A Sermon by Canon Maggie Guite s1

A Sermon by Canon Maggie Guite events in our imaginations. It seems to me, however, that perhaps this is a good day to think not so much Passion Sunday April 2nd 2017 about the events, the poignant tale, as about the meaning of Christ’s death for us to do the theology, [Ezekiel 37.1-14 Psalm 130 John 11.1-45] before we enter imaginatively into the drama.

The meaning of the Passion So, let’s think for a few moments about ways in which people have understood the meaning of Christ’s Passion, This Sunday, the fifth in Lent, used to be known as his suffering and death for us. What does that ‘for us’ Passion Sunday. As I’m sure you know very well, mean? Why did his suffering and death bring us what we ‘Passion’ in the sense we use it in Church is an old usage need - forgiveness, healing , peace, freedom, salvation? of the word, and means Suffering – specifically Christ’s suffering in his death and all that led up to it. So, On one level, the suffering and death of Christ can be ‘Passion Sunday’ marked a serious turning point in the understood from the human, historical point of y, and Church’s year towards the story and meaning of Christ’s when we look at it that way, we may see parallels in the arrest, trial, humiliation and crucifixion. history of our age, and of every other age, too. As a radical preacher Jesus challenged the power and In recent years, however, the term’ and traditions of exclusivity of organized religion, and threatened Passion Sunday’ have been abandoned officially in the political authority. He invited children, the outcasts and Church’s calendar, and even our readings today were maimed, and even Gentiles, into the inner circle of the foreshadowings of the Resurrection more obviously than Kingdom of God when previously they’d been held at of the Suffering of our Lord. However, I feel there’s a more than arms’ length even from the Temple by both real value in still keeping this as Passion Sunday, and I’ll law and custom. In addition, when he claimed very explain why: clearly that he was at the centre of the divine Kingdom’s coming, Jesus both outraged the religious From Palm Sunday, next week, we’ll be encouraged to leaders’ sense of blasphemy, and inculcated resistance think about the story of Jesus’ sufferings beginning with to important aspects of Roman rule, although the the day when he rode in seeming triumph into resistance his teaching implied was not the obvious one Jerusalem, We’ll be asked in our liturgies, in the Stations of taking up arms. of the Cross, and in other ways, to accompany these Why might this historical story be significant for Jesus spoke of giving his life as ‘a ransom for many’ subsequent generations –even for us?Why might it have ( Mark 10.45). In the first century, slaves might be paid ‘saving power’? Well, Christ’s inner authority and dignity for and set free through a ransom, but we sometimes in meeting the suffering his words and actions evoked, hear of ransoms being paid now – maybe to terrorist and the divine ‘Yes’ to him which was spoken in God’s groups, to release hostages There’s something act of raising him from the dead, has brought courage distasteful in this, however much families or and hope to millions of oppressed and excluded peoples governments may sometimes feel it’s the only thing to throughout the centuries, as well as exposing the do, to set someone free. The idea of ransom carries with hollowness of the systems which grind them down. In it the strong sense that the one to whom something is this very real sense, Jesus’ death and resurrection paid had the victim in his or her power illegitimately and continuously spell salvation and healing on the human cruelly. To whom might Jesus’ death have been paid as a stage, particularly for history’s underdogs. The perfect ransom for our freedom? The traditional answer is, to kingdom may never be fully achieved in history, but the the devil, to sin, to death itself. In the history of Passion of Christ has produced a ferment in human Christianity there have mainly understood Jesus’ death affairs which has repeatedly led to real steps of has certainly been along these lines – but sometimes liberation. with a surprising twist in the end of the story. For, if what St Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 about ‘the When we think about the suffering and death of Jesus, rulers of this age’ not understanding what they were we should never forget this aspect of what he brought doing when they crucified the Lord of glory - if that into the world; if we have never been the underdogs of refers not just to the human rulers who had him killed, history we at least should avoid individualizing the story but to those spiritual powers of this age – sin, death of salvation so much, in terms of the ‘salvation of our and the devil himself - then we have a scenario in which souls’ that we fail to notice what his story challenges the life of the Perfect Man, the perfect ransom price to and changes in the historical world around us – even buy back fallen humanity – turned out to be more than challenging the world of our own comfort which may be they had bargained for. His power, as also being Son of hurtful to others. That’s one set of thoughts to take into God, didn’t just buy us back from the devil, sin and our imaginative re-living of Christ’s Passion in the weeks death, but also defeated those powers permanently. He ahead; but alongside that, let’s set the more traditional burst hell open, and came out of it with his ransomed and ‘spiritual’ ideas of what his suffering achieved for train of humanity. So, redemption turned into victory. us. This may all seem very strange to us – very mythological understood the suffering and death of Jesus as being for – and yet the theme of Christ as Victor is very strongly them, particularly in Holy Communion.. there in the