FATHER, FORGIVE
Luke 23.32-43

I’m sure most of you will know that in the early 20th century the people of Armenia suffered greatly at the hands of the Turks. Estimates of how many Armenians were killed range from one to two million, but no one now denies that this was genocide, though it took many years for it to be recognised as so officially.

A story from the time tells of a Turkish officer who raided and looted an Armenian home. He killed the parents, and gave the daughters to his troops - it takes little imagination to know what happened to them. The eldest daughter he kept for his own pleasure.

Eventually she managed to escape, and trained to become a nurse. Sometime later she found herself working in a ward for Turkish officers. One night, by the light of a lantern, she saw the face of that Turkish officer who had treated her family so badly. He was terribly sick. Without exceptional nursing he would soon die.

That nurse was in a very difficult place. In such a situation, the desire for revenge would have been understandable. But she worked hard to restore him to health, and as a result of her ministrations, he began to recover eventually.

One day the doctor and nurse stood by the officer’s bed. The doctor remarked that without the nurse’s devotion the man would be dead.

The officer looked at the nurse and said, “We have met before, haven’t we?”

“Yes,” she said. “We have met before.”
There was silence. Then he asked, “Why didn’t you let me die?”

She replied, “I am a follower of him who said, ‘Love your enemies’.”

Jesus was a man who lived not only by his words, but also by his actions, and we are called to follow that example. Forgiveness is a living-out of love.

We see him now, hanging on the cross, in total agony, surrounded by his enemies, by those who want him dead. Crucifixion is a brutal and undignified method of execution.

The soldiers were carrying out just another day’s work; there had been other crucifixions in the past; there would be more in the future. They had no idea of what they were really doing, killing the Son of God. No doubt to them, Jesus was a trouble-maker and what they were doing would help to keep the peace - certainly that’s what their Roman master believed.

An ordinary day. But the ordinary becomes exceptional. Jesus, in the midst of the brutality and lack of dignity, responds with grace and goodness. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

These soldiers did not know their guilt. And, we too are not always aware of the sins that we commit. Sometimes we are all too aware of them. But Christ’s message of forgiveness crosses the centuries and is for us too. Christ is our King; Christ is also the example and pattern for our lives.

Forgiveness is not easy; receiving forgiveness is not easy; forgiving ourselves is not easy. But Christ’s message from the cross shows that he desires us to be liberated from our guilt. Guilt is a destructive emotion. It eats away at us and corrodes us. It grips us and torments us. Guilt can be a force for good, since it is what enables us to accept that we have sinned. It helps us to know, unlike the soldiers, that we are doing wrong.

But guilt that becomes too dominant denies what Christ has done for us. Christ’s suffering was to enable us to be freed from the effects of sin. Christ’s suffering brings forgiveness. When we are unable to receive forgiveness, from God, from others, from ourselves, we are rendering the sacrifice of the cross powerless.

It is not easy. It requires us to accept that we have failed and then to let go of that failure and the harm that it has done. We may need to make amends, to put our forgiveness into practice, to make efforts to restore broken relationships.

Jesus’s was innocent of his crimes; the criminal hanging with him recognised his guilt. Jesus’s response - today you will be with me in Paradise - should give us hope. Jesus’s forgiveness knows no bounds; it is there for us to receive.

As we watch him hanging on the cross, let us open our hearts to receive his forgiveness, and ask him for his love to flood us so that we might be helped towards forgiving those who have done us wrong and caused us pain.
 

BEHOLD YOUR SON
John 19.19-27

I wonder, if you could look forward to your dying moments and plan your final words, what they would be.

Of course, that’s a pretty impossible task, for none of us knows the circumstances in which the ending of our lives will come. We don’t know whether the end will be sudden or drawn out; we don’t know whether we will be prepared or not; we don’t know whether we will feel at ease with the thought our death; we don’t know whether we will be in pain or at peace; we don’t know whether we will be with those whom we love or whether there will be no one at all with us to hear those final words.

You will probably have worked out by now, if you have looked through the order of today’s service, that I have chosen to focus this year on Jesus’s final words.

