Neville Watson conducted our service of worship on Good Friday. He prefaced it by saying: `I am not asking you to agree with everything that is said this morning. Within this congregation we thankfully have a wide variety of faith positions. I do not wish to convince you of the veracity of my particular approach to Good Friday. I wish only to share with you how I see it. In brief it is this: the biggest mistake we can make is to see the Crucifixion as a past event. The Crucifixion is a present reality. It is in the cross that we see the need for love which keeps on loving. It is in the cross that we see that love, not violence, is redemptive.

`There will be no sermon as such today, just a series of reflections on passages of scripture. If you want a sermon may I suggest Bill Loader`s on the centre page of In Touch. It is so good! It is in the form of questions but it is in effect a brilliant demolition job on the fundamentalist stance that the Christian faith is about going to heaven saved by his precious blood. What is so wrong with that idea? Because it necessitates a cruel, murderous, punishing, vindictive God instead of the God of love portrayed in Jesus of Nazareth. Millions of people will stand today and sing `There is a green hill far away.` It is a much loved hymn and certainly was with me at one point but the words are woeful. `There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gates of heaven and let us in.` It may be possible to sing the hymn and translate the words as one goes but why bother? Far better to re-work the words in the light of a contemporary understanding of this significant day – and this is what we will do within the service.`

The Lighting and Extinguishing and Lighting of the Candle
God so loved the world that he gave us Jesus of Nazareth. Light came into the world and that light is the life of humanity. (the candle is lit) And herein lies the crisis, the judgment, the light was in the world and men and women preferred the darkness to the light.

The fools, the stupid fools, they stood in the presence of greatness, and they disbelieved!

They extinguished the light of life and herein is the significance of this day. (the candle is extinguished) They put out the light – at least they tried to. We who live in the twenty first century know that they failed. We who are here this morning are the evidence of resurrection, indeed the only evidence of resurrection.

And so we light this candle again (the candle is relit) to remind us that there is today darkness and light, and that the darkness gives the light its purpose. The light shines in the darkness but crucifixion is a present reality. The crucifixion is not only about extinguishing the light 2000 years ago.

Every day the light is extinguished - and every day it reignites. Thanks be to God!

First Reading (Luke 23:27-28)
As they led him away to crucifixion . . . great numbers of people followed, among them being women who mourned and lamented over him. Jesus turned to them and said, `Do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and your children`.

Reflection
These are the opening words of the crucifixion narrative. It is a very natural thing to weep. Indeed, the cinema screen has made an art of making us weep. Our emotions may run deep but it does not need much to bring them to the surface.

Jesus` response to the weeping women is quite startling. `Weep not for me, weep for yourselves and your children.` The crucifixion has a significance far beyond a moment of pity. It will reverberate down the halls of history – it affects us and our children and our children`s children. The crucifixion is not a time for tears alone. If that is all we do, then we miss the significance of it today. We remember today an event that literally involves the future of the world. In Jesus of Nazareth we crucify the man of God`s tomorrow. We put ourselves at odds with the hope of God for this world and our future. In the crucifixion we see the struggle of opposites, light and dark, life and death, fulfilment and destruction. We are dealing here with an event of cosmic significance.

`Weep not for me,` says Jesus, `weep for yourselves and your children.`

Prayer
Lord of Life, whose light shines upon us in Jesus of Nazareth, whose life embodies and points to life in all its fullness, we come together on this day because the reality of our lives is to be found only in the Cross. It is in the cross that we see the rejection of all that is good. We see a world blind to the truth, a world that fails to recognise the cosmos come to consciousness, a world which fails to see in Jesus of Nazareth the energizing spirit of life, a world which is so concerned with exploiting the present that it thinks not of future generations. Be with us as we worship this day that we may become more and more aware of its awful significance for us and our world. Amen

Second Reading: (Luke 23:33)
When they reached the place called The Skull they crucified him.

The starting point of any consideration of the crucifixion must be its physical and social nature. The cross has in the past been theologised to death (or, to be more accurate, theologised to eternal life). The sacrificial, substitutionary and ransom theories of the atonement do not do justice to the cross and lose the significance of the event.

Consideration of the cross must begin with its plainest meaning as the death penalty for subversion. It is the ultimate sanction of the powers that be. It is the ultimate sanction of political and social control. Jesus was crucified because he was a threat to the status quo.

