Sermon notes from Good Friday 2009

Behold, humankind!

Good Friday Sermon notes, St David’s Cathedral Hobart 2009

Do you recall how Pontius Pilate presented Jesus to the crowd in Jerusalem?
Do you recall how he asked them to choose who should be condemned to death by
crucifixion?

Pilate, the rule of the Roman Empire in Jerusalem at that time, asked the crowd to
choose between Jesus, the extraordinary teacher with authority over disease, storm
and death or the convicted bandit Barabbas.

Pilate presents Jesus to the leaders and the crowd with the words, ‘Behold, the
man!’ [John 19:5-16]

The crowd must decide. The crowd decides. The crowd screams, ‘Away with him!
Away with him! Crucify him!’ This is seemingly unbelievable. Yet, is it not true to our
human condition? To our human perversity?

The crowd screams for Jesus to be crucified and Barabbas released. The crowd screams for immorality and injustice.
This immoral and unjust act occurred among the Covenant People of God, Israel,who were ruled over by the Roman Empire. This historical setting adds to the extraordinary context of Jesus’ condemnation by the people in the crowd, and
overseen by Pilate (Roman rule).

Hence it is that this barbaric act on a man clearly evidencing God’s works is carried forward by the very people who had experienced
God’s word and deliverance over the centuries. This seems inconceivable.

Additionally, this act of gross injustice occurred in the Roman Empire; an Empire
which prided itself on the rule of justice, of law.

Are we not then presented with the crowd, with the City of Jerusalem, as
representative of the wrongness of the world? Interestingly, this is the theme of the
book, City of Wrong: A Friday in Jerusalem by M. Camel Hussein, a Muslim.
[Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 1994]

When the crowd in Jerusalem on that black Friday wrongs Jesus, and in him God, it
demonstrates the wrong of our humanity. The desire and will to crucify Jesus is an
indicator of the wrongfulness of humankind.

Is the man on trial, ‘Behold, the man!’, or is humankind on trial, ‘Behold,
humankind!’? In Jerusalem on that black Friday, do we hear the cry of history
shouted to us, ‘Behold, humankind!’ Do we hear it? Do we see it? Do we see how
perverse, how wrong we are? Do we see our sin? Many people have.

Good Friday deals with the question of ‘sin’. Sin has its foundation in whatever
takes first place in our lives. When God is not first in our lives then someone else or
something else takes God’s place. Left to ourselves we would always put ‘self’ first.

Saint Augustine said ‘Sin is believing the lie that you are self-created, selfdependent
and self-sustained’. It is interesting to reflect on all the words
compounded with ‘self’ which have a negative or pejorative meaning -
self-indulgence, self-important, self-love, self-satisfied, self-seeking.

Apparently we need a large vocabulary to express our self-centred nature!
Sin involves putting ourselves at the centre of our life instead of God.
The self-centredness of the human condition which brings about such suffering and
shame is seen most graphically on the Cross of Christ.

We know of the Cross. We know of the injustice, the unending waste, the suffering
and hunger, of the failure of love, of the solitude of our society and our own soul, of
the puzzle of our ending.

On Good Friday we come to the end of our self-seeking and our self-justification.
We look at Jesus on the Cross, in our place. We begin to realise who we are and
who God is, and we turn to God, putting God in first place, back at the centre of our
lives.

Our ‘won’t’ power

Can our self-centredness be overcome by adherence to the law? The aim of law is
justice, moral rightness, conduct which is in accordance with true principles. We
agree that this is good for us, for our community. The law aims to bring right living.

But we struggle to live by the law. We seem to lack the will to live rightly.

I sometimes wonder if this inability to obey the law has more to do with our ‘won’t’
power than our ‘will’ power. I see it every time I drive the Midlands Highway. As the
slower vehicle in front approaches the overtaking section, what does the driver do?

Yes, we all know: the car speeds up! ‘I won’t let you pass me!’

There is something deep within us. A human perversity, a recalcitrance, a
rebelliousness, a ‘won’t’ power.

Often times teachers are given curriculum additions to improve behavior. If young
people do not learn right behaviour at home, then they must be taught where? – at
school! Education is seen as the answer to unacceptable behavior.

