Good Friday: Preaching the Passion: The Seven Last Words from the Cross

 

In the two churches which nurtured my adult faith, it was traditional on Good Friday for the Liturgy of Good Friday to be preceded by the Preaching of the Passion, that is three sermons preached between 12noon-1.30 at a half-hourly interval, each ending with a prayer, a hymn, and a time for reflection. These three sermons were sometimes based on a selection of the Seven Last Words (statements) of Jesus from the Cross. They are not literal individual words, but rather seven sayings from the Cross. Countless books have been published on the Seven Words, and they have been set to music.

 

These are my own reflections on the Seven Last Words of Jesus.

 

Fr Matt

 

Word 1: ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’ 

Good Friday and the Crucifixion have long been used as a stick with which to beat the Jewish people. They are accused of deicide, of the murder of Jesus, and over centuries have been censured and brutalised for it. The Holocaust being the most infamous of these acts of persecution and extermination. Yet Jesus’s first word from the cross are words of forgiveness, they are ones that remind us that Christ is not crucified by the Jews, but by each and every one of us as children of Adam and Eve. Each of us through our sinful nature, bears responsibility for Christ’s death, with this in mind the hymn ‘How deep the father’s love for us’ tells us that our own voices are heard among those who at Pilate’s residence in Jerusalem call for Jesus’s execution. We are none of us free from that charge, and no one is more or less guilty because of our ethnicity, race, or religious background.

 

Crucifixion is a horrible way to die. It is an agonising process of torture prolonged over hours, even days. Yet even as he is crucified, and despite humanity’s collective guilt Jesus cries out his forgiveness of us all. If Jesus can do this for us in the midst of his suffering, how much more are we called to forgive from the comfort of our own lives?

 

Yet forgiveness also requires us to work at it. It is the work of a lifetime as much as it is the work of a moment; forgiveness is something we must learn for ourselves, and something we need to practice and work on. Jesus does not forgive flippantly, for him to breathe once he is been crucified is agony, to speak a near impossibility, and yet he shouts out his forgiveness for all creation, showing how hard-won it is. For us, if forgiveness is to have any meaning it must to come from the depths of our being and must transform the way we are towards those whom we forgive, just as we must be transformed ourselves when we seek forgiveness from others, or from God.

 

-        Who do you need to forgive today? Whose forgiveness do you need?

 

Word 2: ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’

They say that we all die alone, even if we have our loved ones around us. That is because it is a journey that we make by ourselves; no one can accompany us, they can only offer us comfort. Furthermore, it is said that crucifixion is one of the worst ways to die. The body is suspended from a pole, hands and feet pierced, and in order to breathe the body has to lift itself up using the pierced hands and feet as points of support inducing further agony. The victim eventually dies through suffocation brought on through exhaustion.

 

The Penitent Thief and his companion are both suffering in this way, as is Jesus. There is no one to comfort them, no one to walk with them on this final journey: they are utterly alone. Yet Jesus in his own lonely suffering reaches out to his two companions and offers them his comfort and promises them that today they will be with him in paradise. He tells them that their suffering will soon be ended, and they will finally be a peace.

 

Even if we cannot accompany someone on their final journey, we can sit with them and comfort them. We can reassure them, hold their hand, and pray with them for their peace. Jesus does so with his two companions even as he is himself dying, and he calls us to do the same where we can.

 

-        Who needs our comfort and love today? Take a moment to reach out to them.

Word 3: ‘Woman, behold, thy son! Behold, thy mother!’

It tore Mary’s heart to watch her son being tortured and killed upon the Cross, what mother could bear to see this happen. As St Simeon told her at her purification: ‘a sword will pierce your own heart to’, and now it is well and truly pierced. Yet she waits patiently with the beloved disciple, and is comforted by the other women, she watches until the very end.

 

The Blessed Virgin has numerous titles: Stella Maris (Star of the Sea); the Ever Virgin; the Woman Clothed with the Sun of the Revelation of St John; and the Second Eve among them. One of the most recent, having been proclaimed in the mid-1960s is that of Mother of the Church.

 

In this third word from the Cross Jesus entrusts his mother into the care of his beloved disciples. The disciples are the church in embryo. (They are the first Bishops, which is why bishops wear mitres which are shaped like the flames that descended on the apostles and the Blessed Virgin at Pentecost.) In entrusting his mother to his disciple, Jesus is entrusting her to the Church, and the Church to her loving care. It is something of a two-way relationship: we ask for her prayers and offer her our devotion and love, she prays for us, and her prayers are efficacious and powerful. A reminder that God tells Eve that the serpent (Satan) may bruise her heel, but she will trample on his head: Mary’s son Jesus of course defeats Satan and the power of sin on the Cross.

 

As her children we are called to crush the serpent, and to proclaim the liberty of God’s children, their freedom from the curse and stain of sin.

 

*That a dogma is proclaimed at a particular time does not mean that said dogma is an innovation, but rather official recognition that something that has been held to be true since antiquity is receiving official recognition. It does not change the nature of the truth of that dogma, it merely recognises that it is true, and has always been true.

 

-        Ask for the Blessed Virgin’s intercession for the Church, Christ’s body here on earth, that she may be faithful to the call Christ has placed on her.

 

Word 4. ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ 

In 2010 I attended the funeral of my then Vicar, the Very Revd. Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark Cathedral. Fr Colin, a larger than life and bombastic character then in his early 60s, had died of Pancreatic Cancer. My enduring memory of that service is of his mother, by now confined to a wheelchair crying out ‘My Colin, my Colin’ in a heart wrenching wail.