way we often sing and pray about what Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection achieved, and Many of us, removed as we are from the Old Testament it’s there in the cross we have hanging in our world, find the emphasis on the offering of blood very Resurrection chapel – the one that shows Jesus on it, not alien– even when we are told that blood is highly as a naked victim, but as a triumphant king, robed in charged in biblical thought, and represents life itself ; majesty. And, for many people, the sense that Christ is but we may still find it easier to reflect on the sacrifice the victor over the things that enslave us can be highly involved in Jesus’ total obedience to his vocation than on significant. I’ll come back to this later. the importance of the shedding of his blood; we may better appreciate the thought that his loving- obedience, Another way of thinking about Christ’s Passion and as the perfect representative of the human race, makes Death is to see it in the light of the Jewish tradition of good in the balance of the universe, the massive sacrifice. Different sacrifices in Hebrew religion have shortfall in the love and obedience we owe to the God different meanings, but they all include the idea of who made us and loves us so much. offering something valuable; blemished animals, things that cost people nothing significant, don’t count. Not all For other people, the most helpful way of thinking about the prescribed sacrifices involved animals or blood, Christ’s Passion, and particularly his death, is to see him though most did. In some cases, sacrifices were made as the one who bore our sin and its consequences on his primarily to expiate for sin – to pay off the debt of our own shoulders – our substitute. Without his death to disobedience against God; in other cases, sacrifices were stand between us and our deserved destiny, we would primarily about signifying unity between God and his suffer separation from God for ever. Yet, on the cross, in people, particularly when some of the offering was a way more mysterious than we can fully imagine, God symbolically sent up to God in smoke ,while some of it took into himself the agony which such separation would was eaten by the people in a meal which unified them bring us , so that we should never have to undergo it. It’s with him. And the blood of animals splashed on the important when thinking about Christ’s death in this way altar, too, was a strong symbol of the bond between the not to divide the Father from the Son in a way that Lord and his people within the Covenant he had implies the whole Triune God wasn’t involved in the pain instituted. All these themes are there in the way of saving us. We have to be careful here. Yet what this Christians over the centuries have remembered and way of thinking about Christ’s sufferings does do, is to highlight quite how serious our sinfulness is – so that if then we need to know that a strong and sympathetic we’re tempted to self-satisfaction, to a feeling that we’re rescuer has come alongside us in our struggles – has not so bad , and what we do is really not so very harmful come into ‘our place’ to accompany us – to forge a way after all, then this may be a powerful and necessary out, and help us along that way. This is what Christ in his antidote. Equally , for some people, already very death and resurrection has done. He is the shepherd burdened by their sense of sin, hearing his message can who is with us in ‘the valley of the shadow of death’, he be a clear-cut way of realising that the burden has been is the one who has come to be the very way, truth and shifted from them. Nevertheless, there’s care needed life that we need to bring us home. here, too, on the psychological side. We have to be aware that there are some who, acutely feeling that There are different ways of explaining the meaning of their lives are hopeless and helpless, have suffered from Christ’s Passion in our lives. Theologians call them zealous Christian preaching intended to inculcate in different ’theories of the atonement’, and some have them a realization of guilt so that they can go on and described them as varied facets of a single diamond. All gratefully embrace salvation; but actually this message of them are metaphors trying to grasp a mystery, and has only served to drive them more deeply into a sense they complement each other, rather than needing to be of their own worthlessness, which they’ve never seen in competition. Some of them make better sense managed to get beyond. This message has sometimes to some people than to others, or work better in some been very damaging when insensitively preached. cultures than in others. Different ones may make better sense at different stages of our lives. For many people, the message of ‘Christ in our place’ may most helpfully be focused on the sense of Jesus’ in I’ll end with a quotation from the author who spoke our place, with us as much as for us. One writer I about saving solidarity, because he gathers together recently read described this idea as that of ‘a solidarity several thoughts in one rather beautiful paragraph, so I that saves’ (Jonathan Frost). When we hear of people share it with you now : ‘In Jesus, ‘the second Adam’, God who have sunk to the very bottom, maybe through their gathers up the fragments of broken human nature, own choices and addictions, or through a burden of self- absorbs our pain and suffers the consequence of sin. In loathing which they cannot shift, our best response (and Jesus, God repairs human nature from within, re-weaves surely it reflects something of God?) is to think ‘what a humanity to its true end, in a solidarity that saves.’ tragedy’ - a response of pity more than blame. All of us (Jonathan Frost, in ‘Reflections for Daily Prayer,’, 20th touch the bottom sometimes, for whatever reason, and February 2017.)