However, we seem constituted to not want to obey the law. We can know and not do. Our need is
something deeper than can be solved by education or knowledge. Education is not the solution because ignorance is not the problem.

The problem is our rebelliousness.

The good that I want to do, I do not do. The evil that I do not want to do, I do. This
deep estrangement from the ways that give life is our state of rebellion against God;
against the life giving ways of God.

This is a state of wrong relationship. The state of wrong relationship is deeper that the doing of certain acts of wrong. ‘Sin’ is the state
of being, who we are, sins are the acts that spring from that state of being. Sins are
what I do or fail to do. Sins are acts of commission and omission.

The state of sin is what I am in my inner being. Acts of sin, sins, are in my doing.
Malcolm Muggeridge, controversial English journalist and commentator, who had
an amazing and very public about face in becoming a Christian, said this as he
desperately struggled against the call of Christ,

‘This is how I came to see my situation, in a sort of dream or vision, something more
vivid and actual than most happenings and experiences. I am confined in the tiny
dark dungeon of my ego, manacled with the appetites of the flesh, shackled with the
inordinate demands of the will – a prisoner serving a life sentence with no hope of
deliverance.’

[p.454, ‘Living through an Apocalypse’ in Let the Earth hear His Voice, J. D. Douglas
(Ed.), World Wide Publications, Minnesota, 1975]

Malcolm Muggeridge came to see himself as being in the wrong. ‘Behold
humankind!’ Humankind ‘manacled with the appetites of the flesh, shackled with the
inordinate demands of the will – a prisoner serving a life sentence with no hope of
deliverance.’

Countless people throughout history have likewise seen themselves. Augustine, the great bishop of North Africa and teacher of the Church, 354-430AD,was appointed at a young age to the Chair of Rhetoric in Milan. He referred to his
university appointment as ‘his chair of lies’. In Augustine’s autobiography,
Confessions, he relates that prior to his conversion to Christ there was a special
episode where God caused him to realise how wrong and wretched he was and he
concluded, ‘Will I ever cease setting my heart on shadows and following a lie?’

Later, hearing the sing-song voice of a child in nearby house, ‘Take it and read it,
take it and read it’ Augustine rushed and took up the Bible and read Romans 13:13,14 and so decided to ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’. [pp.35-41, A Third Testament, by M. Muggeridge, BBC and Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Ltd, Toronto 1976]

Augustine, Muggeridge, C. S. Lewis, Beatriz Buono, Silvia Chaves, Elizabeth Dole
and countless others who have come to realise their need for Christ’s forgiveness of
sin and the fullness of life in following him.

The correct diagnosis of the human problem is that we have put something other
than God in first place in our lives. We are rebels, in a state of rebellion against God
and God’s ways. We are in sin. If this is the correct diagnosis, then God in Christ
coming to restore that broken relationship is the remedy.

Be warned: If you diagnose the wrong sickness, you give the wrong remedy!
How could our human condition be adequately addressed?

Good Friday God in Christ deals with the human condition: self-centredness,
suffering and shame.

Easter Sunday is God’s offer of new life, hope, restoration, love and justice.
God came and lived among us in the person of Jesus Christ so that by committing
to, and following him, we can come back into relationship with God.

Jesus offers a way back from rebellion to relationship.

Conclusion

Why is an understanding of sin, our wrongfulness, our will to crucify Christ, our
perversity so important?

To understand the magnitude of sin, is to understand the magnitude of the Saviour.
To understand the depth of self-obsession, is to understand the depth of God’s selfsacrifice.
To understand the gravity of rebellion, is to understand the grace of our Rescuer.
To understand the sinfulness of sin is to understand the holiness of the Holy One.
To understand the ‘will to crucify’, is to understand our calling to Christ-likeness.
To understand how greatly we are forgiven, is to greatly forgive.
To understand how complete was Christ’s sacrifice, is to completely serve Christ.
To understand how total was Christ’s victory on the cross over sin, is to accept God’s
love, is to love God, is to love God’s people, is to love God’s world.

Bishop John Harrower