Good Friday
Down through the history of our Christian tradition, there have been two stories of Jesus, sometime woven together, sometimes kept apart. Both have their origin in the very earliest preaching and teaching of the church. Both could probably be traced back to the Jesus of history, if only we knew more about that.
One story tells of the divine son of God, who comes down to earth to save us from our sins. He does this, first by teaching us what we should be like, and then by dying for us on the cross. This is the story we find in the letters of St Paul, and in the other letter writers, especially in the text know as the Letter to the Hebrews.
Later on in the history of the tradition, especially where it was dominated by the legal thinking of the Latin West, the story became amplified. Forgiveness could only happen when the righteous wrath of the holy God was satisfied by the punishment of sin. But rather than punishing us, God demanded that his son pay the price, by dying for us on the cross. This is the story as we see it in the medieval theologians of the west, in much of the Holy Week music of our tradition, and, of course in Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. You will see that in this interpretation, it is the suffering rather than the death, which pays the price of sin, and so the suffering has to be maximised as far as possible, often much further than can be justified by the Gospel accounts.
There is another aspect of this story which we need to note. Because access to the healing and saving power of Christ is mediated through the sacraments, and because the mediation process is connected with the emotions of fear and guilt, the story is easily manipulated to justify the power of the institution of the church, the priesthood, and, in a Christendom world, the state and the ruler as God’s representative. It has been the dominant story of the Christian faith throughout the centuries.
The other story tells about Jesus of Nazareth, the peasant carpenter, a man of insight and compassion. He brings healing to the sick, he tells stories which arouse inner enlightenment about the nature of God, whom he called Father, and about God’s dealings with humanity and creation. He creates a community around him which is open to all, especially to those rejected or dehumanised by society. His words and actions call forth a new understanding of humanity in which men women and children become co-creators of good. But his vision of a liberated, creative and equal humanity bring Jesus into conflict with the powers of his time, the authorities of the Roman empire, and their local representatives in Jesus’ homeland, the Temple priests and their bureaucracy. Jesus does not shy away from this conflict, but rather marches boldly into it. He confronts the scribes, the Pharisees and the temple authorities and calls into question everything they stand for. And, as the conflict mounts in intensity, the Galilean peasant and his motley crew stage a mock triumphal march into Jerusalem. In The Last Week,ii John Crossan and Marcus Borg suggest that this would be happening just about the same time as the Roman Governor Pilate would be coming from Caesarea Maritima in the west to be present in Jerusalem with the legionaries to ensure peace at the Festival. Pilate would arrive on horseback with heavily armed mounted and foot soldiers of the army of occupation and oppression. Jesus arrived from the east on a donkey, with his community of liberation and humanity waving palm leaves. Having thus defied the power of Rome, the next day Jesus walked into the temple, and by overturning the bankers’ tables and setting free the sacrificial animals, he confronted the power of the religious authorities. And, in this story, seen in St Mark’s Gospel, Jesus got exactly the response he expected, arrest, trial and crucifixion as a seditious activist.
As I said, both these stories have been passed down in the Christian Tradition, along with others which for centuries have been forgotten or suppressed, but which recently have come to light with the rediscovery of long lost manuscripts. But let us stay today with the two stories which were preserved in what came to be known as the Bible. It is not surprising that the first story soon became dominant. The second story with its hints that all might be equal, and especially that women and children were the truest bearers of the message of God, was soon relegated to its second place by a patriarchal society and a church anxious to inherit the power of the Roman Empire. You see this process already happening as you move from Mark, the earliest canonical Gospel through Matthew and Luke to John. But the story was too embedded in the earliest tradition ever to be totally lost or suppressed, and has remained to inspire alternative ways of living the faith throughout the centuries.
