The Cross – Good Friday
“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” 1 Cor 1.18
It is said that when Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Last Supper he used the innocent face of a choirboy for his portrait of Our Lord. Much later (and he took many years to complete it) he looked for a suitable model for Judas and found it in the degenerate and corrupt face of a dissolute young man recruited from the gutter.
Something familiar about the face prompted him to ask the young man about his origins. And to his surprise and horror it was the same choirboy who had fallen into a depraved and degenerate life.
And this is part of our common human dilemma. For the same face can present innocence and corruption. We know in our best moments and in our worst moments, what we are capable of.
The very name Good Friday contains this ambiguity, for it reminds us that the cross is the Good News of the Gospel, and yet at the same time it is the instrument of torture for our Saviour.
On Good Friday our Lord wrestles with the powers of sin and darkness, and overcomes. We still wrestle with our own sin and darkness and with the corruption which blights the whole human race on this war-riven planet.
Yet the Cross is our strength and our help, and the guarantor of our ultimate victory – the victory we will celebrate tomorrow night.
But on this Good Friday, let us spend a few minutes looking at the daily struggles we all face to choose the hard way of the cross, rather than the easy way of self.
One of John Donne’s poems illustrates this struggle very well – A Hymn to God the Father.
As you read the poem you are reminded of the choices and contrasts in Donne’s career (1573-1631): from ‘Don Juan’ to Dean of St Paul’s; from ‘Man of the World’ to ‘Man of God’; from dashing young love poet to the shrouded marble corpse that still stands today as his memorial in the aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral. Donne knew all about original sin and Augustine and Calvin’s emphasis on the ‘total depravity’ of man.
He would take very seriously indeed the 9th Article of Religion, formulated just before his birth: that "man… is of his own nature… inclined to evil". Not surprisingly then in his poem Donne first confesses the effects of original sin: the sin of Adam; the first choice that went so very wrong. But also the choices we make day by day, even when we know they are wrong and ultimately self destructive. We follow the example of Adam & Eve.
Even from outside the Garden we still hear God’s voice announcing: "Behold the man is become like one of us, knowing good from evil".
Donne writhes with that human consciousness of the trapped-ness of existence. We’re doomed to follow the sins of our forebears. To lighten the theme a little, he makes a play on his name ‘Donne’, throughout the poem. Let me read the first verse that looks back to Adam’s sin:
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,And the ‘more’ is the realisation that his sinful behaviour affects others. However much we imagine that our sins are simply ‘private’, they always contribute to the greater woe of our corporate humanity; and more specifically to those closest to us at home, at work, in church. The second verse:
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
For I have more.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin by which I wonIn the final verse, Donne begins to bring some resolution to this dilemma. The verse reminds us of another 17th century poet with far better Protestant credentials; namely John Bunyan.
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow'd in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
For I have more.
You may recall in Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian is shown a vision of a man locked in a room: the room of his own despair; despair that he can ever be saved; despair that he can ever be loved by God.
And this too is Donne’s last fear – his greatest horror. Why? Because it is the underlying neurosis of the human condition; now, in the 21st century, as then in the 17th. We too fear being locked into an empty, Godless universe. We too fear being locked out from the love of the God who made us.
But Donne, unlike many today in the Western world, can dare to believe - can allow himself to see - the human face of God shining from the face of this clouded universe. John Donne believes in the Incarnation; believes that God and Man, the objective and the subjective, the spiritual and the material, meet in the person of Jesus Christ. The Cross is a crossroads, where the sin of man is overwhelmed by the love of God. Through the saving work of Christ on the Cross, there is the death of death, and therefore for those who cling to the cross, even the death of the fear of death.
Hear the third verse:
I have a sin of fear, that when I've spunIn our sophisticated, liberal Western lives, we sometimes forget the simple assurance and wonder of the Cross: that our sins are forgiven.
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore:
And having done that, Thou hast done;
I fear no more.
I remember a young man called Neil, who had a past that could almost match Donne’s! He came out of church after mass one day – tears streaming down his face – ‘you ought to put tissues in the pews!’ he said. He was overwhelmed by the fact that he was forgiven and loved by God.
Today as we venerate the cross, we mourn for our sins and the sins of the world which cost Christ so dearly; and yet we wait with quiet confidence for the power of the resurrection to break afresh into our lives.
“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” 1 Cor 1.18
