Good Friday - the cross stands while the world turns

Good Friday 2025… 

People say to me “I bet Christmas is your busiest time!” Actually it isn’t. The most draining week of the year is Holy Week if you do it properly. It’s also the biggest privilege in ministry I think to lead people to what is the heart of Christianity - the sacrificial love of Jesus on the cross and the defeat of death as he bursts out of a tomb and brings life and hope to the world. 

This week so far I’ve done a walk of witness and two services on Palm Sunday, led a reflection and compline on Monday, received reflections and compline in the cathedral on Tuesday and Wednesday, I’ve led a nursing home service and a Holy Habits study on Wednesday and on Thursday I led a funeral and an evening communion.

So we come to Good Friday. I began today with two services at 9.30 and 10.30. The first was a peaceful service shared by seven of us, the second was a larger service where we reflected on three crucifixes - Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross, the crucified Christ over Manchester in the cathedral there and a crucifix that was found in France on a battlefield in World War One and brought back to Tinwell in Rutland by an army chaplain who later became vicar there. In 2019 it was returned to the site of the battlefield where a village has been rebuilt. 

Then to the market ground where a cross is always erected today and Churches Together have a service. I led the service and preached on the cross stands while the world turns… despite a dodgy microphone and my voice going mid sermon I think it was okay. Here’s my thoughts: the pictures are from the top of the wheel taken by a member of Fountains Church after the wheel operator said someone wanting to take photos could have a free ride!  

We stand today before a cross and by a wheel.

Have you been on the wheel yet? I’ve not – although it was suggested I preach from one of the pods at the top. As you go round slowly there are things to see you can’t normally see. 

Maybe this Good Friday the world is going round and round directionless. Ongoing conflict in Gaza and in Ukraine, trade wars and tariffs, shootings again in America, people struggling to cope with their circumstances. In a spin. The world goes round so fast we just want to get off it and find some peace. 

There’s a religious order called the Carthusians, and they have a motto which in Latin is “Stat crux dum volvitur orbis,’ ‘The cross stands while the world turns’

Yes, the cross stands, unmovable, strong, solid, firmly grounded like a peg that holds the tent from being blown away by the wind or an anchor that keeps the ship from going adrift. 

Everyone understands the need for stability, even in a world that promotes rapid change. If nothing remains constant in the midst of change, everything descends into chaos. The cross is like a single coordinate point in the map of life, while other things are moving, shifting and changing, this point remains fixed, providing us with the needed reference point to guide our orientation and chart our direction. The cross stands erect, unshaken even in the midst of the tumultuous storms of life and the crisis which trails every moment of transition and change.

Rather than seeing the cross as an object to be feared or to be avoided at all cost, the cross is perhaps the most consoling symbol of our Christian faith. Of course, the cross alone provides us with little to no consolation. In fact, it should invoke horror and derision. But because of what our Lord did today, Good Friday, we will never be able to look at the cross in the same way again. We are asked to behold not an empty cross for a while. Our gaze and attention is drawn today to the One who hangs on the cross, the One who is the “Salvation of the World”! Christ is our Rock, Christ is our Anchor, Christ is the axis of the World, He stands steady and unmoving even as the world revolves and turns.

We have an anchor that holds us firm and solid through any storm. It doesn’t mean that the storm will pass quickly, or that we won’t suffer from it. What it means is that we have a firm and sure foundation, and the One to whom we hold tight has gone before us and prepares a place for those who trust in Him. We know that though the wind is raging all around and even though the waves may rise to the point of sinking our ship, there’s a place of stillness in the storm. And you can find it in the One who hangs from the cross. Yes, the cross stands steady, while the world spins and shifts and revolves.

On the cross, it appeared that God had been vanquished. As ever so often, humanity and goodness appeared to have been crushed. Our Lord was killed, and yet the cross endures. It stands because it is sustained by what does not change.

There is a second part to the Carthusian motto which is often omitted in popular quotes and lengthy discussions, “et mundo inconcussa supersto”, which translates “and steadfast/unshaken I stand on top of the world”. So, here’s the full saying:  The cross stands while the world turns steadfast/unshaken I stand on top of the world.

There’s something to shout loud in a pod on top of the wheel. Maybe I should have shared these words up there after all. 

Let us hold firmly to the cross, the only thing which stands steady in a changing world, in the midst of chaos, death and destruction, and we can proudly declare with our Lord, “steadfast unshaken I stand on top of the world.”

The cross is definitive and irreversible ‘no’ of God to violence, injustice, hate, lies – to all that we call ‘evil,’ and at the same it is equally the irreversible ‘yes’ to love, truth, and goodness.

Friends, if you are going round and round today and life is in a spin for you, the cross stands. God can't be abolished. Justice will come. The light cannot be extinguished. The voice of the voiceless will be heard. The suffering ones will be healed. 

God gave the world Jesus, His only Son, so that the world might be saved through Him. As our world turns look to Jesus , He is with us in the midst of all that the world brings our way.Alleluia! 

Lord, by your cross and resurrection,
  you have set us free.
You are the Saviour of the world.

After three services it was good to receive in the cathedral. I always find the Good Friday liturgy very moving (although I may have gone to sleep through some of it!) The procession to the cross one by one while the choir sing the reproaches is very powerful and at the end we all follow the cross down into the crypt of St Wilfrid, the oldest part of any cathedral in the country.

I’ve had people tell me they can’t do Good Friday because it’s too awful. But Jesus has to rise from something and Easter only comes out of suffering and darkness and today it’s been right we’ve stopped to think about the inhumanity of the world, those we crucify today, the love that is stronger than hate and evil and that Jesus gets the darkness and death…  

Easter will come… God will do it. But it also needs me to write it tonight so I can have Saturday off! I’ve four services, three of them can be the same!!