3 April 2026 – Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25, 13-17; Jn 18:1–19:42

The Very Rev’d Bertrand Oliver, Dean and Rector

‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

The World in which Jesus lived was full of crosses.

This was how Roman imperial power executed those who had no rights—non-citizens who had somehow crossed a line. It was how the empire made examples of people, sometimes almost at random, in order to warn would-be troublemakers.

And so crosses were part of the landscape. A grim reminder to the people of Palestine that they had no rights where they lived. That their future was at the whim of the imperial ruler. That their lives were worth less than those of others, perhaps even worthless.

For us, the story that we have just heard sung again is poignant because we know it speaks of the one who saves the world. And so the cross somehow feels uniquely like a unique moment: the place where God was put to death. On the feast of Christ the King, we sometimes even speak of the cross as a throne, something Jesus steps onto willingly.
Yet, on this Friday, the cross is something else.

It is the place were many were put to death – and here, Jesus, an inconvenient preacher, dies alongside two others. People, who – by virtue of their legal status – did not matter. They were not Roman Citizens. They were expendable.
Citizenship was everything, without it you were nothing.

And those words echo into our own time.

We see them them in those who flee for their lives, who put down roots in communities where they are often underpaid, unseen and unprotected. Who can, at any moment, become convenient examples, caught up in systems of fear, used by those seeking power, reduced to slogans in a world that prefers ‘us’ and ‘them’.

The physical cross as an instrument of terror has mostly disappeared from our. The reality it represent has not.
The cross remains, sometimes as a cultural artefact, sometimes as decoration, sometimes even as something ironic.
In our Western culture, it can appear more as a symbol of failure than of glory. For some, it is mocked or emptied of meaning.

So today, we have to ask:
What does the Cross mean for us?

For us who today follow Jesus on the way to the Cross, it is not simply about explaining suffering.
It is not that God needed to experience our pain in order to understand us. Nor that a wrathful God required the death of a son in order to forgive.

As former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writes: ‘What is done on the cross is not about the intensity with which God feels human sorrow.

‘The Cross is about where God is; and about what human hatred and self-hatred actually means’
(Rowan Williams – The Cross in the 21st Century, in ‘Seven words for three hours’, DLT 2005, p31)

What human hatred and self-hatred actually means. Think about that for a moment.

The cross shows us both.

It shows us the depth of human rejection:
humanity turning on love, turning on truth, turning even on God.

And it shows us where God is found:
not in power, not in security, not in privilege—
but with the outcast, the rejected, the crucified.

God is with Jesus
in the place of the non-citizen,
the condemned,
the one who does not matter.

And that draws a sharp line between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world — between a world built on power and exclusion, and a God whose life is given away in love.

For those who cling to power, the cross is necessary.
Because Jesus—his teaching, his healing, his welcome—threatens everything that keeps them in control.

“Love God. Love your neighbour as yourself.”
And if we cannot manage to love ourselves as we are, how can we love our neighbour, how can we love God?

So the crucifixion is not simply a drama of suffering – although of course it is that. It is also a revelation.
In nailing God to the Cross, we see the full extent of our refusal of love. The rejection of Jesus becomes, in the end, a rejection of our own humanity.

Earlier this week, someone asked me whether it is normal to feel sadness while attending religious services in this season.

Yes, it is.

Because when we stand before the cross, we see not only what was done to Jesus, but what continues to be done in our world, and sometimes through us.

Good Friday allows us to touch that grief.
To recognise it as part of God’s own grief for creation
a grief born of love,
a longing for life in all its fullness, for all—not just for some at the expense of others.

And so today, we wait.

In the communion we share—consuming all that remains—we enter into absence. The aumbry stands open and empty. The signs of presence give way, for a time, to loss.
Jesus is dead. And we wait with the disciples in grief.

In a moment, a cross will be brought into our sanctuary.

You will be invited to come forward—to touch it, to kiss it, to light a candle.
As you do so, bring your grief.
But do not bring only your grief for Jesus.
Bring also the weight of the world.
Bring before God all those who, even now, are being crucified
because of who they are,
where they were born,
what they believe,
or what they dare to hope for.

And as you come, remember this:
The cross is not only the place of death.

It is the place where God chooses to be.

Amen.