Sermon - Good Friday : Hands which bless the world

Renato Guttuso, Mano del Crocifisso 

It was a great privilege to be invited to preach for the Pascal Triduum at St George’s Bloomsbury in April 2023. The first time I have preached at all three services and the first time I have spoken in front of so many people at once. I drew on my experience visiting the Holy Land last year and based each sermon loosely around part of a prayer attributed to St Teresa of Avila ‘Christ has no body now on earth but yours’ and the theme of connection, disconnection and reconnection. On Thursday the focus was ‘Feet which walk to do good’ and connections to the embodied love of Jesus through the symbolic washing of feet and the sharing of the Last Supper. On Friday the focus was ‘Hands which bless the world’ and our disconnection from the embodied love of Jesus when he died on the cross. On Sunday the focus was ‘Eyes which see life anew’ and our re-connection to the love of Jesus through Mary Magdalene’s vision in the garden at dawn. The sermon on Sunday drew each reflection together to encourage us to choose to live life as pilgrims – not tourists. To embody the love of God we have now received through the Spirit of the risen Christ.

A sermon given at the Good Friday Liturgy on Friday April 7th 2023 at St George’s Bloomsbury. (Year A) based on John 18.1-end of 19.

 

Every year thousands of people are touched by the experience of visiting Jerusalem. My trip there last year was full of surprises. One of which was that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is built over the locations of both the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. A hill and a cave - or what’s left of them - are inside the basilica. Not something I had realised before. The two sites - as identified by Saint Helena at least - are so close, they’re almost in touching distance. 

 

The top of what remains of Golgotha - a rocky outcrop said to have been shaped like a skull - can be seen in the Chapel of the Crucifixion, accessed by a flight of what seem to be far too narrow stone steps. The pale limestone, worn down by centuries of stroking is now off limits, protected by a Perspex box. A huge fissure in one section said to have been the result of an earthquake. More of the rock is visible in the grotto below which is, by tradition, understood as the burial place of Adam. 

 

This part of the Holy Sepulchre is controlled by the Greek Orthodox Church and it’s as blingy as you might expect. Upstairs, in the darkness of the chapel, candlelight glimmers from the golden mosaics that adorn the ceiling and walls. The whole place smells of incense. Very different to the sights and smells that Jesus would have experienced as he carried his own cross up the hill. 

 

In those days outside the city walls, Golgotha was a place where things were discarded, cast away. A place where bins - and latrines - were emptied. 

 

It was here that Christ, having been handed over to suffer and die, emptied himself for our salvation. His hands - always open in life - nailed open on the cross. 

 

Black marble discs show the location of the crosses of the two men crucified either side of our Lord. The distance between them far closer than I ever imagined. These men could have been just fingertips away from Jesus at the moment of his death.

 

An altar has been placed over the site where the cross of Jesus is said to have stood. Beneath the altar an aperture. You can get down on your hands and knees, crawl between the legs of the table and place your hand into the hole. 

 

The rock is smooth - almost oily. Alive. Someone said if you reach down far enough you can feel the bottom - my hands were too big to get that far.

 

By instinct we are materialist. But since the death of Jesus, all that we can ever hold and touch is part of our fallen world. 

 

Here at Golgotha, in the Chapel of the Crucifixion, pilgrims come to reach out and grasp - at nothing - they come to touch absence. To feel a void. 

 

A void shaped as the new Adam. The one who was without sin. The one who overcame death. The one whose love was perfect. 

 

From now until Easter Sunday we hold that emptiness. 

 

Some say we are closer to God at the moment of the crucifixion than at any other. If that is so, since we are made in his image, maybe it is at this moment that we are also closest to ourselves? 

 

Perhaps holding this Jesus-shaped void between the time of his crucifixion and his resurrection is, for now, the most authentic expression of human experience? Because the environment in which we live our lives is that in-between time before his promised return.

 

It is said that the difference between tourists and pilgrims is that tourists get away from life while pilgrims confront life’s big questions - and allow this experience to change them.

 

Our task then is to face up to the reality of being disconnected from the embodied love of Jesus - to embrace that void. Not turn away from it. Not try to fill it ourselves. But to be prepared to be changed by it. To live our lives as pilgrims, not tourists.

 

Being a pilgrim in the present moment means looking into our hands and finding more questions than answers. To acknowledge our lack of self-sufficiency and embrace our dependence on God. 

 

Being a pilgrim in the present moment means looking into our hands, covered with so many unnecessary scars and bruises of our own making - and realising that the fight is over. The hand of peace is in front of us.  

 

Being a pilgrim in the present moment means looking into our hands and letting go of all the darkness and despair that we are holding on to and allowing it to be banished by the one whose light cannot be overcome.

 

This afternoon we remember the day that Christ was handed over to die - his open hands nailed to the cross. He handed the world a life-rope. 

 

Hope.

 

The knowledge that the void he left behind will be filled. 

 

Let us take that rope in our hands and follow where it leads. 

 

Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the hands with which He blesses all the world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

 

 

Image : Renato Guttuso, Mano del Crocifisso  

Acknowledgements : I am very grateful to Fr David Peebles at St George’s Bloomsbury for allowing a novice like me to preach at such important services. I am indebted to Rodney Aist and all at St George’s College Jerusalem for their wisdom on the spirituality of pilgrimage and their hospitality in Jerusalem last year and to Dr Gena St David of the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas for her excellent lecture at St Augustine’s College helping us to view scripture and theology through the lens of neuroscience.