Cross

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Hello, I’m Bishop Joe and today we’re at the Parish Church of St Leonard in Penwortham for the third of this four part series, looking at the Apostles’ Creed – that great and ancient proclamation of the biblical story of our creation and our salvation.

We’re looking at the Creed in four videos – Creation, Christmas, Cross, and Comforter.

Today, we’re looking at the latter part of the Second Article of the Creed. Here it is:

I believe in Jesus Christ […]

who […] suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried;

he descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again;

he ascended into heaven,

he is seated at the right hand of the Father,

and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

In short: I believe in Jesus, who died and was buried, and who rose again, ascended into heaven, and will come as our judge.

We’ve come to St Leonard’s today because of the striking window behind me – which draws our gaze to the cross. And that’s the part of this article of the Creed which we are going to be thinking about today: the Crucifixion of Jesus – the death he died on Good Friday to save us from our sins.

If, as we saw last time, Christmas began in the dark, then it is surely true that Good Friday was the darkest of days.

St Peter, in his sermon in Acts Chapter 3, says the most shocking thing. He says ‘You killed the Author of life’. God – the One who gives us life – came himself and walked among us, as one of us. And humanity’s response was to betray him and torture him and murder him.

And yet we call this day Good Friday. And look, the cross behind me is filled not with darkness but with light. And that is because… well, remember Joseph, in the Book of Genesis, is addressing his brothers and speaking about his own suffering, but he foreshadows and points towards Good Friday, towards the Gospel. He says, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives”.  

Around half of each of the four Gospel stories is made up of Passion Narratives – accounts of that last week which led to Jesus’ crucifixion. If you have never read one of these Passion Narratives through in one sitting, I invite you to do so, to sit with all the evil that humanity threw at this man. And yet, because Jesus is God, faithful in the face of human betrayal, loving in the face of human brutality, Jesus took all that we threw at him and fashioned it into the very instrument of our salvation.

How does the death of Jesus save us? The Scriptures offer us many different pictures, like rays of light from the cross, each one illuminating a part of this great mystery of God’s saving love. Here are just some of those biblical pictures.

Firstly, think of Jesus’ own words: “[…] the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”. Gregory of Nyssa takes up this picture of ransom in the fourth century, writing of how Jesus by his death offered himself as a ransom to release humanity, held captive by Satan. John Chrysostom, in his famous Easter Sermon, alludes to the same idea.

Or, secondly, look to the Letter to the Hebrews, which compares Jesus’ death to the sacrifices of the Jerusalem Temple. Jesus is this image is both priest and sacrifice. As it is written, ‘now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself’.

Or, thirdly, the Letter to the Colossians: “[Christ] forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross”. The 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury, St Anselm, takes up this image and writes a famous book on Jesus’ death paying off the debt with God which our sins incurred, a debt we could never have paid for ourselves. In the words of one 19th century hymn: ‘There was no other good enough / To pay the price of sin’. In the 16th century the Reformer John Calvin also took up this picture in another way, writing that Jesus suffered the punishment due to us for our sins, acting as our substitute.

No one of these pictures says all that needs to be said about the way in which Christ’s death saves us. Indeed, there is endless depth here – for we cannot fathom the mind of God. So the Book of Common Prayer places different pictures side by side in the Prayer of Consecration, when the priest says that, at the cross, Jesus made […] (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world”.   

This was the darkest of days. But ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’.

So it is that with Christians across the ages, we read in the words of the prophet Isaiah, a meditation on Good Friday.

Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you,

because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.