Good Friday Preaching of the Passion: 1. The Still Centre
Good Friday
Canon Tim Schofield, Canon Emeritus of Chichester Cathedral
The White Crucifixion – Marc Chagall
Jerusalem has been called a sacred city, the city of God, which is why in medieval maps it was placed at the centre of the world. Others, though, have seen a darker side to the city with Aldous Huxley describing it as “the slaughterhouse of religions” – a city of murder and massacre. At the time of Jesus’ own death, Jerusalem would have been a seething mass of humanity due to the Passover Festival – the time when the population of the city swelled to three times its usual size, as pilgrims flocked from around the world. And because the Passover was a celebration of hope and liberation Jewish nationalism would have been at fever pitch. People were longing and looking for freedom from Roman oppression.
And so, as Jesus, the Son of God, went to the cross Jerusalem would have been in a frenzy of religious fervour; of political plotting and power games; with the intimidating presence of the Roman army fuelling this environment of fear and tension. And in the midst of all this Jesus hung on the cross as the still centre. “The still point of the turning world” in the words of T.S. Eliot.
And something of this juxtaposition of stillness and agitation is caught for us in Marc Chagall’s painting “The White Crucifixion”. Chagall was a Russian Jew who lived through the terrors of the twentieth century. The White Crucifixion was painted in 1938 after Chagall had travelled through Europe and seen the effects of Nazi brutality. It was in June 1938 that the first transportation of Jews to the camps began and in the same month synagogues in Munich and Nuremburg were destroyed and pogroms carried out. But the painting also references the destruction of Jewish life in Russia, a life Chagall had known and treasured as a child.
In the centre of the painting, at the foot of the cross, is a Menorah – a Jewish candlestick – but with only five candles alight instead of the usual 7 – and the painting goes on to reveal how the light is gradually being extinguished. On the right of the picture, we see a synagogue being burnt by a Nazi brownshirt and sacred furniture and books being thrown on the street. Above the cross Jewish figures weep in lament while to the left a Jewish village in Russia is burnt by Communist troops with red flags. Below, in a scene that feels very contemporary, refugees try to escape by boat, and others flee in fear clutching the sacred scrolls.
At the centre of all this anguish is the crucified Jesus, wrapped in a Jewish prayer shawl, with the title “King of the Jews” inscribed above him in Hebrew. But the ultimate focus in the painting is the white cross on which Jesus hangs. The white cross is connected to a white ladder, Jacob’s ladder, that leads to the eternal life of heaven. It is also joined, in the right-hand corner, to the white smoke emanating from the Torah, the Jewish scriptures, which are both a light to our path and, in the words of psalmist, everlasting. These all witness to, what Chagall calls, the white light of eternity, the light of the eternal God. The terror of persecution, crucifixion and death are real, but they cannot destroy the light and faithfulness of God. Jesus is sharing the agony of his people, but it is as if the stillness of his eternal love is not overcome by evil. It is a picture of how God both suffers and stands faithfully with his people, no matter how the world is shaken.
So, as we set out on this Three Hours’ together, we are reminded that the cross is first and foremost the eternal work of God in Jesus. We are going to explore further in these addresses the way of salvation – what God has done for us and for the world on the cross. But we begin by observing with Marc Chagall that there is an eternal dimension to the crucifixion of Jesus which makes it a still centre, a point of hope, beyond the twists and turns of human history.
Some years ago, one of the sisters at the Fairacres Community in Oxford made some little crosses to be held in the hand. On one occasion she showed the Mother of the Community, Sister Jane, the first stage of the making, the hewing out of the rough shape of the cross from a block of wood. When Sister Jane saw it, she thought, “She hasn’t made it, she’s discovered what’s always there”. Sister Jane went on to reflect on the implication of that discovery that the cross is at the heart of creation. The cross, the total self-giving love of God, is implicit in the very being of the created world. And that brings to mind that mysterious biblical image of Jesus as the lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Cross-shaped love runs through creation like the grain through a piece of wood or more prosaically a message through a stick of rock.
And that understanding of the cross as the still centre of creation, and of life itself, is important for us today. Just as the seething activity of the city went on as Jesus was crucified, and people were oblivious to what was really happening, so it is for us in our own time. A part of us feels that it is almost anachronistic to be here in the Cathedral for three hours when the world outside is busy in leisure, in shopping or in travelling. We can feel out of step; slightly foolish. But it is anything but foolish to be here. For the cross is the still centre that gives meaning and hope to our suffering world, and we come here to enter into that stillness.
We are not here, though, just to engage with what God has done in the crucified Jesus in an objective sense. One of the greatest theologians ever to have been Archbishop of Canterbury –St. Anselm – said that what Jesus did for us on the cross, he must also do in us. We come here not as spectators but as participants. For deep within each of us is a shadow side that echoes, to some extent, what was going on in Jerusalem – suffering and sorrow; resentment and conflict; denial and failure; longing and distraction. So, we need to reflect on what we bring with us to this service and place that too before Jesus at the still centre of the cross.
That is why we began the service with Charlotte Eliot’s hymn “Just as I am”. She wrote this hymn following an illness which left her permanently disabled. And one particular afternoon she was overwhelmed with depression and feelings of being both useless and helpless. So, she sat and wrote the hymn “Just as I am” – bringing all her conflicts and doubts, her wounds and fears to the Lord – to the crucified Lamb of God. And as she did that, she found inner liberation and hope. What Jesus had done for her on the cross was now being done in her. And that is the pattern for us today. We bring all that we are, all that is within us that we might find hope and healing. We come before the still point of the turning world.