Good Friday

‘As the crowds were appalled on seeing him – so disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer human.’

Last year a church caused controversy by removing a crucifix from the outside of its building. It was, said the priest, an unwelcoming image that was, said many who passed by, ugly and scary. And so, following public opinion, the gruesome image was removed. It was, indeed, a rather hideous and horrendous representation of the crucifixion of Christ although, it could be said, it would be difficult to over emphasise or exaggerate the crucifixion. It is, after all, a scene of a dying man but more than that, a man who has been publicly executed, intentionally tortured. But it is, perhaps, surprising really that it apparently disturbed so many for the Crucifix is often such an over familiar, overlooked image that we can fail to appreciate the pain and suffering it actually represents. In fact, on so many occasions, we overlook so many images of suffering and pain in the world, we easily look away from or ignore the disturbing, detestable scenes and images that bombard us every day. We become immune to them. We become untouched by them. We become hardened to them. Pain and suffering is all around us and yet we can, in one swift click of the remote control, turn away from ugliness and pain and find something more comfortable and comforting, less challenging, less distasteful, less disturbing, something to cheer us up and protect us from pain.

‘As the crowds were appalled on seeing him – so disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer human.’

Today, at this liturgy, we are given the opportunity to venerate the cross. To look at it rather objectively this is a rather bizarre thing to do. Why on earth would we venerate, revere, something that is, in itself, a tool of execution, a symbol of suffering, an image of immense pain. Surely, we would have to be somewhat warped to welcome pain. Surely, we would be somewhat unbalanced to glory in an ugly, gruelling, gross and indecent image. And in the days and years after Christ’s death and resurrection as the church began to grow many people found the cross of Jesus an obstacle to believing, pure folly. ‘For the message of the cross,’ said St Paul, ‘is foolishness to those who are perishing but for us who are being saved it is the power of God.’

In the letter to the Hebrews, the writer says, ‘During his life on earth, he offered up prayer and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears, to the one who had the power to save him our of death, and he submitted so humbly that his prayer was heard. Although he was Son, he learnt to obey through suffering; but having been made perfect, he became for all who obey him the source of eternal life.’

The cross of Jesus is, of course, a scandalous and disturbing image: scandalous to think that in order to win us over, in order to prove his love to us, in order to change the way we live, in order to save us from all that we have allowed to spoil our friendship with God, he offers himself into our hands and experiences suffering and death.

His death on the cross has changed the way we view pain and suffering, removed our fear of death and even, indeed, our fear of living. That’s not to say that pain and suffering is belittled or explained away. It’s not to say that pain and suffering is not and cannot be destructive. But we know that through Christ’s suffering and death God has creatively and lovingly, powerfully yet humbly, changed us and made it possible for us to be free from all that holds us back and destroys us and open up new possibilities for us.

We are called, like Jesus, to stand alongside those who are in pain. And yes, we can and do cry out in doubt and desolation, in frustration and hopelessness, to God who has the power to save us from all that hurts and harms. The cross of Jesus, the image of crucifixion, expresses the pain we often experience and the pain of the world in which we live. And there in the cross we get no easy answers, to glib and tidy response, no neat solution: only the outstretched arms of our God.