BIBLE READING
Mark 15.33-41 - The Death of Jesus
Mark 15.33-41 - The Death of Jesus
When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, ‘Listen, he is calling for Elijah.’ And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.’ Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’
There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.
REFLECTION
It is finished. The curtain is torn. The final cry of anguish from the cross fades, bringing to an end a slow, lingering and lonely death.
It is said that we are closer to God at the moment of Jesus’s Crucifixion than at any other. Perhaps driven by a need for consolation at that peak of ultimate desolation; to atone for our absence; artists, musicians, dramatists and poets have been inspired by the scriptures to transport us back to the events of what we now call Holy Week.
For the past month at my weekday church, St Stephen Walbrook in the City of London, I have been surrounded by different interpretations of the image of the death of Jesus. The exhibition made the news due to some of its more challenging artworks. You might have heard about the Crucified Stormtrooper.
Several pieces, including a drawing by Frances Bacon, seem to have been inspired by Jesus’s final words from Psalm 22; depicting a contorted, withered, sinuous, writhing form – more animal than human, entrails exposed and a huge openings in the head desperately gasping at the last breath of life. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” - well we are now – confronted by it on canvas, in all its horror, brutality and loneliness.
If the Bacon drawing screams horror, Paul Benney’s painting “The Dying Slave” captures something of the beauty of vulnerability and death. It shows a naked and limp figure suspended over a whirlpool of deep water. Hope is more obvious here than in the Bacon drawing - the Dying Slave can be seen beginning to transfigure, its limbs dissolving into flames, the heat from which is turning the water below into vapour. A cycle of resurrection and renewal that reminds us of the connection between heaven and earth, between individuality and all of creation, our fragile bodies and this body – in all its beautiful imperfection.
One death, two different visual interpretations - of which there are countless more.
In her book Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, Fleming Rutledge, the American Episcopal Priest, condenses centuries of writings into eight motifs that are used to explain Jesus’s death on the cross, some of which, she explains, surface more prominently in different Christian traditions than others. These motifs draw parallels between Jesus and Israel; of Passover and exodus, of judgement and reckoning - (Wesley’s “Great Assize”) - or Christ’s victory over sin and the devil and his descent into hell. But whatever the dominant images or motifs that we choose to interpret the meaning of his death in our own churches and in our own lives, we all come back here - to the foot of the cross.
The improbability of a single event – this single event - having significance for everything, everywhere and for all time has prompted Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin in the Fields, to ask whether our faith is hanging by a single thread? Fleming Rutledge, quoting Shakespeare, prefers the term yarn - and says that each of us is “a mingled yarn, good and ill together.” Perhaps this is a good metaphor for our life as “the faithful”? It is probably true to say that for most of us and for most of the time, our single “good” thread seems to be hidden deep within the rest of that yarn. But, as Sam Wells reminds us, we each face moments when we have the chance to say or do something that shows what we believe life is for, what existence is about and what truth is made of.
I know that single thread is a strong bond; a cord of light and hope that has drawn us all together here this morning. A reminder of our connectedness and interdependence not only to each other but to our community here in Southgate, Oakwood and Cockfosters and - as we join in asking these same questions about the crucifixion with Christians further afield - with the whole world.
I have seen that these single threads are even stronger when we come together; when our Street Pastors go out each weekend to care for our neighbours – or when we work as Churches Together to provide shelter for the homeless, as part of the Enfield Churches Winter Night Shelter. Though we are many, we are one body. This crucified body.
Sam Wells explains that it is in moments like these that we come face to face with the cross and we discover that, hanging by a thread, is none other than Jesus.
As St Paul reminds us: I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
PRAYER
A prayer written by Ali Newell.
O Christ, your cross speaks both to us and to our world.
In your dying for us you accepted the pain and hurt
Of the whole of creation.
The arms of your cross stretch out across the
Broken world in reconciliation.
You have made peace with us.
Help us to make peace with you by sharing in your
Reconciling work.
Amen.
Links
Hanging by a Thread by Samuel Wells was published in 2016 by Church Publishing and is available now priced £8.99.
The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge was published in 2015 by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
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