Elizabeth Farrelly’s column was a sobering reminder that the church’s treatment of people who undergo marriage breakdown is a much bigger issue than just my case. Click here or the image to read the article. Click here to read letters that came in response to the article.
Amir Mohammad Esmaeili of the Tehran Times contacted me to ask for my response to the assassination of prominent Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, on Friday, November 27th, 2020. My answer was published on December 2nd.
Indeed, I believe the assassination of civilian technicians is a barbaric form of politics. To download the full edition of the Tehran Times for December 2nd, 2020, click here.
Thanks to my friends as 2SER for this interview. It was done as part of the promotion for my new book, “Christians and Muslims can be friends”, but the focus ended up more on my boxing and work with young people.
This article came out on Saturday, November 14th, 2020. I did the interview with a view to promoting the launch of my new book, “Christians and Muslims can be friends”, but the focus of the article was on my treatment by the church. The article generated a lot of strong responses – negative as well as positive. Click the image to read the full article.
Father Dave Smith is back in the ring in his fight for social justice with a new book, Christians and Muslims can be friends, urging love, understanding and tolerance between the faiths.
For more than 30 years ‘Fighting Father Dave’, an Anglican priest and professional boxer in Sydney’s inner-west, has worked with at-risk youth, teaching boxing to young people with substance abuse or anger management issues.
Father Dave is also an outspoken fighter for human rights and has built strong ties with the Muslim community, in Australia and internationally. He counts among his friends Grand Muftis, sheikhs, Muslim politicians and sportspeople, as well as progressive Christian leaders.
Christians and Muslims can be friends will be officially launched on Saturday, 28 November 2020 when Father Dave goes a few rounds in the ring with his Muslim and Christian friends – Anthony Mundine, Billy Dib and Solomon Haumono.
In his book Father Dave explores the Christian Scriptures to show how Jesus taught his followers to move beyond an ‘us and them’ mentality to discover each other’s humanity.
“Christians and Muslims can be friends. I have no doubt about that, and every pew-warming Christian has an opportunity to gird up his or her loins to make a real difference,” Father Dave writes.
He calls for Christians to take a greater role towards friendship with Muslims, illustrated via interviews with Muslim friends including the Grand Mufti of Syria, Dr Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun, Australia’s first female Muslim federal MP, Dr Anne Aly, and boxer Anthony Mundine.
Federal Labor Leader Anthony Albanese, who is Father Dave’s local MP, said there had never been a more important time to nurture dialogue between religious groups.
“Thank you, Dave, for your book. I believe it will do much to generate understanding and mutual respect, and to build friendships,” Mr Albanese wrote in an endorsement.
Father Dave is the former parish priest of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Dulwich Hill, Sydney, and has been nominated three times for Australian of the Year.
Christians and Muslims can be friends is available on amazon.com.au
As you know, this may well be the last Sermon I give from this pulpit, and will most certainly be the last sermon I give here in my current position as Acting Rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Dulwich Hill, which may help explain why I’ve taken the unprecedented step of disregarding the scheduled Gospel reading for the day!
Yes, some of you may decide to walk out (or switch off) at this point. Who would believe that I could be such a maverick in this final fling, after thirty years of faithful adherence to the common lectionary, but, yes, the inner rebel has finally emerged, and I’ve given ‘doubting Thomas’ the flick this year.
Yes, this Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, is the Sunday were every year we are given the reading from the Gospel of John, chapter twenty – the story of ‘Doubting Thomas’ – and, to be quite honest with you, I’m sick of him.
It’s not that I dislike the man – honestly. In fact, I feel a real affection for him, and yet I truly don’t understand why, where our readings are normally scheduled in a three-yearly cycle, we get this reading, not every three years but every single year!
I truly don’t understand it. Even the Christmas and Easter readings differ from year to year. Why is the story about Thomas so important?
I can only assume that Thomas’ ‘doubting’ is something that has been so close to the heart of the Christian community over the centuries that we feel a need to keep coming back to this story again and again, and I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing. I’m not suggesting that doubt is a bad thing, but is it really such a key thing in the life of the Christian church that we have to keep readdressing it like clockwork every year at this time – a time when you might think we would be busy proclaiming the resurrection?
Perhaps it is that important, and if you were looking forward to finding strength in your doubts today, or affirmation of your doubts, now is the time to make a hasty exit (or switch Facebook or YouTube channels, as the case may be) and avail yourself of any number of other churches where there’s a less rebellious priest in the pulpit!
At any rate, instead of focusing on the Gospel of John, chapter 20, I’ve made the radical move of focusing instead on the following chapter – John, chapter 21, which doesn’t find its way into the lectionary at all this year, so I’m not stealing anybody else’s sermon. This reading just happens to be a personal favourite, and one that I’ve found to be particularly helpful to me at the moment. It’s the passage that deals with the reconciliation between the resurrected Jesus and his best friend, Peter.
I appreciate that Jesus doesn’t use the term ‘best friend’ with regards to Peter, and some might argue that John (often referred to as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’) should be given that title. Some might even argue that Mary Magdalene or some others might be equally worthy of that title. Even so, I think the dialogue between Jesus and Peter itself points to the deep and profound nature of their friendship.
I’m beginning from verse 15 of John chapter twenty-one.
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
16 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”
17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. 18 Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” 19 Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!” (John 21:15-19)
We are familiar enough, I think, with the history of the relationship between Jesus and Peter so as to make full sense of this dialogue. Jesus asks Peter three times, “do you love me?”, and it doesn’t escape us, any more than it would have escaped Peter, that this three-fold question from Jesus paralleled Peter’s three-fold betrayal.
