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Good Friday

14th April 2006

Here is Michael Roden’s address given at the Market Square service that followed the Walk of Witness : 

Thank you, my brothers and sisters, for allowing me to speak today. I shall speak briefly today as, like you, I am not used to shouting about my faith in the Market place! 

Today, surrounded by all the familiar sights of our daily life, we pause for a moment all together to remember Jesus on the cross.  

This is the most difficult day in the churches year. We meet as a crowd in a square to think of a square like this far away and a crowd like this 2000 years ago. We think of a good man, the best of all men, bound and held prisoner and condemned to death. To cheer ourselves and to try not to be too heavy, we try to think of the end of the story, the joy of the resurrection, but for a while today, that seems far away and we are left watching a good man die on a cross.  

And what does the man on the cross shout out? Does he curse the crowd? Does he ask his father to destroy them? Does he shout out that they will pay for this for eternity? Luke tells us that at the moment of greatest agony, when they crucified Jesus with two criminals Jesus says: Father forgive them for they know not what they do. 

We know, don’t we, that being forgiving is one of the hardest things to be. 20 years ago I was a curate in Lambeth at a time when it had the highest crime rate in Britain. I have to say I do not think it was my fault. Every year, on Good Friday we Anglicans would go on a procession like this together with the Methodists, Baptists, Catholics and Pentecostal churches. In my first year we went into an estate dubbed by the Daily Star as ‘Murder Mile‘. We sang a hymn and the Baptist minister started to give a talk, as I am doing now.  

Suddenly from the top of  a block of flats a group of youths started to throw stones. One elderly lady was hit and fell to the ground her head bleeding. The person next to me leant over her to help her to her feet and, as she did so, the helper said ‘You must forgive them’. ‘Forgive them’ the old lady replied ‘I’d like to kill them!’. 

The clergy are not exempt from hostile thoughts. In these last few weeks we have heard the story of a sister in arms, a woman priest who cannot forgive the London Bombers who killed her daughter. And we, hearing her tale, have great sympathy for her plight.  

But now we come to Jesus on the cross, in the worst agony we can imagine, and we hear his words of prayer for us the crowd. Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Perhaps the words are too much for Mark, Matthew and John, who do not record them. Only Luke records that Jesus said this.  

Who is the forgiveness for? The soldiers? The religious authorities? The crowd? Judas? The disciples? Or is it for us in our pathetically divided churches. Jerusalem or Hitchin, them or us? I believe it is for all these and more. The forgiveness echoed through the crowd then, through the humanity of St Luke and round this square today.  

So what is it that you begrudge?

What is that makes you bitter?

What is it that poisons your mind and keeps you awake at night?  

Is it your colleague at work?

Is it someone close to you?

Is it someone long ago? 

With all this bitterness we crucify ourselves and each other and there is no need, no need at all. Jesus goes to the cross to take all that rubbish away. Jesus passes that stuff straight through to God. He doesn’t hold it for a minute and neither should we.  

Luke tells us ‘Jesus is crucified with two criminals, one on the right and one on the left. And Jesus said Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Straight through to God.  

Jesus the son of God is crucified on the city rubbish dump so that we don’t have to live with the burden of all that bitterness, all that anger, all that resentment at any one different to us. All that is taken away. That is why this Good Friday is both the worst day in the world and the best. The worst of all crimes and the best of all outcomes.  

The love of God cannot be defeated by violence, by bitterness, by stupidity, it cannot even be defeated by what we think of as the final act death. Good Friday is God’s love beyond all imagining. God‘s love in our emotional chaos. We are here in this square to thank God, to thank Jesus. We pray that we can learn from this instant response of Christ at all times, in any time of suffering, Father forgive them for they know not what they do.   

So we pray : Help us heavenly father to push any bitterness we have straight through to you, so that we will all know, once more, your peace, which passes understanding. We pray this through Jesus Christ our crucified and risen Lord.

 Amen.