My twelfth Lent blog - Words from the Cross

The Wednesday of Holy Week has had two services in it for me plus a meeting with my colleague and a pastoral visit. 

This afternoon Rev Karen and I were at Boroughbridge Manor, always a joy, where we did the whole of Holy Week in half a hour with three readings and four hymns and some prayers. Then tonight I did a reverse Tenebrae at Boroughbridge Methodist. Usually you extinguish candles as you reflect on our abandonment of Jesus, but tonight I wrote a service where we lit a candle after each last word of Jesus from the cross which are about sticking with us despite ourselves. And they are about triumph out of suffering. Seven candles were lit and then an eighth reflecting on our task to be light as the world is dark enough.

I shared the writing of two theologians tonight who I find helpful reflecting on the purpose of a Holy Week pilgrimage in 2024. Nadia Bolz Weber warns us about skipping the cross. 

“ I would contend that through the cross we know that God isn’t standing smugly at a distance but that God's abundant grace is hiding in, with, and under all the brokenness  in the world around us. God is present with us in all of it.

And while the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross is not about you.  It is certainly FOR you.

In fact, God is so for you that there is no place God will not go to be with you.  Nothing separates you from the love of God in Jesus….not insults, not betrayal, not suffering, and as we will see at Easter – not even death itself.  

So don’t go from glory to glory and skip the cross, because it is there that you will find a self-emptying God who pursues you and saves you with relentless, terrifying love and who ultimately will enter the grave and the very stench of death in order to say even here, even here I will not be without you.”

We reflected tonight on this passage:

“And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus. And there followed him a great multitude of the people, and of women who bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

How do we live the theology of the cross? 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this:

“If you’ve ever really forgiven somebody, forgiven some real wrong, all forgiveness is suffering. If you say I forgave and I didn’t suffer, it wasn’t’ really that serious a wrong. But if you have ever really, truly been wronged, and you have forgiven it, then you have suffered. Because all forgiveness is a form of suffering. If someone has wronged you deeply, there is an indelible sense of debt, an injustice, a feeling you can’t just shrug off. And once you sense this deep injustice, this debt, there are only two things you can do. One is you can make the perpetrator pay—you can find ways to make the perpetrator suffer and pay down the debt, or Two you can forgive.”

Is that the point of Good Friday? In a world that doesn’t forgive, criticises, is never wrong, lashes out, doesn’t care and lords it over those it thinks it can intimidate is forgiveness and grace and hope the way we should live? Just asking! 

O Come and Mourn with me Awhile, a poem by Frederick William Faber in 1849:

“O come and mourn with me awhile; O come ye to the Saviours side;
O come, together let us mourn;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.

Have we no tears to shed for him,
while soldiers scoff and foes deride?
Ah! look how patiently he hangs;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.

How fast his hands and feet are nailed;
his blessed tongue with thirst is tied,
his failing eyes are blind with blood:
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.

His mother cannot reach his face;
she stands in helplessness beside;
her heart is martyred with her Son's:
Jesus, our Love, is Crucified.

Seven times seven he spoke, seven words of love;
and all three hours his silence cried
for mercy on the souls of men;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.

O break, O break, hard heart of mine!
Thy weak self-love and guilty pride
his Pilate and his Judas were:
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.

A broken heart, a fount of tears,
ask, and they will not be denied;
a broken heart love's cradle is:
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.

O love of God! O sin of man!
In this dread act your strength is tried;
and victory remains with love;
for he, our Love, is crucified.”