There are seven sayings in the Gospels uttered by Jesus while he was hanging on the cross. The headings of the sections in this service derive from those sayings - the two not explicitly mentioned will pop up in my talks - one has already done so - so we will in some way reflect on all seven of Jesus’s last words.

Much of what happens while Jesus is on the cross is public, but this scene is a private moment, between Jesus, his mother, and the Beloved Disciple. It’s a moment in which Jesus’s compassion and care are seen, in contrast to the taunting and mocking crowds around him.

Jesus looks down from his lofty position and sees his mother and his friend and understands their pain. Death is always hard, but facing the death of one’s child must be one of the most profound sorrows that human beings ever face.

In the midst of the brutality of the situation, Mary’s presence and Jesus’s words add some humanity. In his dying moments, as he watches his mother’s pain, Jesus can do nothing more than to show his love for her. He cannot come down from the cross and take her home. He cannot reach out and put his arms around her in a deep embrace. All he can do as he hangs there is tell her that he loves her.

And he does this by creating a new family. In the moment of separation, Jesus creates community. Mary and the Beloved Disciple are the beginnings of the new Christian family. In effect, what he is saying to them, is “I love you, Mother”; “I love you, friend”; “Love one another.”

In our fractured and fragmented society, where communities are struggling to retain a sense of neighbourliness and friendship, where people live in suspicion of their next door neighbours, the church and its people can make such a difference by continuing to emulate the example of Jesus.

In this country, we have to accept that the reality of church life at present is that numbers are declining, commitment is diminishing and faith in God for most people is of little or no importance.

But, I wonder, how much we help ourselves. What an impact it would make if you said and acted as Jesus has done, if we said to those we meet - I love you. Now, clearly we’d have to be very careful about how we did this - in our sex-mad age, the word love sometimes loses its true meaning. But many, many people never hear the words of love. Many, many people never experience the actions of love. And, it doesn’t take much.
Jesus’s love for the world was the ultimate sacrifice. Sometimes that is what is asked of us, but mostly all we need to do is utter that loving word of care, or notice when someone is struggling with life - I’m always struck by the story of the stranger who uttered in the ear of the dying Stephen Lawrence - You are loved. You are loved.

That is what Jesus is doing from the cross. That is the message we are called to give to the world. And, even when we struggle to love people, we can still offer them the words of God’s love, of Christ’s love on the cross.
 
WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?
Psalm 22.1-8, 14-15; Matthew 27.45-47

Forsakenness, abandonment - it’s something that many people experience for a variety of reasons.

Perhaps they are grieving the death of someone they love. A very common part of the grieving process is a sense of abandonment by the one who has died. Sometimes this leads to anger at the deceased for leaving the living person alone.

Perhaps the sense of abandonment comes for a child whose parent has, for whatever reason, deserted them, whether physically or emotionally.

Perhaps it comes from the desertion by one lover of another.

The sense of abandonment can lead to very profound feelings - emotions that are almost too painful to put into words. Abandonment can leave one with a sense of deep, deep pain that nothing seems to be able to take away. It can lead to a sense of isolation, a deep hole within oneself that nothing can fill. The loss affects the whole of one’s being, it can be overwhelming. It can manifest itself in physical pain as one longs for the friend who has gone. It can bring a person to a point where utter desolation is all they feel, where life has lost its meaning, and their overriding wish is obliteration, for it is existence itself which causes the pain to go on.

The deep hurt experienced by those who are abandoned can be healed, but more often than not, it isn’t. Certainly it takes time - months and years - to get over an abandonment, and many people are left with deep wounds and scars that nothing can alleviate.

The more intimate the relationship between the abandoner and the abandoned, the deeper the pain.

Jesus has already faced a series of abandonments. One of his closest friends has betrayed him. Another has denied that he even knew Jesus. The crowds who hailed him as their king on Palm Sunday have since cried out for his death. As he hangs on the cross, his friends have fled, leaving only a very faithful few.

But that’s not the end of the forsakenness. Jesus utters a cry of such anguish that it pierces the heart - “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The relationship between Jesus and God was the most intimate relationship ever experienced. The sense of dereliction apparent in that cry from the cross is so great because of the closeness of the relationship.
In using the words of Psalm 22, he also brings to mind the silence of God, to whom he cries out. Psalm 22 expresses the feelings of one who has been forsaken. It communicates his feelings that he is no longer human, because of the way that others treat him.

