'Today we come to the cross to give thanks to God for giving us the example of Christ his Son'
In my homily yesterday evening I asserted that Jesus Christ did not die as some kind of human sacrifice to satisfy the demands of the goodness and justice of an angry God. Nevertheless this afternoon we commemorate the undoubted fact that our Saviour Jesus Christ died upon the cross. This afternoon I want to reflect with you on one element of this aspect of the Easter mystery.
In our culture we do not like talking about death – we fear death – and yet our death is the one thing we can be absolutely sure will happen to us. We may hope for all sorts of other things in our lives – for marriage perhaps, the gift of success, for children, for grandchildren, for power, for money – men and women hope for, work for, a wide variety of different ends but the only thing we can be quite sure will be part of our life’s experience is death. We fear the process of dying and we fear death itself. I, at least, find it difficult to speak of welcoming death as a friend; even though one way and another I have seen death very many times. Death is part of the human condition: and that by itself is an important statement. The fact that Jesus died marks him out as a real human being for in the ordinary way of thinking God is eternal, without beginning or end; God does not die. And yet, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, died and was laid in the tomb.
Why is this significant? One reason why the death of Jesus is significant is because he is our brother and our teacher. Jesus has walked the path which leads to death; the same path that we will walk. Jesus has known fear, fear of separation, fear of loneliness: ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine’. Jesus confronted the power of death which lies in the fear which it engenders. He confronted fear by love.
Jesus experienced the love of God the Father and he shared that love with his mother and his disciples. Jesus desires to share that love with you and with me. He taught his disciples that living in love means finding the truth and living in fidelity to it. Jesus was faithful to the truth which he had learned from his Father and he taught the same truth to his Apostles. Remaining faithful to the truth meant that he refused to compromise with the values of the world; he refused to be dominated by self-interest. The world desires that we should put self before everything. Jesus paid the price for his fidelity: he was publicly executed as a criminal.
Jesus desires that we should live in fidelity to the truth, that we should learn what it means to love; to love God and to love each other. If we live in this way we discover what it means to be truly human. If we are truly, perfectly, human we will live as Adam and Eve before the Fall: unafraid in the presence of God and so unafraid in the presence of death. Jesus lived his life in perfect conformity to the will of his Father. His love of the Father was such that the Father and Son were completely united, they were one. The love of Christ for us means that it is possible for us to be united by grace to the Father. If we will follow in Christ’s footsteps, if we will accept the gifts of God which Christ desires to share with us we, too, become one again with God. Then our death possesses the same nature as Christ’s death: it is no longer a barrier between God and ourselves; it is no longer the personification of separation, of loneliness, of fear; it is the gateway into the unknown world in which we encounter God face to face.
And so today we come to the cross to give thanks to God for giving us the example of Christ his son. For now we know that if we entrust ourselves into the hands of God, if we remain faithful to God’s commandment of love, as Christ was faithful, we will pass from death to new life. We approach that moment with some trepidation, some anxiety – because we live on this earthly side of the doorway of death and there is much that is hidden from us; but we place our trust in the love which has overcome death and now lives and reigns with the Father: Jesus Christ who is Lord both now and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Fr Abbot