Good Friday - The Tree of Life

Every year we end up here, at the foot of the cross with all our sorrow, remorse, reluctance – all the myriad human responses to the death of Jesus, the one who was like us but more than. (Good Friday. John 18:1-19:42.) 

Why, we ask ourselves, death, and death on a cross? What does death on a cross mean – for the world, then and now, and for us? How does such a death make things different or better amongst such a litany of sufferings going back in time, and we fear, forward in time?

When God chose incarnation – becoming human flesh – God also chose death. To be born is to be committed also to death. To live fully is to be given over to dying and letting go. To give oneself, even one’s divine self, to the extravagance of loving in human form is to risk hate and rejection.

But surely Jesus could have lived a long rich life and then full of days drawn up his knees, breathed his last, and returned to his divine source, like the prophets and wisdom teachers of old. If Jesus had to die young why not in battle, or saving a drowning child, or as martyr – a hero whose death would have given purpose and underscored a life of generosity and goodness?

Why a cross we ask. What was a cross for Jesus and for his time? A cross was a devise of torture and public shaming, a place of annihilation not only of the individual person but their family, their political and religious group. It was a place of desecration and the ultimate weapon of oppression. No wonder Judas betrayed, Peter denied all affiliation, his disciples scattered and shook behind closed doors and even the faithful women kept their distance. The cross did what it was intended to do – it killed cruelly the one who hung upon it and destroyed their cause and brought fear into the hearts of their followers.

And yet this same cross became for us the place of beauty and life, of tenderness and hope, of renewal and redemption. The power and the beauty of the cross is disturbing and confounding.

Many of us were taught that Jesus died for us, for our sins. At one level that is surely true. But Jesus clearly saw his impending death not as primarily payment for sin but as sustenance for the spiritual journey from slavery to liberation, from life through death to life eternal.

Jesus was put to death because of religious and political fear, hatred and judgement – because he offended the religious and caused the political authorities to fear insurrection and unrest. And he allowed that this happened at the Festival of Passover, at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, that celebrated the central story of the Jewish faith – the journey from slavery and oppression to liberation and the promised land.

It is the manner of his death that makes the cross beautiful and powerful. Confronted by fear and hate and abandonment Jesus loved until the end. God took into human flesh the terror of humanity’s cruelty and judgment and overcame hate with forgiveness and love, overcame the darkness of death with light, and overcame fear with hope. There is now no place, no situation that the love of God has not touched, even the tomb has been illumined with love and eternal life.

This is why we can look upon the cross and see not only splintery wood, bloody suffering and death but we can look upon the cross and see helpless un-killable love, unfathomable forgiveness, and life without end.

It is why we can call the tree of shame and death the place of beauty, why the instrument of torture has become our healing, why the place of desolation has become our hope.  It is why we can decorate the cross with not only nails but with vines of green and flowers of every colour.

One does not undo the other until the final day. Until then nails and vines entwine. Fear resides near hope. Light will emerge in the dark.

In the language of one of the greats of the church, Thomas Traherne, 17^th century priest and poet, wrote: “Our Saviour’s cross is the throne of delights. That centre of eternity, that tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God!  ... there we enter in to the heart of the universe. The cross is the abyss of wonders, the centre of desires, the school of virtue, the house of wisdom, the throne of love, the theatre of joys and the place of sorrows, it is the root of happiness, and the gate of heaven.”

And so as we watch the news, gather in flawed communities, nurse our own wounds, we seek to hold the pain and the passionate love of the divine for us, the anguish of those who like the women watched helplessly and yet will soon bear witness to the resurrection, and to see the shame and yet proclaim the victory of hope and love and peace.