The death penalty in those days was of two kinds. The way criminals were executed was that the person knelt and the head was struck off with a sword. It was quick and efficient. The other way was that of crucifixion – a slow and excruciatingly painful way reserved for enemies of the State. It is highly significant that Jesus was crucified. The crowd made the nature of his death quite clear: `We have no king but Caesar`. Pilate even more so: `You brought this man before me on a charge of subversion`. Jesus was, and is, a threat to our way of life.

Jesus was well aware of the nature of crucifixion. The town adjoining Nazareth, Sepphoris, was the scene of a revolt against the Romans and the streets were lined with crosses. Some have suggested that Jesus may have walked among the crosses as a youth but the dating doesn`t tally. There is no doubt however that Jesus was acquainted with the practice of crucifixion as the ultimate sanction of social and political control.

It is important to note also that Jesus was not a passive victim of circumstances. After Ceasarea Philippi, when his disciples recognised him as the long awaited Messiah, we are told that `he set his face towards Jerusalem`. He knew precisely what he was walking into. `No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord.` Jesus deliberately confronted the powers that be in the name of God, in the name of humanity`s fulfilment. They did their worst. They crucified the embodiment of humanity`s future, and it wasn`t enough. Today he roams the world where the powers that be cannot touch him. He is out of control.

But let`s not pre-empt Easter Sunday. Let`s stay with the aptly named God`s Friday and recognize the physical and social significance of the crucifixion. It was the death penalty for those who confronted the existing state of affairs.

And the biggest mistake we can make is to think that the crucifixion is a past event. The drama of God`s Friday has not ended. `Goodness continues to be crucified, the innocent are still being killed, hunger still stalks our wealthy world and violence is still endemic and new possibilities represented by Jesus are still set aside so that the wealthy and powerful can flourish and the poor still pay the price. Crucifixion is a continuing event within human history.` As John Taylor says, `His death is a supreme example of injustice. It stands for all injustice.` And we have to identify where we stand with respect to the cross. We have the same choice as the people of those days - the people who made their voice clearly heard when they shouted, `Crucify him! We have no king but Caesar.` He is a threat to our way of life.

Let`s be very clear that we are not today commemorating an angry God requiring recompense. We are commemorating an event which is as fresh as tomorrow`s newspaper. Good Friday is being enacted daily, in refugee camps, on battlefields wherever there is suffering and love, fear and hope. It is about a way of life, a way of love, a way of life in which active non violence plays an integral part. And let me stop there as I feel a sermon coming on!

Prayer
Inexhaustible source of life, you dignify the universe with the gift of freedom and wait until it freely returns your love. In Jesus of Nazareth you enter our human condition and you are rejected by the powers that be and the people of the world. So it was then and so it is today. The drama has not ended. Goodness continues to be crucified, the innocent are still killed, hunger still stalks our wealthy world, violence is endemic, and the new possibilities represented by Jesus are still set side. Help us to hear in our day and generation the lash of the whip, the cry of the crowd and the rejection of love. Help us to see the rejection of Jesus in our time in the suffering and brutality of our world, in the horror of hunger in a world that has enough for everyone. Let us, we pray, hold high the cross of Christ, for in it is the truth about our society and our world, and that the world has changed forever. Amen

I have been suggesting that the crucifixion is a present reality. It is concerned with our children and our children`s children. The crucifixion is of cosmic proportions. I have also spoken of the crucifixion in terms of social and political confrontation, confrontation with the existing order. In its plainest meaning it was the death penalty for subversion. Crucifixion is what happens to those who refute the way of the world.

Both of these things, to my way of thinking, make the crucifixion of enormous relevance to the present rather than being the stamping of our passport into some heavenly kingdom when we die.

I think the evidence is pretty strong for crucifixion being about the present day rather than the past. But there is a clincher passage of scripture to which we now listen.

Third Reading: (Mark 8: 34)
And Jesus said, `If any want to become my followers let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Reflection
What does this mean? Its meaning is patently clear. The Cross, the crucifixion is, should be, indeed must be a feature of our life today. We too are called to confront the powers that be in the name of humanity, in the name of an evolving fullness of life. `Take up your cross and follow me.` This isn`t about some affliction we may suffer. It is about Jesus calling us to a way of life and the hope of social transformation – and to tread that way regardless of the consequences.