In our own generations it has inspired liberation theology, feminist theology, the worker priest movement, peace activism, ecological awareness, not to mention much of the preaching you will hear week by week in this Cathedral. But the bifurcation between these two stories stands behind the serious debates and divisions of our time, not only in our Anglican communion, but across the world wide churches. It is also not too difficult to see that the imperial powers of our own time, like the powers of Imperial Rome prefer that first story, with all the openings it gives to justify power and control in a still male-dominated society.
But both stories are there, in the Bible and in the Tradition, and you can chose which one helps you most. Or you can, as has been often done try to live with both stories in an even balance. Or you can try to weave the two stories into one. It is up to you. But for me, it is the second story which offers sense and insight into the nature of humanity and the vocation of the church for our present time. And I suspect in some quarters I may not be too popular because I keep on saying that. But then, Good Friday tells us that popularity is not what it is all about. Jesus on the way to the cross in Mark’s gospel invites us to take up the cross and follow him.
Easter
On Good Friday I spoke of the way in which the Christian tradition hands on to us two stories of Jesus. Perhaps I can nuance that a little more by calling them two story elements, or hermeneutic motifs. Sometimes they are woven together, sometimes kept apart, sometimes held in balance. Both have their origin in the very earliest preaching and teaching of the church, and both are in our canonical texts.
One story tells of the divine son of God, who comes down to earth to save us from our sins. He does this, first by teaching us what we should be like, and then by dying for us on the cross.
The other story tells about Jesus of Nazareth, the peasant carpenter, a man of insight and compassion. He brings healing to the sick. He tells stories which arouse inner enlightenment about the nature of God and about God’s dealings with humanity and creation. He creates a community around him which is open to all, especially to those rejected or dehumanised by society. But his compassion brings him into conflict with those who would oppress, exclude and de-humanise people, especially the authorities of the Roman Empire, and their local representatives, the temple priests and their bureaucracy. And he ends his life executed as a seditious activist, the crime for which crucifixion was specifically reserved.
Concomitant with these two story elements of the life and death of Jesus are two parallel story elements of resurrection. The continuation of the first story is represented by the texts of today’s liturgyiii. The Divine Son of God rose from the tomb, victorious over sin and death (in some of the later developments of the story, having first harrowed hell). He proved himself alive by appearing physically to his followers, and then physically ascended into heaven. The resurrection, in this story, represents vindication, success and victory. It is proved by physical signs and faith. The church proclaimed the message and quickly grew and spread.
With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. (Acts 4:33)
As St Luke presents the story in the Acts of the Apostles, even the authorities of the Roman Empire, if not accepting the gospel, allowed it to spread and grow. Two centuries later as Constantine prepared for the decisive Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, he saw a cross in the sky, accompanied by the words:
In this sign you shall conquer.
And he did. Not long after, the formerly illegal faith became the official religion of the Empire, and so began Christendom, the victorious twinning of Church and state, but also a mind set of Christians in which power, success and victory play a central role.
Christendom kept the church alive during the period we know as the dark ages. But it also led to the crusades, and once Europe awoke in the renaissance, reformation and counter- reformation, the Christendom mind-set led to slavery and colonialism, to the imposition of a supposedly superior Christian patriarchal culture and civilization on the rest of the world. In our own days it has led to the exclusion of and denial of humanity to, those who are different. It has led to the ecological degradation of our planet, perhaps to a dangerous point beyond the possibility of recovery. From the power drive of Christendom have come holocaust and genocide, and if present trends in the growth of fundamentalisms continue, I fear it may lead to ugly and life destroying, even nuclear, confrontation.
So I believe the time has come to consider seriously the other story. We shall particularly find it, as I said on Good Friday, in St Mark’s gospel. It has always been the minority option in the history of the Church, but it is equally a part of the tradition, and, unlike some of the other stories which fell by the wayside in early years, but have recently been re-discovered, the Mark story always formed part of the canonical scriptures, those approved by the church. In recent decades it has inspired liberation theology, feminist theology, the worker priest movement, peace activism, ecological awareness, not to mention much of the preaching you will hear week by week in this Cathedral.