And it is no surprise that that is how the Psalmist sees it. For one of the things that marks human beings out is their ability to give and receive love. Love, of course, is a risky business. Those who do not love will never experience the pain of love going wrong. Those who do make themselves vulnerable to the loss of love.

For any of us to be abandoned by those we love brings deep desolation. What it means for Jesus to be forsaken by God, his creator, his source of life, his Father, the object of his total love cannot be expressed in words, so deep is the dereliction. In that cry from the cross is Jesus’s own agony, which has been echoed by others through the years.

What stands out, and those who have experienced abandonment will probably recognise this, is that the one to whom Jesus cries out is the one by whom he has been forsaken. In the midst of his desolation, he calls out to the one by whom he has been deserted, longing to be heard, yearning for a restoration of the relationship.

At the heart of his sense of loss he is still crying out to God, still communicating, which implies that God is there to hear his cry, but at this point chooses not to act.

Since we believe in a loving God, we know that God’s own heart would have been breaking at this point too. For within the very heart of God, a deep separation is going on between Father and Son, a ripping apart of a unity, a whole. For Jesus is not only God’s Son, but God himself. The integrity of the godhead is being challenged through the crucifixion. The pain of separation is felt on both sides.

There is a trite saying - if God feels far away, guess who moved? The Bible teaches us through this story, through the words of Psalm 22, through the story of Job, how little truth there is in that saying. The horror of the crucifixion is that in some profound way God had abandoned Jesus. But Jesus was not a mere puppet in this sacrificial work; it was a path he chose to take.

It was an abandonment that needed to happen if the power of resurrection and life was to be complete. Only a total darkness and death could bring about completely new and restored life. For the whole of creation to be redeemed, the sacrifice needed to be complete.
 

I AM THIRSTY
Psalm 69.13-21; John 19.28-30

Without water, we shall all die. Dehydration is one of the fastest ways towards death.

Physically, Jesus will have been extremely thirsty by the time he utters these words. We are not told, but it is possible that he has had nothing at all to drink since the cup of wine which he took and blessed at the Last Supper. In chronological terms, that was not that long ago, but if we think about what he has undergone since then, the hours seem to grow longer.

There is a profound contradiction in all this. These three words, “I am thirsty,” show the extent of the sacrifice and separation from God that Jesus is undergoing.

John’s Gospel says a lot about water. Right at the start we see John baptising in water. Then at the wedding of Cana, Jesus uses the water, to bring new life to a jaded celebration by turning it into wine. He tells Nicodemus that new birth comes from water and Spirit.

His next encounter, in John chapter 4, is with the woman at the well. He offers her water that will put an end to thirst for ever - Jesus said: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

After the feeding of the five thousand in chapter 6, he reiterates what he has previously said; “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

And at the Festival of Tabernacles in chapter 7, he again returns to this theme: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.”

Water means life. Life in all its fullness. Water means physical life and spiritual life.

Back in Isaiah chapter 55, the call is issued - Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. Even further back, during the Exodus, water is brought forth from the rock.

Water is symbolic of the life that God gives.

And now, Jesus is thirsty. That life, physical and spiritual, is slipping away from him. The one who provided for the thirsty is in need of a drink. Yet again, Jesus’s abandonment is brought home. In John 7, Jesus follows his words by explaining that the living water comes in the form of the Holy Spirit.

When Jesus uttered his words of abandonment, we became aware of a split in the very nature of God between Father and Son. His words of thirst reveal now another split, between Son and Spirit. Again we see the godhead ripped apart.

And why? Why does Jesus suffer this agony, this abandonment, this tearing up of the bonds, this rift at the very heart of his being?

He does it for us. It was for us he died on the tree. It was for us he suffered separation from God. It was for us that he thirsted.

It was his love that nailed him to the tree. It is his love that is offered to all of us, a love shown through the greatest gift and grace he offers - forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the heart of the Gospel. Forgiveness is not cheap. Forgiveness is something distinctive about the Christian way that we can offer to the world.

