Liturgy of Good Friday

Sermon preached by Revd Dr Cally Hammond, Dean of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge

John 18.1 – 19.42

After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. 2 Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, because Jesus often met there with his disciples. 3 So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. 4 Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” 5 They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus replied, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. 6 When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they stepped back and fell to the ground. 7 Again he asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” 8 Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So if you are looking for me, let these men go.” 9 This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken, “I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me.” 10 Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear. The slave’s name was Malchus. 11 Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” 12   So the soldiers, their officer, and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound him. 13 First they took him to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. 14 Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it was better to have one person die for the people. 15   Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest, 16 but Peter was standing outside at the gate. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out, spoke to the woman who guarded the gate, and brought Peter in. 17 The woman said to Peter, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.” 18 Now the slaves and the police had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing around it and warming themselves. Peter also was standing with them and warming himself. 19   Then the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching. 20 Jesus answered, “I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret. 21 Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said.” 22 When he had said this, one of the police standing nearby struck Jesus on the face, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?” 23 Jesus answered, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?” 24 Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.

25   Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They asked him, “You are not also one of his disciples, are you?” He denied it and said, “I am not.” 26 One of the slaves of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” 27 Again Peter denied it, and at that moment the cock crowed.

28   Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover. 29 So Pilate went out to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” 30 They answered, “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” 31 Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law.” The Jews replied, “We are not permitted to put anyone to death.” 32 (This was to fulfill what Jesus had said when he indicated the kind of death he was to die.)

33   Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” 35 Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” 37 Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”

After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, “I find no case against him. 39 But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” 40 They shouted in reply, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a bandit.

19:1   Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. 3 They kept coming up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and striking him on the face. 4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.” 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!” 6 When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him.” 7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.” 8   Now when Pilate heard this, he was more afraid than ever. 9 He entered his headquarters again and asked Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 Pilate therefore said to him, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” 12 From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.” 13   When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge’s bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, “Here is your King!” 15 They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.” 16 Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.  So they took Jesus; 17 and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. 19 Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” 20 Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. 21 Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” 22 Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.” 23 When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. 24 So they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it.” This was to fulfill what the scripture says, “They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.”

25 And that is what the soldiers did. Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. 28 After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfil the scripture), “I am thirsty.” 29 A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

31   Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. 32 Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. 35 (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.) 36 These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, “None of his bones shall be broken.” 37 And again another passage of scripture says, “They will look on the one whom they have pierced.”

38   After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. 39 Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. 40 They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. 41 Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. 42 And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

Jeremy Taylor, The Great Exemplar (1129)

Lord, what am I,
that the eternal Son of God
should suffer one stripe for me?
But thy love is infinite.
Dearest Jesu, pity me,
for I am accused by my own conscience,
and am found guilty;
let thy innocence excuse me,
the robes of thy righteousness clothe me,
thy bondage set me free,
and thy stripes heal me:
that I may partake of the efficacy
of thy sufferings,
and be crowned as thou art,
having my thorns changed to rays of glory
under thee our head,
O holy and immaculate Lamb of God. Amen.

On Good Friday we meditate on 1: the salvation of the world through a once-for-all sacrifice; and 2: the salvation of ourselves as individuals. We can picture the scene, the crowds of people: soldiers, officials, disciples, family, bystanders; and, in the midst of all the throng, Jesus—utterly alone.

This is a state we recognise. We have our moments of complete isolation in the midst of crowds. When Jesus gives voice to his isolation, Eli Eli, lamah sabathani? he is in a place we have been also.

Yesterday and today I have been sharing words of a 17C spiritual writer, Jeremy Taylor. He knew about lonely suffering. He paid the price for his loyalty to the King under Cromwell and his so-called “Protectorate”. Taylor wrote the first biography of Jesus since the gospels, and he called it The Great Exemplar. Its basic theme is simple: we should live our lives after Jesus’ example.

But Jesus is hanging on a cross. How can we begin to take him as our example, as he is now, today, here? It’s easy to think of him as a man who went about doing good, showing kindness – not easy to be like him in that way, but it is possible.

