Good Friday (2022)

The news of the last few weeks remind us

of the horrors human beings can perpetrate.

Indifference to the truth, treating others as expendable,

torture, brutal killing… just like 2000 years ago.

This is not a day when we think of ourselves in isolation.

This is a day of solidarity.

Solidarity with those suffering, most especially the innocent,

whose cry for healing and for justice we bring to God.

It is also a day to identify ourselves

with the failure of the whole of humanity,

in its capacity for wickedness, and in its frailty,

and to pray earnestly for forgiveness.

Today, in solidarity with Jesus,

we feel keenly the plight of the suffering,

and the horrors of human behaviour,

and respond in prayer,

because that is exactly what Jesus did.

But is not all we do; we also look at the cross with faith.

In John’s gospel, after the entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday,

we hear Jesus say: [12:23] [also 17:1]

Now the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

and, just a few verses later, [12:27]

What shall I say: Father, save me from this hour?

And our gospel yesterday evening started with [13:1]

Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to pass from this world to his Father.

So ‘The hour’ is both the hour of death and the hour of glorification.

John, the great contemplative, sees ­– and wants us to see –

that the moment of God’s glory shining through,

the moment revealing God’s incarnate love for broken humanity,

in all its beauty, in all its glory,

is the moment Jesus says

It is accomplished, and gives over his Spirit.