When I was a curate back in the 1970’s the Church decided it needed a Renewal Campaign. We regarded ourselves as quite a ‘successful church’ in many ways and we were quite ‘comfortably off’ as they say but , according to the Vicar there was something missing. he felt we needed  a shake-up and being dutiful curates (and I being a raw deacon) we fell in with his plans.  The Renewal Campaign reached its climax in Eastertide when we had invited a group of 5 Franciscan Friars and sisters to lead us in a fortnight of intense activity – housegroups for adults; groups for teenagers; special celebration services – some led by our newly formed youth music group; prayer workshops; Guest night events – all sorts of things designed to encourage us to a deeper commitment.  We called our Campaign Come Alive!  and as it progressed we felt very pleased with much that had happened. By the time we got to the final service we felt thoroughly ‘renewed’ if renewal could be measured in terms of how exhausted we were!

During the final service, the leader of our Come Alive fortnight –the leader of the Mission, Brother Derek, a wise and mature friar, floored us.  He said something I have never forgotten and often thought over.

You have called this campaign ‘Come Alive!’ but it can’t really happen because you haven’t yet learned how to die!

It took me a long time to realise what he meant but I’m not sure that we did a lot about it. By then the Vicar had given up wanting to be renewed and he gave the Charismatic movement a wide berth from then on.  Looking back now over the years I think our problem was that we wanted the icing before we’d actually baked the cake.

That’s also how I think we sometimes approach Easter.  We love it as a festival, especially if the weather is good but we often want the festive icing without the cake – and the cake is what Holy Week provides.  The Church’s celebration of our Lord’s life during those emotionally charged days leading to His Crucifixion is a pilgrimage which can both inform and renew our faith in a way that has few equals.

I calculate that I have now been through 43 Holy Weeks and every one of them has given me new insights into our Lord and the meaning of His Cross as well as renewing me in some area of my faith.  Different services have spoken in differing ways but the cumulative effect is that at least once every year I have meditated on what our Lord’s Passion actually means.  And in every year I have come to Easter with a renewed joy.  Of one thing I am utterly convinced and it is that nice though Easter might be, unless we have also celebrated the Cross, it lacks something vital.

I use the word Celebrate in relation to  the Cross because so often we treat the Cross as if it is some kind of defeat – and one caused somehow by us.  Jesus is dragged violently through the Jewish and Roman Courts; where is he judged, sentenced, flogged, scourged, mocked and abused and we are invited to look on him with pity and with shame. 

We are asked to meditate on our own sinfulness and make the connection between our wrong-doing and Christ’s sacrifice.  ‘Your sins put him there’ was one of the clarion calls of Good Friday preaching by so many in the Church and we just felt guilty.  Maybe that’s why so many slip around the Cross and concentrate on the joy of Easter lilies and loud Alleluias.  But the Cross isn’t a place of defeat. It’s a place of Victory. A place where Jesus took on all the dark forces of the world – and not just this world but the cosmic supernatural forces who are fighting for control of our souls – and He defeated them by Love.

Yesterday we had a Deanery Quiet Day at Theydon Garnon and we were looking at a remarkable Anglo-Saxon poem called The Dream of The Rood.  The poem gives a picture of Jesus which is a far cry from that of a passive one of meek submission to His Father’s will and an acceptance of the destiny as a suffering servant who dies on the Cross feeling abandoned and rejected by His Father – as Matthew and Marks’s Gospel suggest. Both have Jesus crying out to His Father ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me’ just before he dies in what can only be seen as a defeat which needs the Resurrection to reverse it.  The Dream of the Rood presents a different image and speaks of Jesus as the Warrior King leaping onto the Cross to defeat death and evil in a battle which he gladly accepts as his destiny.  So we read in the poem in a section in which the Cross itself is made to speak:

And then I saw the Lord of mankind hasten with eager zeal
that He might mount upon me [...]

and

Then the young hero (who was God Almighty)
got ready, resolute and strong in heart.
He climbed onto the lofty gallows tree,
bold in the sight of many watching men,
where he intended to redeem mankind.