 

In the same way we hear the cry of utter desolation of Christ as he hangs on the Cross. There is no one there to comfort him, or to relieve his agony – the Roman soldiers assigned to his execution knew exactly how to manage and prolong their victim’s suffering. (They did not care about his comfort or his distress, they are more interested in who gets what remains of his possessions*.) These soldiers were professionals, everything they did was designed to destroy the mind and body of the victim, whilst keeping them alive for as long as possible.

 

But this is more than just a cry of physical pain from Jesus, it is the pain of absolute loss. Jesus in his love for creation bears in himself the weight of every human sin and evil, of every moment of human despair and suffering. The Revelation of St John tells us that the scars of bearing these remain on his glorious body to this day, yet now are beautiful and glorified because of what he has done. In these words, he is taking into the heart of God our own experiences of pain, separation, darkness, and depression. His cry then is our own cry when we experience these things, and we know now that he has experienced them with us and for us.

 

Yet even as he suffers, Jesus does not abandon God nor does God abandon him – he is after all God, and God cannot abandon his own self. His words ‘why have you forsaken me’ are not one of someone who has given up or who has been given up on. Rather these are the words of someone who continues to hold on, even to the very end. They are words of deep and profound suffering, but they are also words of hope, because of out of abandonment comes the possibility of return.

 

It is interesting to note that these words come from opening of Psalm 22. If you read the Psalm you will see that it resolves itself, that is that it moves from depression to hope. Only one Psalm does not resolve itself but ends in pain and darkness: Psalm 88. Jesus chooses not Psalm 88, but 22 to express his own sense of abandonment and grief, reminding us that what seems to end in darkness on Good Friday actually begins afresh in the light of dawn of Easter Day.

 

*‘Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and divided them into four parts, to every soldier a part, and the coat. Now the coat was without seam, woven whole from the top down. Therefore, they said among themselves, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it will become. Thus the saying in Scripture was fulfilled: ‘they divided My raiment among them, and upon My vesture did they cast lots’.’ (John 19:23–24).

 

-        Pray for those who feel abandoned by God. Those suffering from depression. Those who are looking for hope in the midst of despair.

 

Word 5: ‘I thirst’

As I child I made a discovery that has continued to fascinate me to this day, that is that if you repeat a word or phrase endlessly it will eventually lose any sense of meaning and become just a series of unrelated sounds. It is not a great discovery, certainly not up there with anything Einstein has taught us, but it is something that continues to capture my attention.

 

The Seven Last Words of Jesus have been poured over and reflected on repeatedly for around 2,000 years. They have been set to music, and countless books and sermons have been written on them both by Bishops, Popes and theologians, but also by humble clergy. And like a word repeated too many times, we can lose the inner sense of something by looking at it for too long.

 

When Jesus says ‘I thirst’ he shakes our perception of him to our innermost being. Jesus faith tells us divine, but he is also human. The Seven Last Words hold a deep theological significance and meaning, but in this Word we meet the all too human Jesus, one whose suffering is overcoming him. Since his arrest and trial there has been no rest or reprieve from his suffering, no chance for a meal or indeed a drink, and no opportunity to sleep. We need to remember to that Israel is a hot and parched land whose heat quickly drains and tires the healthy person, let alone one who has been scourged nearly to the point of death. By the time Jesus is crucified he must have been both on the point of physical collapse through exhaustion and pain, but also suffering because of severe dehydration.

 

In saying ‘I thirst’ Jesus shows comradeship with all who suffer, with all whose land is parched through drought, with those who have nothing and who what little they do have has been taken from them. He walks in companionship with those who are dying, in particular those who are dying alone and uncomforted. He holds in himself also those who are hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and so should we where we can.

 

-        We cannot offer the thirsting Jesus a drink. But we can care those who are suffering, comfort for those who are dying, help those whose land is suffering drought and famine. Like Jesus, we can walk alongside them, providing for their needs, and ensuring that they have enough.

  

Word 6: ‘It is finished’.

‘Hands that flung stars into space,

‘To cruel nails surrendered’.

[Graham Kendrick: ‘Servant King’]

 

Hands that had at the very beginning had placed the stars in their place, are now pierced by nails of Iron, star metal.

[---]

So what is it that is finished?

 

These words of Jesus ‘It is finished’ are found in the Gospel of St John. His is a Gospel which is centred on the image of the seven days of creation. From his opening words ‘In the beginning’ and through is seven miracles (or ‘signs’ as he names them) John wants us to see that in Jesus comes the New Creation. This theme of creation runs through his Gospel into the resurrection encounters with St Mary Magdalene in the garden, and St Peter by the lakeside.

 

In his death (and resurrection) the old creation of sin and death comes to an end it literally ‘is finished’, and the New Creation comes into being in Christ. Jesus’s words ‘It is finished’ are a heralding proclamation of that fact.

 

-        Give thanks to God for the passing of the old creation of sin and death, and pray to God that his new creation may be alive within each of us.

 

Word 7: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit’ 

And so, it ends. Jesus commends his spirit into the hands of God. What began 33 years before at the Annunciation now comes to an end and Christ gives up his spirit.

 

Christ’s principal work has been the reconciliation of humankind to God. His birth, life and now his death have been in that cause. He has done all he can, and he gives up his spirit in order that through his death this work might be completed.

 

It is worth noticing that Jesus willingly hands himself over to God. His spirit is not taken from him, nor is it demanded from him: he willingly commends his spirit, his very life, into the hands of his Father.

 

Whilst we may not be called to die for Christ, we are called to give all that we have to the service of God: we are called to die daily to sin, and to live for God. That will mean different things for each of us because we are each different.

 

-        Our call is to first find out for ourselves what it means for us to hand over all that we are to God, and then to do so, trusting in his loving mercy.

 

‘Love so amazing, so divine,

‘Demand my soul, my life, my all.’