As usual on Good Friday I’ve brought you some pictures to look at. I think I do this because Good Friday is really beyond words. When I was choosing hymns for today I noticed that many of them are really sentimental and somehow many of them make it ‘all about us’ or ‘all about me’. At the time of the agony of the Son of God we’re still going on about ourselves – me me me. The traditional theology that Jesus died in order that God might be pacified with regard to our sins seems to encourage this self-centered chit chat that we indulge in at this time of year. We forget that this was an image – an idea – which was used to help us make sense of the startling idea of the death of God’s son at our hands. The trouble is it excuses us. We killed God and it’s OK because that’s exactly what God intended. We still kill God each time we allow GOd’s children to die in violence, on the road as refugees, every time one of GOd’s children dies of starvation or thirst – we kill God again. We kill God’s creation too. And it isn’t excusable. It’s not OK.
I realise that TALKING about images of the crucifixion in order to avoid words is a bit of a contradiction so I will be brief and then allow a little space for you to look at the images before you by yourself.
Why have I chosen these particular images?
The first one -the medieval fresco, I chose because it’s so busy. IN many way it reminds me of images of the nativity – that stable heaving with angels and and shepherds and nosy neigbours, kings and their retinue, camels, donkeys, sheep, cows – even goldfinches sometimes. And here they are again – romans dividing Jesus’ robe, someone having a really good look at his toes, various people propping Mary up, and flights of angels filling the sky – if you look carefully you can see that one of them is catching Jesus’ blood in a golden cup.
We so often separate our faith from the world around us. We come inside here, where it’s quiet and peaceful and we can escape for a while. But nearly everything to do with Jesus is ‘out there’ – he was born, lived, ministered and died in public. The only time he was away from real life for any length of time was the time he spent in the wilderness. But even here the Devil pestered him.
Somehow we have to learn from this. It’s fine to come here, to pray alone, to retreat for a while. But we have to live our faith out there where Jesus lived and died. We’re lucky in the C of E that we do have a legal framework for public faith – our Bishop’s sit in the House of Lords and our life is, to some extent, regulated by parliament. But that doesn’t excuse us. We don’t have to preach on street corners and threaten people with big black bibles, but we do have to live out our faith in a world full of people we sometimes wish would go away and leave us alone. That’s the inevitable result of incarnation – Jesus became one of us, came to our world, our town, our village. We think about this often at Christmas, but not so often on Good Friday. Christianity is the most ‘this worldly’ of all faiths – let’s remember that today.
See https://www.artway.eu/content.php?id=1211&action=show&lang=en for more about the above picture and the artist.
I chose the next picture because it reminded me that we do tend to domesticate Jesus and imagine that he was ‘one of us’. We imagine him as an englishman with blonde hair and blue eyes. This makes it easier for us to accommodate him. We have to remember that he wasn’t really ‘one of us’. In a sense he wasn’t ‘one of anybody’ – he died on the outside of society – on a hill ‘out of town’, shunned by his own people. Although Jesus is ‘one of us’, he is also ‘other than us’. He is always a stranger, always beyond our imagining and knowledge. He is the ultimate ‘other’. If we’re white, Jesus is black. If we are secure and comfortable, Jesus is on the road with the refugees. If we’re native, Jesus is an immigrant.
And yet, and yet – this image was painted by a Guatemalan in order to show that God loves the people of that country. Behind him are scenes from Guatemalan life. These are important to Jesus, the artist is saying. Even in describing him as an ‘outsider’ Jesus dances just beyond our reach, refusing to be categorised or tamed. He is ‘one of us’ yet ‘not one of us’. A mystery. THE mystery. Leading always onwards, beyond our what is comfortable and certain into the unknown, the unknowable.
The final image is one I have shown you before. This is from the Isenheim altarpiece, painted by Matthias Grunewald. It was painted for a religious community of monks whose main calling was to care for those suffering from the plague and ergotism – a fungal disease caught from infected grain which caused insanity, amongst other things. The altarpiece identifies Jesus with the sick and dying. We might have expected Jesus to be identified with the carers in their selfless and dangerous work.
It’s easy to be sentimental about this – identifying Jesus with plague and ergotism sufferers. Let’s just remember that there would have been times when the monks were completely overwhelmed by the numbers of people who were turning to them for help. Let’s remember that plagues sufferers could be as unpleasant, selfish
and rude as anyone else. That they were likely to be dirty, smelly and infectious. This crucifixion wasn’t painted out of sentiment, but in order to drive the monks on in service and love in the most difficult of times. Yes, the dying would have found comfort here that Jesus shared in their suffering. But this is not really a comforting image – it is, in fact, another image of Jesus beyond ‘us’ – beyond ‘me’. This is a demanding image – one that drives us beyond the easy and comfortable into the pain of the world that clamours at the edges of our secure lives to those beyond who may well overwhelm us, who may take away our security and leave us empty handed.
We keep silence for a few minutes to reflect.