In its imagery of Jesus as the Warrior who engages death and evil in battle, the poem is closer to John’s Gospel which places Jesus firmly in control of all that is happening to him because He has chosen this way to confront the world’s evil.

In John, our Lord’s final words, It is finished  have nothing about the dejection of Mark or Matthew’s account – a weary, destroyed Jesus giving up his spirit to death.  It is, in John, a triumphal cry – better translated as

'It is accomplished'

in the sense that the Divine plan for human salvation hatched between Jesus and His Father has reached its fruition. Jesus confronts death and evil by transfiguring death through his acceptance of it.

There is a way of defeating something by absorbing it and neutralizing it and Jesus does this through Love – a Love which pours out to us from the Cross and changes our destiny.  The Cross is our Lord’s Victory and Resurrection is the natural result of the Victory because when death is defeated on the Cross then eternal life floods into humanity like water when a dam is broken. What has stopped the eternal love of God from reaching us has now been cast aside. This is total victory and Jesus has taken control of human destiny which is why we call it Good Friday.  It is not black Friday or Jesus is defeated Friday  or Sorrowful Friday.  It is the Day when Jesus takes on the cosmic forces of the heavens – the forces that would turn our souls away from God and, in a battle in which he is the Heroic Warrior, he frees us – all of humankind throughout all of human history – from the power of death, evil and sin.

As the Dream of the Rood put it – he intended to redeem mankind  and on the Cross that is precisely what he did - but we only will fully understand that if we have followed him along the way of his self-chosen destiny during Holy Week. That’s why Good Friday is a Celebration and along with the rest of Holy Week, one we shouldn’t miss. 

Now, I’m beginning to feel like a salesman!  But the truth is – and I’ll say it again – you can’t have icing on the cake if there is no cake to ice.  Resurrection without Cross isn’t an option.  St John of the Cross said:

Those who seek not the Cross of Christ, seek not the glory of Christ.

I return to Brother Derek’s words –

You can’t Come Alive because you haven’t learned to die.

There is, of course, more than one form of death and what Derek meant was that we hadn’t learned to live sacrificially and we were too self-absorbed. We were self-satisfied and we hadn’t got that hunger and thirst for Jesus that really makes for a faithful Church.  In truth we were like the dry bones of Ezekiel’s vision – awaiting a breath of God’s Spirit to animate them. We needed to learn to cry Come from the four winds, O breath  and breathe upon us so that we may live.

Now, I don’t actually believe that is true of us here because I think God’s Spirit has been breathing through this Church for quite some time.  I think, sometimes, that the problem is the reverse. We’ve been so blown on by the Spirit that we have been caught up in a whirlwind of activity by God and actually, we wouldn’t mind taking a breather.

It’s a bit like T S Eliot’s words in  his 4 Quartets:

We’ve had the experience but missed the meaning.

Well, not quite missed  but it is important for us from time to time to take stock of what that meaning might be.  What is God actually doing here?  One of the points of our Lenten Sabbatical has been to try and reduce our church activity in order to Listen to what God is saying personally to our hearts – to try and discover the meaning of what he is calling us to become – as individuals and as a Church.  Actually I wonder how quiet our Lent has actually been and even whether we have been able to make the best of the opportunity that is on offer.

On Wednesday night a few of us tried out the new Labyrinth and one of the things that happens as you take the winding circular path which seems to take us to the centre is that we actually have to slow down. We can’t walk the Labyrinth at a fast pace and as we slow down so, hopefully, there is a new focus for our thoughts, our prayers. We are led to concentrate less on ourselves and more on God and following from that, on God’s purpose for us.

Well, Holy Week is a kind of Labyrinth which leads us slowly towards the Cross, slowing us down so that we might gain  a renewed appreciation of its Victory and of its central message – a stupendous message – a gigantic statement from God about the immensity of His love for each one of us.  And it is when we realize this anew that any dryness in the bones of our faith will be taken away and with the bones in Ezekiel’s Vision we shall know that the Lord has spoken and is indeed acting in our hearts.

Grasp that this Passiontide and you will certainly Come Alive!