The Mark story as it continues beyond Good Fridayiv is remarkably different from the others. The women come to the tomb and find it empty. They meet a young man who tells them to take a message to the disciples that Jesus would meet them in Galilee, but, like the disciple in the Gospel which has preceded it, they fail. Mark says, they said nothing to any one, because they were afraid. End of Story. There are no resurrection appearances, no commission to a church to spread victoriously. If fact, Mark has told us, every one has failed, Jewish and Roman authorities, the crowds, the disciples, Jesus family, even now the faithful women. Only one person understood, the anonymous woman who anointed Jesus just before his arrest v. And maybe too the children, who play a very important role in Mark’s Gospel. When Matthew, Luke and maybe John took over Mark’s story they did a complete makeover, to bring it into line with the more dominant story. We are so used to conflating the stories that we often don’t even notice the differences.
But I believe Mark’s Gospel is not incomplete, as some early writers thought and provided alternative ending, which you will find printed at the end of the Gospel, annotated as such in the best translations. Nor is it a dead end story of the failure of a community where others succeeded. Rather it is an alternative story, to which the key is found in the repeated injunction to the disciples to take up the cross and follow Jesus. The resurrection for Mark is not to be found in appearances, signs and miracles, in growth and success, but in a church continuing the ministry of Jesus by faithfully grappling with the forces which de-humanise, exclude, oppress and enslave God’s children. Christ is alive wherever his followers continue to stand against the power of the state to control living and thinking. Christ is alive when the church continues Jesus’ work of creating an open, inclusive and loving community, which accepts all without preconditions.
At this point in the history of the Church, and in my life, certain things are rather clear to me. In the West, Christendom, the alliance between church and secular society, is on its death bed, and I certainly hope there is a “do not resuscitate” note on the chart. But the church itself is in serious decline, and that we do have to take seriously and deal with. The decline is not just a matter of numbers, though that has happened and raises serious questions about the future physical and administrative structures, not least in this diocese of the Anglican Church. But the more serious decline is in our ability to communicate with, and be noticed by society at large. Who we are, what we do, what we have to say, just does not make any impact out there, beyond our doors.
Many in the church, even in the leadership, seem totally unconcerned by the current situation. But among those who are concerned two very different solutions are being proposed, which seem to me to follow the broad outline of the two story elements which we have looked at.
There are those for whom numbers, growth, success and vindication are the driving forces in the renewal of the church, and these seem to go together with the creation of a narrow, exclusive community of true believers. There is even some hope for the renewal of Christendom, and a concomitant crusade-like intention of struggling to become superior to other societies and nations.
Then there are those for whom faithful, healing, compassionate, inclusive and prophetic ministry hold the central position in the search for a re-born church. They would seek to leave behind the Christendom systems and structures of the church, and evolve a new basis for a church of humility and commitment to the ministry of Jesus. They would strive for a church which was able to join hands with those of other religions and philosophies in seeking to bring peace, healing, justice, sharing, and hopefully, joy to our world.
As I said on Good Friday, I believe the basic directions for both these positions spring from the texts of our faith and from the tradition as it has been handed down to us. It may be possible to find a way, as has most often happened in the history of the tradition, in which the two can live together and mutually support each other. But for the present it is my personal feeling that the minority position of openness for humanity is most under threat and that, together with my personal option for it, leads me to make a choice to go that direction, and to strive to lead this community that way too.
i The Easter address was given on the Second Sunday of Easter. As the congregations were somewhat different the two meditations overlap somewhat.
ii See note v below.
iii The Biblical texts of the liturgy were Acts 4:32-35, 1 John 1:1-2:2 and John 20:19-31.
iv Mark 16:1-8
v In this paragraph, I am specifically drawing on the recent work of John Dominique Crossan and Marcus J. Borg in The Last Week, HarperCollins, 2006. The general direction of both meditations has been influenced by this book.
The Very Rev Michael J. Pitts, Dean and Rector