On Ash Wednesday, I chose for my sermon text, a reading from the Book of Proverbs:
There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil,
a false witness who breathes out lies,
and one who sows discord among brothers.
I said then that way this proverb is written, six things and seven, is probably a literary device intended to draw attention to the seventh item listed, which is the worst offence of all, and one that all the others lead to, discord among brothers.
During Lent, I preached on these things that God hates, and I’ve shown how we all have these hateful qualities and characteristics, and that what we do at times clearly shows that we have them. And in addition to the six hateful things I’ve already preached about, there’s no doubt that we’ve also all had the seventh in our lives too – discord.
It’s not very hard to see why the first six hateful things lead to discord, to see why and how haughty eyes, lying tongues, hands that shed innocent blood, hearts that devise wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, and false witnesses who breathe out lies, lead to discord, to disagreements, hostility and conflicts between people. And it’s not too hard to see why this seventh thing is the worst and most hateful in God’s eyes because what does discord show other than a lack of love; a lack of love for God by showing that we’re not acting as he wants us to, and a lack of love for our neighbour because we’re treating them so badly, much worse than we’d like to be treated ourselves? So Lent has been, and of course always is, about our sinful ways and about examining our lives in the light of Christ to see where we’re going wrong and how we could be and need to be better. And all this leads to the climax of Lent on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are the climax of Lent because we see on those days just what sin, what having and doing things that are hateful to God leads to. These days are the climax of Lent because they show the result of sin, that alienation from God that’s revealed in Jesus’ cry from the Cross;
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
They’re the climax of Lent because they show the cost of sin, the pain it causes and the death it ultimately leads to, as shown in Jesus’ Passion, his agony in Gethsemane, his betrayal and abandonment, his humiliation, the spitting and beating, the scourging, the thorns and the nails, and finally, his death on the Cross. But these days are also the climax of Lent because, in the light of faith, in the light of what we now know follows these terrible things, they show us the depth of God’s love for us. They show us length to which God, and his Son, were prepared to go to, to save us from our sins and from the true price of our hatefulness.
Having said all that though, those who claim that Jesus’ death on Good Friday is the foundational event of the Christian faith, are wrong. There are those who do say that, in fact it’s something you often hear on TV programmes about Jesus and the Church, but they are wrong. In fact, they couldn’t be more wrong. Jesus’ Passion and Cross are of vital importance to Christians and to the Church but only when we see them in the light of what happened next. The events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are central to our faith, but only because of today, Easter Day, and what we celebrate today. These things are only important to us, and in fact they only make sense to us, in light of Jesus’ Resurrection.
We see Jesus’ Passion and Cross as a sacrifice for sin, a sacrifice that was necessary under the Jewish law. But the law already made provision for sacrificial sin offerings. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the Jewish year and it’s a day that, even today, is still devoted to sacrificial offerings to take away the sins of the people. These days those offerings are usually in the form of prayers and fasting but in biblical times, Yom Kippur was a day for blood sacrifices and for the driving out into the wilderness of the ‘scapegoat’ which, symbolically, carried away with it the sins of the people. But that sacrifice has to be repeated every year and if Jesus had died on the Cross and that had been the end of it, what would his sacrifice have been other than just one more in a long line of sacrificial sin offerings? What more would it have meant or signified to anyone than any other sacrifice meant, or had meant or still means?
No, the foundational event of our faith is not what happened on Good Friday, it’s what happened today, on Easter Day. Today is the day we realise just what God has done for us, just how much he and his Son were prepared to do to free us from the sin and death that our often hateful nature would condemn us to. Today is the day we realise that God didn’t simply send his Son to earth to tell us the error of our ways and show us how we need to live in order to be less hateful to God, but that he sent him to hell and back to prove to us that what his Son said was true and what he did was right. Today is the day we realise that Jesus’ sacrifice was accepted by God. We realise that because he died as a sinner, as one of us, carrying the guilt of all the hatefulness of the world, but he didn’t remain in the death that should have warranted, but was raised from death to life. And because of that, today is the day we realise that we can hear his words,
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”
and truly believe them. So today and the Resurrection we celebrate today is the vindication of all that Jesus said and did and because of that, today is also both the foundation of our faith in Jesus, of our faith as Christians, and the vindication of our faith.
Despite all this, of course, we still have those qualities that are hateful to God, and we still show them in our words and actions. But when we realise that Jesus’ sacrifice was accepted by God and therefore, that his sacrifice did take away the sin of the world, we can also believe that our sins can be forgiven too.
The Christian faith speaks of both sin and sins, but these aren’t necessarily the singular and plural cases of the same thing. When we speak about sin, what we’re often referring to is a state of being; sin, if you like, refers to the fact that we do have those qualities and characteristics that are hateful to God and are inclined to show them in our words and actions. Sins, on the other hand, refer to the hateful things we actually do and say, the things we do and say that show these hateful qualities and characteristics. So, when we call Jesus the ‘Lamb of God’, which is a reference to the sacrifice he made on the Cross and profess our belief that he takes away the sin of the world, we don’t mean that Jesus’ sacrifice has removed these hateful qualities and characteristics from us. We must realise that because we know we still have them and show them in our lives. What we mean is that Jesus’ sacrifice has removed the consequences that result from our possession of those things.
His sacrifice does that, not by taking away the consequences we do suffer as a result of our hateful nature, which is a tendency to do and say hateful things, but by taking away the consequences we would suffer as a result of those hateful things we actually do and say.
Jesus’ sacrifice doesn’t take away our sin by taking away our sinful nature, it takes away our sin by taking away our need to pay the price of the things our sinful nature leads us to do. We don’t have to pay the price of our sin because Jesus has already paid the price for our sins. He paid the price for our sins in his own blood during his Passion. He paid the price of our sins by dying for them on the Cross. His Resurrection is the proof that God the Father accepted the offering Jesus made on our behalf as the price due, paid in full.
Of course we still have work to do. We don’t get off entirely ‘scot free’ (a medieval term for what we’d call tax evasion, not a slur against our northern neighbours who are sometimes noted for their frugality) for our hateful nature and ways, because we have to do our best to be less hateful to God in what we do. Today is the day we realise that all Jesus said and did was true, but that also means it’s a day when we have to remember that, although Jesus never condemned sinners, he did tell them to “Go, and sin no more.” But nevertheless, when we do allow our hateful nature to get the better of us and lead us into doing hateful things, we know that we can turn to Jesus in penitence and ask forgiveness knowing that the full cost of what we’ve done, the alienation from God and the death that brings, has already been paid and the payment has been accepted. So today is the day when we should realise that, even in our most hateful moments, we should never despair that we’re hopeless, a lost cause, or that we’re unforgivable, because Jesus’ Resurrection assures us of quite the opposite.
And so today, the day when we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the day when we celebrate the foundational event of our faith, the day when we celebrate the vindication of all Jesus said and did, is the day when we can say and should say, loudly and boldly,
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Amen.
Propers for Easter Day, 9th April 2023
Entrance Antiphon
I have risen: I am with you once more; you placed your hand on me to keep me safe.
How great is the depth of your wisdom, alleluia!
The Collect
Lord of all life and power,
who through the mighty resurrection of your Son,
overcame the old order of sin and death to make all things new in him:
grant that we, being dead to sin,
and alive to you in Jesus Christ,
may reign with him in glory;
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit
be praise and honour, glory and might,
now and in all eternity.
Amen.
The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)
Acts 10:34, 37-43
Psalm 118:1-2,16-17, 22-23
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-9
RCL (St Gabriel’s)
Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2,14-24
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-18
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 