Good Friday Preaching of the Passion: 5. The Ecology of the Cross
Good Friday
Canon Tim Schofield, Canon Emeritus of Chichester Cathedral
The Rubbish Dump – George Warner Allen
The hill where Jesus was crucified was called Golgotha – an Aramaic word meaning skull. The slightly morbid name came from the rounded shape of the hill and a tradition that it marked the place where the skull of Adam was buried. More importantly though for us, Golgotha was Jerusalem’s rubbish tip – the place where all the refuse and dung of the city was thrown. And the Romans quite deliberately crucified Jewish prisoners there because it was yet one more way to humiliate and degrade a people who venerated the clean and the holy.
And George Warner Allen’s picture entitled “The Rubbish Tip” resonates with the idea of Golgotha but gives it a modern context. It depicts the industrial landscape of the Midlands with its factories and chimneys and all their pollution. It was commissioned as an altarpiece for a priest who was working at the Black Country industrial mission in Wolverhampton.
Before this commission Allen had painted several pictures of families picnicking. All the other paintings are peaceful, rural idylls but here we have a family surrounded by the detritus and decay of the urban landscape. It is a powerful depiction of the way we live in a shared, interrelated world. We see in Allen’s picture that one of the casualties of environmental degradation is the human soul. Humanity can never truly be at peace without a right relationship with creation. And yet the figure of Jesus rises above this wasteland to bless humanity and creation. Here is a picture of ultimate hope, what St. Paul calls a hope that “does not disappoint”. It witnesses to the hope that at the resurrection of all things creation itself will be set free. There will be a new heaven and a new earth in which God will take his creation, of which we are a part, beyond the touch of evil and decay.
That ultimate hope is sure but what of now? At the end of February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued their latest report saying that climate change is now irreversible. So, given that, does the crucifixion of Jesus at Golgotha give us what has been called proximate hope? Hope to sustain us in the here and now. And to reflect on that I want to think about the great Christian virtues of faith, love and hope and their importance in our current crisis.
Faith is what makes Christian hope more than mere optimism. Faith implies that, in a crisis, we don’t just rely on human skills but trust in the providence of God. Belief in providence does not, of course, mean we sit around waiting for God to put things right with a miraculous intervention. Rather we should expect God to work with the grain of human living and suffering. We see something of this in Mark’s gospel with the so-called Messianic Secret. At the end of the opening chapter Jesus encounters a leper whom he begins to heal. Then, so the leper might complete his healing, he has to do something – he has to show himself to the priest so he can resume right relationships within society. Jesus helps; but Jesus also involves people in their own healing. This view of providence is summed up by St. Augustine: “Without God, we cannot; without us, God will not”. The leper is then commanded to be silent about his healing – God is not in the business of self-promotion but works quietly among us.
And the Messianic Secret reaches its zenith at Golgotha. There Jesus is lifted up on the cross to bring about the healing of humanity. And to demonstrate that we live in an interconnected world darkness covers the whole earth as Jesus battles with the powers of evil. But this battle is waged, not by calling on legions of angels, but in almost total silence; in what seemed to be complete failure; and hidden behind physical degradation so great that there was “nothing in his appearance that we should desire him”. And yet the suffering of Jesus’ body, as he soaks up the corruption of the world, is a sign that God is concerned with the material world and is working to heal it. So, as we face the climate crisis, we should counter the temptation to despair, with faith in God’s providence.
Then there is the virtue of love. In medieval times people talked of the healing virtue of plants and herbs. And for the Old Testament prophets, love too had healing virtue for the whole creation. Conversely, a lack of love had a profound environmental impact. Listen to what the prophet Hosea said to his people: “There is no faithfulness or loyalty and no knowledge of God in the land…lying, murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air even the fish of the sea are perishing. (Hosea 4: v.2,3) Here is a holistic vision of the world. Human relationships and behaviour are connected to the flourishing or failing of the natural world. And that is why the supreme act of love, Jesus’ self-giving on the cross, had a holistic impact on the world.
This is made explicit in a sixth century hymn “Faithful Cross” part of which we will hear after this address. The penultimate verse ends like this: “From that holy Body pierced, blood and water forth proceed: earth and stars and sky and ocean by that flood from stain are freed.”
And all this is a source of hope. Instead of pinning our hopes on global solutions we need to begin where we are – with what someone has called repetitive act of kindness. Doing repeated acts of love and kindness in our own part of the world puts grace into our spaces, including the spaces of creation around us. That’s the witness of the prophets and of the church and should be an inspiration to us.
So to the last virtue of hope itself. Women were among the most faithful disciples of Jesus, and they remained with him as he died on the cross. In particular Mary, the mother of Jesus, was there and as she is losing her son, Jesus says to her and the beloved disciple standing beside her: “Woman, here is your son.” And to the disciple whom he loved he said: “Here is your mother.” At the cross a new community is created. And whatever else we take from this passage one thing it is saying is that we can’t flourish alone. In the same way many writers, secular and sacred, have said that if we are to have any hope for the future then it will only be as we work together as a community. We have to put aside individualism and build local communities, as the transition movement is trying to do, which seek to reduce the effects of climate destruction.
I have for a long time been a fan of Tolkien’s writing. And at the end of “The Lord of the Rings” when the evil realm of Sauron has been overthrown, Frodo and his companions return to their homeland – to The Shire – and find it desecrated by the marks of evil. Beloved trees, hundreds of years old, have been felled; all that is beautiful despoiled, people set against one another. And what happens next is a parable for our times. Frodo, Sam and the others set about cleansing and healing the land together, as a community, aided by the providential help of Galadriel. And we are called to work at the local level with repetitive acts of kindness, creating local communities in which we look for small acts that make a difference. Whether that is recycling, replanting the land or reimagining living in a changed world, we are to do these small acts in love and hope, believing in faith that we are helped by the providential love of a crucified and risen Lord.
I am deeply indebted to Richard Bauckham and Timothy Gorringe for their insights on the ecological crisis.