But this agony? We need help to make sense of this. So ask yourself Taylor’s question: Lord, what am I, that you, the eternal Son of God, should suffer one stripe for me? Back at once comes his answer: my love is infinite. There is a strand in Christianity that is obsessed with personal sinfulness. Jeremy Taylor’s time was not free from that mindset. We mortals are prone to magnify trivial faults; we turn a moment of repentance into a constant state of mind. It can become an obsession, trapping us: as the psalmist puts it, I am so fast in prison that I cannot get forth. y 88.7

That is not what Good Friday is about. It is not about looking at Jesus, then saying to God, “That’s enough about him, let’s talk about ME!” We must keep our focus on Jesus, wait for him to turn his gaze towards us.

Jesus was not guilty. Not only not guilty of crime, not guilty of anything. But there he hangs still, and suffers. When we see him, the suffering servant, we know, thank God, that he has healed us;  is still healing us: that by his stripes we are healed:

We stand accused by our own consciences, found guilty; but Christ is the one who suffers the beating, the thorns of spite, the nails, the spear.

Then we should pray, with Taylor: Let thy innocence excuse me, the robes of thy righteousness clothe me, thy bondage set me free, and thy stripes heal me:.

That is a powerful act of faith: affirming that Jesus is the suffering servant prophesied of old; wholly, utterly righteous, setting us free first from sin, and then from death.

We must not nullify his salvation by insisting on wallowing in guilt and sin for ever. If we want to make wholesome, life-giving sense of the Passion we must start from truth. Tell the truth. To him who is the Truth. And yes, make our plea for help, not splurging out our manifold sins and wickedness, but praying simply: Dearest Jesu, pity me.

The suffering of Good Friday is not senseless, it has a purpose. Just now we sang, When I survey the wondrous Cross. By singing, we took the truth of the Cross into our hearts, we made it our own. That hymn is a meditation on a verse of scripture, Gal 6.14: God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

There is only one wondrous Cross/ On which the prince of glory died. It is not here. Isaac Watts, when he wrote the hymn, did not have that original wondrous Cross in front of him. But still it was truly present before the eyes of his mind. We can follow his example. We can meditate on that original “wondrous cross.” When I do so, what do I see? I see a master-carpenter. Making a cross – for another master-carpenter. Perhaps Jesus even noticed the skill, the craftsmanship of the Cross’s making.

For Christians the one true “wondrous Cross” makes us notice crosses everywhere, anywhere. And the sight of a cross, any cross, can be a visual shorthand for whole chapters of the Gospels.

Sometimes when I meditate on the Crucifixion, I see the Cross tip over, and become a bridge: it crosses the great gulf that S. Luke tells us exists between heaven and earth, allowing us to cross over, from earth to heaven.

When I picture the wondrous Cross, I try to imagine “his dying crimson, like a robe”: but my imagination fails me. It has already failed me in the previous verse; when there flows from his head, his hands, his feet – all the places where he had been wounded by the prick of thorns, or the point of nails – what? Not blood, but “sorrow” and “love.” They pour out of the wounded Christ, no longer abstract qualities now but physical realities.

On Good Friday, nothing about the world, all that is in it, all that it has to offer; nothing matters, in comparison with knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings (Philippians 3.10).

No wonder Jeremy Taylor prays not to be stuck in enduring his own crown of thorns, but to be changed as Christ is changed:

That I may be crowned as thou art, having my thorns changed to rays of glory. 

Thank God that we, with Jeremy Taylor, with Isaac Watts, with Christians across the world, and down the centuries, and in all the years that are yet to come, can gather on Good Friday to tell the Old, old, story; and find the strength we need, to survey the wondrous Cross, on which the Prince of glory died.

To remember that Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all. And that thy love is infinite. Dearest Jesu, pity me.

1. When I survey the wond’rous Cross
On which the Prince of Glory dy’d,
My richest Gain I count but Loss,
And pour Contempt on all my Pride.

2. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the Death of Christ my God:
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his Blood.

3. See from his Head, his Hands, his Feet,
Sorrow and Love flow mingled down!
Did ever such Love and Sorrow meet?
Or Thorns compose so rich a Crown?

4. His dying Crimson, like a Robe,
Spreads o’er his Body on the Tree;
Then am I dead to all the Globe,
And all the Globe is dead to me.

5. Were the whole Realm of Nature mine,
That were a Present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my Soul, my Life, my All.