For forgiveness does not condemn, but recognises that we have all failed and fallen short of God’s glory, all of us, that is, except the one whose sacrifice was perfect, the one who deserved no punishment, for he had done no wrong.

Jesus’s thirst highlights the separation from God’s living waters that he experiences on the cross. For John, water is life. In order for us to flow with living water, with the life of God, Jesus undergoes a loss of life.

This was no false separation from God and God’s life, as some would have us believe. That would have been ineffective in conquering sin and death. Only a true separation could bring about our salvation; only a true death could bring about our life.

That is what Jesus is undergoing on the cross, a total separation, a true death.

Our sin no longer condemns us to a future without hope, but because of Jesus’s taking on himself a hope-less situation, our future remains strong. We do not need to take upon us the thirst of Jesus, for the living waters are there for us to tap into, flowing with life and God’s grace.

As Jesus thirsts, may we open ourselves to drinking from the water that enables us never to thirst again.
 

IT IS FINISHED
John 19.30; Luke 23.44-47

Two different endings to this story, depending on which Gospel one reads.

In general, Jesus’s cry from John’s Gospel is considered to be the penultimate thing he said, while the words in Luke are the very end of the story.

Most of us live lives full of unfinished business: the phone call not returned, the letter to which we haven’t responded, the book half read, the diet not kept. Right at this moment I can answer yes to all four  of those charges.

Some of these unfinished things may not seem large in themselves, but in a particular context they might take on serious consequences.

The unfinished diet for someone at risk of heart attack because of their weight is a serious proposition. The telephone call to which we haven’t responded may mean the ending of a relationship. The letter we didn’t reply to might have been the last one we ever received from someone who then died.

Much of our unfinished business affects not only us but others too. The marriage that is wrecked because the row was never mended, the evicted tenant now living on the street because the bills were never paid and help was not sought, the broken promise that smashed someone else’s trust in us and so on.

What unfinished business is lurking in our lives? We may never get a chance to complete it, if we don’t address it today.

So much guilt arises when someone dies and leaves unfinished business behind them - the words of love never spoken, the forgiveness never offered, the wounds not healed. Unfinished business that goes to the grave leaves a lasting impression on those who have been failed. The grave also may prevent us from finishing what we have to do with the one who has died. It is little wonder that Jesus warned people to sort things out with others before they approached the altar with their gift, leaving it there if necessary while they went away to make amends.

Our unfinished business so often leads us into sin - so much of it reveals a lack of love for another who has perhaps hurt us, so much of it depends on sins we have not forgiven, so much of it depends on our pride or sloth - those deadly sins.

Our unfinished business matters because it leaves things in a way that is less than loving to the one with whom the business is to be conducted or sells ourselves short.

By contrast, Jesus was able to go to his death uttering the words: “It is finished.” A cry of triumph and of victory, not of work left undone. Jesus’s work has been completed, accomplished, and is now finished.

To say that something is finished can mean one of two things - it can have a negative meaning - it’s all over, we’ve finished, can imply a relationship that is broken; a life that is over unfulfilled; a dream that has died.

But it can also mean that something has been accomplished - an artist putting the finishing touches to a painting, a poet writing the final word of a masterpiece, a Messiah who has fulfilled the work he was sent to do, to put an end to death by dying for us, to put an end to darkness by the conquering power of light, to put an end to despair by bringing hope, to put an end to hatred by never living in any way but the way of love.

That cry on the cross is a great cry of triumph - a cry of finished business. When Jesus speaks of his future a few days earlier, this is what he says: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

The death of the seed is necessary for life to continue. Jesus’s work has been completed, the seed is ready to die, so that greater life might ensue.

God’s work is nearly over. But there is one more sentence to be uttered: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” In that last utterance, Jesus makes clear that the property of death to induce fear has lost its power.

This is a death undertaken willingly. These are not words of resignation and powerlessness; these are words of power. These are words that express Jesus’s willingness to embrace his death for the sake of others.

These words sum up all his self-offering - in them is an act of will, an act of choice, an act of utter trust in God to make all things well.