SERMON AT ST JOHN'S CATHEDRAL OBAN
Murdoch MacKenzie
Good Friday 2003
The Darkness Matthew 27:45-49
The reason we keep this Watch from Noon to Three is to remember the three hours during which Jesus hung on the Cross and said nothing. A strange darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, an eerie silence, perhaps a bit like the one which some of us experienced during the eclipse of the sun not so long ago.
And suddenly the silence is shattered by the sound of trumpets from the distant Temple. It was the Levites blowing to announce the beginning of the slaughter of the Paschal lambs in the Temple courts, the ninth hour. At precisely the same moment Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, also breaks the silence with the agonising cry, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" " My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" the opening words of Psalm 22.
Though we were to live for a thousand years we could never understand the mystery of what it meant for Jesus to utter that great cry of dereliction. This was the man who had said, " I and the Father are one ". This was the man who had taught his disciples to pray to God as " Abba, Father ", to begin their prayers with the words, " Our Father ". This was the man who on every occasion in his life had always addressed God as " Abba, Father " - except on this one occasion when he cried out, " My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? " In the words of ' O sacred head sore wounded ', " What language shall I borrow ? " to fathom the depths of such an experience ? What can it possibly mean that desolating cry except that this Lord Jesus has so identified himself with our sins, with our wickedness, that he shares the very wilderness of our despair and lack of faith?
Deserted and betrayed by his disciples, rejected and condemned by the nation's leaders, taunted by passers-by and fellow victims, Jesus now experiences utter desolation: even God has forsaken him ! Steeped as he was in the Old Testament it is quite possible that the opening words of Psalm 22 occurred to Jesus at that moment ' My God, my God, why have you forsaken me ?' Indeed much of Psalm 22 reads like a commentary on the Crucifixion -
' Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning ?..... I am a worm and no man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads and say; ' he committed his cause to the Lord; let him deliver him, for he delights in him. ' I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; thou dost lay me in the dust of death.... Yea, dogs are around me; a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet... they divide my garments among them and for my raiment they cast lots. ' ' Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani ' ' My God, my God, why have you forsaken me ?' Matthew has the words in Hebrew, as they are in the Psalm, whereas Mark, the earlier Gospel, has them in Aramaic, as they may well have been on the lips of Jesus, ' Eloi, Eloi lama sabachthani ' And these are the only words from the Cross that appear in either Mark or Matthew. The other six ' words ' are all in Luke and John.
But they portray in the words of the prophet Isaiah ' a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief ' who was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities and on whom the Lord has laid the iniquity of us all. The cry of dereliction provides a profound theological commentary on the oneness of Jesus with humanity, and on the meaning of his death, in which he shares human despair to the full, the dark night of the soul, the sense of having been abandoned by God, what Paul describes in Philippians 2:8 as ' becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross. At this moment Jesus experiences what Paul elsewhere describes as ' becoming a curse ' (Galatians 3:13) or ' being made sin ' (2 Corinthians 5:21) . Is it any wonder that this great cry came at the very moment that the Paschal lambs were being slaughtered in the Temple? ' O Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world, have mercy on us. O Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world have mercy on us. O Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world, grant us your peace. ' The Agnus Dei.
And in this Holy Week these words ring out once again, loud and clear, as we hear them from the hospitals of Baghdad and the streets of Ramallah, not to mention the streets of Jerusalem itself. Because these and other places like them, such as the Congo, Zimbabwe and Northern Ireland are where Jesus is now, this Easter, in the midst of the darkness, places in which we still hear his haunting cry, " Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ". And the same words ring out loud and clear in the personal darkness of each of our own lives, whatever our own particular sorrow or grief may be. There cannot be any sorrow like unto his sorrow but whatever our situation Jesus is there, God is with us in the darkness, precisely at that moment when we feel most abandoned. For each one of us personally and for the world as a whole there has to be what is now called the Good Friday Agreement, an agreement which is costly, which has been wrought out of utter darkness and which if it is to have any ultimate meaning must be sealed in the blood of the Lamb. And may the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world grant us his peace this Easter.
