thirty years ago now, of course. He journeyed round the towns and villages of Galilee, as some rabbis did, teaching a bit here, giving advice there, performing the occasional healing here and there. He was, in some ways, nothing special. Galilee had a habit of producing wandering teachers and healers, and Jesus wasn't the first nor the last. Some were famous enough to have their names remembered and some of their best sayings passed on: others were quickly forgotten. But there is no denying that Jesus made more of an impression than most: his teaching was particularly lively and vivid - but his message was quite traditional, our age-old Jewish teaching about the love of God and the need for people to love God in return and to love their neighbour. He drew the crowds, as many of these rabbis did, but he also offended people. He was regarded as a very holy man, but he had a reputation for enjoying parties with prostitutes, which was bad enough, but even worse with tax-collectors, the sworn enemies of true Galileans because they collected the taxes for our Roman rulers. And that did for him in the end. He offended too many powerful people and they did to him what has been done to many prophets of many different religions in many different places over the centuries. They killed him. None of the family dispute that. Some were proud of him, others were embarrassed; and we were all appalled at his death, as well as worried, for being family of a crucified man was a dangerous thing to be in those days. No, it was what happened next which really divided us. So now I run the Christian synagogue here, and James runs the one in Jerusalem; but the rest don’t want to know. We still speak to each other, and we still share Passover together sometimes, but they aren’t Believers, Followers of the Way, and they can’t agree with James and I when we say that Jesus is ‘Lord’ or worship in his name. We’ve tried to persuade them, just as James has tried so hard in his Mission in Jerusalem to persuade so many, but the results are meagre. There’s talk from time to time that we are heretics and should be evicted from the Faith, and Simeon tends towards that view, but most of the family just see us as another eccentric group, like the Essenes only more worldly, and as long as we don’t try to change them or cause any kind of public fuss they are happy enough to let us be. They are not at all happy, and neither is James really, with what the apostle Paul is doing a bit more successfully than we are, that is, taking the message about Jesus to the goys, but as long as I don’t encourage that here the family leave me pretty well alone. But I digress. No, it was what happened next which really caused the family division. It was the claim by Peter and some of the others that after they had seen Jesus crucified on the Friday afternoon, that he actually met them three days later on the Sunday, and on and off for a few weeks after that. And it was what that led to, that they very soon began to call Jesus ‘Messiah’, which was hard enough, and even ‘Lord’, which really was a name too far for most of the family, and most of my fellow Jews too. We don't quite say that Jesus is God, but some of the Christians I know come very near to it, and that is so hard for so many of us Jews, me included, because of our commitment to the One Immortal and Invisible God. I know that there are many, many questions about Jesus that I can’t answer. And I certainly have no answer to what really happened on that first Easter Day. But I keep coming back to this one thing - which my congregation here are probably sick and tired of hearing me say – that for me we glimpse the answer to the question about the meaning of life, the universe and everything in Jesus of Nazareth, my eldest brother. We glimpse it in what he said, what he did and what he was, especially in his death and what happened after it. And when our preachers share their glimpses, and tell their stories, and paint their pictures, and invite us to live by them, and to join them in seeing what they have seen, then I just have to say, ‘Yes - This is my story’ and pray that God will continue to help me to live in it. Like Jonas and his brothers, there are many people, inside the Church as well as outside, for whom the whole business of the resurrection presents huge difficulties. They cannot take the idea of a corpse raised from the dead, and it is not hard to see why not. Some offer explanations that the resurrection stories are really about visions of Jesus which the first disciples had. Others make no attempt to explain what actually happened at all and offer a different explanation for the resurrection stories. They say that what those stories are doing is pointing up the importance and significance of Jesus in the lives of the first Christians. They say that the first Christians told those stories as their way of saying that they had seen in Jesus the clue or the key to the meaning of life, the universe and everything, and that his death had not destroyed what he stood for. Though he had been despised, rejected and crucified he really was the one given to us by God. For them these stories tell that the truth as it is in Jesus is stronger and the love which he embodied is more real than the forces of evil and untruth which took him to the cross. For them these stories show that despite his death Jesus was present with his followers when they prayed and as they worshipped; that his body might be dead but his spirit was with them. I do not find either of those ‘explanations’ very convincing. It looks as if very early on there were those who tried to explain the appearances of Jesus to his disciples as ‘visions’, so early that both John and Luke are at pains to point out in their resurrection stories that these appearances were more than visions, that they were meetings with a risen Jesus who was real. With regard to the second explanation, it seems to me if that was what the first Christians wanted to say about Jesus, and it clearly was, then they could say all of it without needing to use any sort of ‘bodily resurrection’ pictures at all. All they needed to have said to have made their point was that Jesus had been raised by God, taken into heaven and installed in power and glory at God's right hand. They need not have confused the issue by talking about Jesus being raised to human life again in one form or another and appearing in human form to his disciples. That would have been a perfectly acceptable way of making their point about the tremendous significance of Jesus, and it would have had credibility. But they do not do it that way. Instead they tell stories about a ‘bodily resurrection’ in which the appearances of Jesus are real appearances. The earliest teaching about the resurrection of Jesus and what it means for Christians is found in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul begins that chapter of his letter by reminding the Corinthians about what he had taught them when he was with them, and that that teaching was not in fact his own but was what he had himself been taught. So here is a very old tradition indeed. Not only is it old, it is ‘of first importance’ (verse 3). That teaching was that
We can see that the stress is on the appearances of the risen Christ because in the next two verses Paul gives a list of those to whom Jesus appeared after he had appeared to Peter and the twelve: to more than five hundred of the Christians at once, then to James, then to all the apostles, and ‘last of all, as to one untimely born’, to Paul himself. Notice that Paul is careful to show that the appearance to him was somehow different from those to the others, but that it was Jesus who had appeared also to him, the Jesus who had appeared to his disciples, the Jesus who was crucified, and that this appearance to him was more than a vision. These stories do not shirk the problems, and almost every one of them has some sort of reference in it to the confusion or doubt of the disciples at the time: but even though they cannot explain what had happened the New Testament writers are at pains to point out that they were not talking about either ghosts or visions but encounters. There are all sorts of questions we cannot answer about Jesus’ life – and not only about Easter Sunday, or Good Friday or Palm Sunday either. There are many gaps we cannot fill and details which confuse. There is no doubt at all that some of his doings in the gospels have been exaggerated and we do not know how many of the things that the gospels tell us he said he actually did say. And we do know that everything in the gospels is coloured by the beliefs and interests of each particular writer. Never the less, the overall picture is clear. Each Gospel writer gives his testimony to Jesus in the hope that we will want to become his followers as well, for the Gospels are like sermons, reflecting the faith of the preacher and inviting us to believe. At the very least, they invite us, like Jonas, to believe that Jesus Christ is the best clue there is to the meaning of life, the best view we have into the very heart of God, and that he is the one who can make us all really alive. The rest of the New Testament shares the same convictions and makes the same invitation. Bible reading 1 Corinthians 15 Reflection 1 The Creeds, our worship and our hymns say many mysterious things about Jesus. We don’t find the idea that ‘Jesus Christ is the best clue there is to the meaning of life, the universe and everything’ in the Creeds or in liturgies or in hymns. What do you think about putting it like that? 2 Do you agree with Paul that Easter is the real beginning of Christianity? 3 What impact do the events of Easter have on your life? Prayer Eternal God, as we reflect on the resurrection of Jesus Christ whom we honour as your Son and name as our Lord, grant us to enter into the joy-filled mystery of Easter, of a life restored and a love given anew.
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