To see the suffering Jesus, is to see the suffering of all humanity –and that causes me to tremble. But it needs to do much more than that. It needs to put us on the path to confront the powers that be in the name of suffering humanity, in the name of human society as it could be - as embodied in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.

Prayer
God of life and love, It is only as we look at the cross that we truly know how much we need forgiveness. We have failed to be an Easter people and our lives have been limited by self concern. Like the disciples of old we have been missing in action, we have been found wanting in times of crisis. The cross stands before us telling the truth about who we have been and who we are. May we have the courage to live life as you would have it lived, as it was and is revealed in the crucified one who calls us, even today, to take up our cross and follow him.

Number us we pray as those who hear the call to carry the cross. Let us be known as people for whom nothing matters but living in your way for your world. Amen

Just one more passage of scripture concerning the contemporary significance of the crucifixion as over and against a contract for eternal life in some kind of heaven. We listen to the final words of Jesus on the cross.

Fourth Reading : (Luke 23:46)
Jesus uttered a loud cry and said, `Into your hands I commit my Spirit.`

Reflection
The loud cry referred to is described in another gospel as the Greek word `Teetalestai` which can be translated as either `It is finished` or `It is accomplished`. I favour the latter – a triumphant `It is accomplished` rather than a sigh of thankfulness `It is finished` at the end of the suffering. Be that as it may it is the words that follow that fascinate me: `Into your hands I commit my spirit.`

I have spoken to many people close to death and I remember being asked by one of them, `What do you do when you are reaching the end?` My first reaction was to say that there is not much you can do and in one way that is very true. I shared with him, however, what I hoped to do – to simply repeat as a mantra `Into your hands I commit my spirit. Into your hands I commit my spirit.` I still live in that hope. And there is very good precedent for it!

The point I make is the same as I have been making all along. Don`t ever let anyone tell you that the crucifixion isn`t a present reality. It is of cosmic significance. It is of social and political significance. It is of significance for you and me, in life and in death. It is of significance to the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth today in that it highlights the importance of active non violence. It offers us the key to life and death – not in some kind of heaven but right here and now. We seek to live a life and die a death that consists of the prayer `Into your hands I commit my spirit.`

Prayer
In the loss of loved ones we know something of the agony of God on this day. May we have the wisdom, the courage to commit ourselves into the loving care of God. May the insight of Jesus be our insight and our words be, both in life and death, `Into your hands we commit our spirit`.

We pray this day for the victims of our way of life and those who know the crushing weight of tragedy, injustice and grief. Enable us, we pray, so to communicate your presence in all, that they may find the place of defeat, the place of fulfilment. Amen

The Dismissal
The drama of God`s Friday has not ended. The crucifixion is a continuing event within human history as is the call of the one who was crucified: `If anyone wants to be my disciple, if anyone wants to see life my way, do my work, let them take up their cross and follow me. `
I know of no bigger challenge than that and for God`s sake and the world`s sake I hope that we will see crucifixion as an ongoing reality within the human story. We are all there. We are all part of the drama of the cross. There wouldn`t have been a crucifixion without –

a Judas for whom money was more important than relationships


a Peter with his inappropriate self confidence


a Caiaphas with his impeccable political logic that it was better for one man to die rather than the nation perish


the Priests who saw Jesus playing fast and loose with established religion


the Crowd and its mindless lust for blood


a Pilate yielding to the pressure of the crowd


the terrorists hanging alongside Jesus


soldiers who weren`t paid to think but just to carry out the orders of their superiors


and the disciples who ran away.

May we this Easter not run away, but face the truth that there is in all of us the desire to get him out of our lives, to be rid of him, so we can have the security of our preferred politics, our cosy religion, and a quiet life.

There is no resurrection without crucifixion.
Easter begins in the darkness.

The end result and the significance of Good Friday is ... (the candle is extinguished and covered with a black cloth)

Go in silence. There are no words to describe the awful horror of this day; for then, and now, `The Lord of Life is Crucified.`

Acknowledgments
At my age acknowledgment is difficult as the source of that which I read is quickly lost. The people whom I can recognize within the above are Keith Rowe, John V. Taylor, and Terry Falla . There will be many others whose contribution you may recognize. So be it. I rarely have an original thought!