Amen.
Murdoch MacKenzie
The reason we keep this Watch from Noon to Three is to remember the three hours during which Jesus hung on the Cross and said nothing. A strange darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, an eerie silence, perhaps a bit like the one which some of us experienced during the eclipse of the sun not so long ago.
And suddenly the silence is shattered by the sound of trumpets from the distant Temple. It was the Levites blowing to announce the beginning of the slaughter of the Paschal lambs in the Temple courts, the ninth hour. At precisely the same moment Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, also breaks the silence with the agonising cry, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" " My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" the opening words of Psalm 22.
Though we were to live for a thousand years we could never understand the mystery of what it meant for Jesus to utter that great cry of dereliction. This was the man who had said, " I and the Father are one ". This was the man who had taught his disciples to pray to God as " Abba, Father ", to begin their prayers with the words, " Our Father ". This was the man who on every occasion in his life had always addressed God as " Abba, Father " - except on this one occasion when he cried out, " My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? " In the words of ' O sacred head sore wounded ', " What language shall I borrow ? " to fathom the depths of such an experience ? What can it possibly mean that desolating cry except that this Lord Jesus has so identified himself with our sins, with our wickedness, that he shares the very wilderness of our despair and lack of faith?
Deserted and betrayed by his disciples, rejected and condemned by the nation's leaders, taunted by passers-by and fellow victims, Jesus now experiences utter desolation: even God has forsaken him ! Steeped as he was in the Old Testament it is quite possible that the opening words of Psalm 22 occurred to Jesus at that moment ' My God, my God, why have you forsaken me ?' Indeed much of Psalm 22 reads like a commentary on the Crucifixion -
' Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning ?..... I am a worm and no man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads and say; ' he committed his cause to the Lord; let him deliver him, for he delights in him. ' I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; thou dost lay me in the dust of death.... Yea, dogs are around me; a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet... they divide my garments among them and for my raiment they cast lots. ' ' Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani ' ' My God, my God, why have you forsaken me ?' Matthew has the words in Hebrew, as they are in the Psalm, whereas Mark, the earlier Gospel, has them in Aramaic, as they may well have been on the lips of Jesus, ' Eloi, Eloi lama sabachthani ' And these are the only words from the Cross that appear in either Mark or Matthew. The other six ' words ' are all in Luke and John.
But they portray in the words of the prophet Isaiah ' a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief ' who was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities and on whom the Lord has laid the iniquity of us all. The cry of dereliction provides a profound theological commentary on the oneness of Jesus with humanity, and on the meaning of his death, in which he shares human despair to the full, the dark night of the soul, the sense of having been abandoned by God, what Paul describes in Philippians 2:8 as ' becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross. At this moment Jesus experiences what Paul elsewhere describes as ' becoming a curse ' (Galatians 3:13) or ' being made sin ' (2 Corinthians 5:21) . Is it any wonder that this great cry came at the very moment that the Paschal lambs were being slaughtered in the Temple? ' O Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world, have mercy on us. O Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world have mercy on us. O Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world, grant us your peace. ' The Agnus Dei.
And in this Holy Week these words ring out once again, loud and clear, as we hear them from the hospitals of Baghdad and the streets of Ramallah, not to mention the streets of Jerusalem itself. Because these and other places like them, such as the Congo, Zimbabwe and Northern Ireland are where Jesus is now, this Easter, in the midst of the darkness, places in which we still hear his haunting cry, " Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ". And the same words ring out loud and clear in the personal darkness of each of our own lives, whatever our own particular sorrow or grief may be. There cannot be any sorrow like unto his sorrow but whatever our situation Jesus is there, God is with us in the darkness, precisely at that moment when we feel most abandoned. For each one of us personally and for the world as a whole there has to be what is now called the Good Friday Agreement, an agreement which is costly, which has been wrought out of utter darkness and which if it is to have any ultimate meaning must be sealed in the blood of the Lamb. And may the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world grant us his peace this Easter.
Amen.
Murdoch MacKenzie