It was just after they had shared the last supper together that Peter had said to Jesus, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” (Luke 22:33), to which Jesus had replied, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.” (Luke 22:34)
And indeed, Peter did deny Him:
A slave-girl says, “This man also was with him”, but Peter replies, “Woman, I do not know him.” (Luke 22:57)
A nameless man says, “You also are one of them”, but Peter said, “Man, I am not.” (Luke 22:58)
“Still another insisted, saying, “Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.” But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.”” (Luke 22:59-50)
That sad story ends with Jesus turning and looking at Peter, and Peter running away and weeping bitterly. (Luke 22:61-62)
We don’t know exactly how long the gap was between Peter’s betrayal and this meeting on the beach where reconciliation took place. We know that it was at least ten days, and it could have been significantly longer. We know too that this was by no means the first time Peter had seen Jesus again after the resurrection.
Often that is the way reconciliation works. Often it takes time. We want things to be fixed up quickly and to put the pain of the past behind us, but it doesn’t always work that way. Genuine reconciliation can take time.
‘Do you love me?’, Jesus asks Peter? ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Do you love me?’
It is significant, I think, that it is Jesus – the one who was betrayed – who takes the lead in initiating reconciliation. I don’t know whether it could have worked the other way around – if Peter had been the one to initiate the conversation – “Hey, Jesus, I know I betrayed you three times but I want you to know that I still love you”.
Maybe it can never work that way? It’s hard to know. In this case, at any rate, Jesus controls the process, and every act of betrayal is countered with an affirmation of love – “Yes, I love you”, “Yes, I love you”, “Yes, Lord. You know that I love you.”
What Jesus said next, as recorded in John, chapter 21, verse 18, was unexpected, I think, and it’s this verse that really drew me to the passage today.
You might have expected Jesus to conclude this intimate moment of reconciliation with Peter by saying something like, “let’s have a hug!”, or even “have you got any beer?” Instead, Peter receives from Jesus something far more solemn:
“Very truly I tell you, when you were young you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”” (John 21:18)
We are told that Jesus gave this to Peter as a prophecy as an indication of exactly how Peter was going to die (John 21:19) but you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was hardly the time! Why would you want to juxtapose all these intimate expressions of love with images of violence and death?
Even so, my reading of this verse has, for as long as I can remember, been heavily influenced by the wisdom of the late Henri Nouwen, who saw this prophecy to Peter as being archetypal of the growth into maturity of every follower of Jesus: when you are young you dress yourself and go where you want, but when you are old you stretch out your hands, and someone else leads you where you do not want to go’
Henri Nouwen, for any who aren’t familiar with him, was a Dutch Catholic priest and spiritual writer, and a man who struggled greatly in his life. He struggled with his sexuality, with his friendships, and with the exact form of his vocation.
For Nouwen, this image given to us in John, chapter twenty one, is the path set for every true believer. When we are young, we do our own thing, we have our own plans, we nurture our own visions and ambitions. As we get older, we loosen our grip on the hopes we had for ourselves, and ultimately, in faith, we stretch out our hands and allow others to lead us to places where we do not want to go.
This, of course, is where I find myself today – stretching out my hands and allowing others to drag me off to places where I do not want to go. I don’t want to lose my church community any more than I wanted to lose my wife and children. I don’t want to lose my home or my vocation, and if I had it my own way, I would cling on to all of these things.
Even so, I believe Nouwen is right in pointing to the words of Jesus in this instance. This is not the way for the disciple of Christ. When you are young you dress yourself and you follow your own dreams and your own ambitions. Following Jesus means being wiling to let go of all of that and be led instead into places I don’t want to go.
Of course, it’s not as if I haven’t been to places that I didn’t want to go already.
Despite what some may think, I had no desire initially to go to Syria in 2013 where I was surrounded by misery and death and bombs going off.
I didn’t want to go to Manus Island either, to be almost drowned in a dingy, bouncing between coral reefs, while being pursued by the local navy.
I didn’t want to go to Jerusalem in 2004, to see my friend, Morde Vanunu, released from prison, only to be mobbed and almost killed in a riot.
And when it comes to my thirty years here of ministry here in Dulwich Hill, did I really ever want to be led into so many of the things we’ve done here?
I thought I’d conclude today by sharing a few of those experiences here in Dulwich Hill that I never expected to have, and generally didn’t want to have. I thought I’d limit myself to three experiences out of many thousands, otherwise I’d be here all day. These three though are amongst the most memorable for me.
The first incident happened in our youth centre, which was where we saw so much joy and sadness and so many miracles and also so crime and death, and on this particular occasion there was a threat of real violence (which was not uncommon).
We had a female youth worker managing the centre that day and she had to ask one of the young boys to leave. I don’t remember what the boy had done wrong, and I don’t think it was all that serious as he was only banned for the day, but the problem was that his father found out, and his dad was a local thug who I didn’t know well but who I did know had some bad connections in what was then a bad neighbourhood.
The dad stood for a while out on the street in front of our Youth Centre, loudly threatening our youth worker and all the kids who were with her, and saying that he was going to return in a little while with some of his mates and they were going to teach us all a lesson. I asked our youth worker to call the police and explain what was going on, which she did, and meanwhile I got all the kids (I think there were between 20 and 30 of them) inside and shut the door where they played pool.
Half an hour later the father hadn’t returned, which was god, but the police hadn’t shown up either, so things were still tense. Then one of the Samoan boys got on his phone, and a few minutes later came over and told me not to sweat. Within ten minutes a series of small cars showed up. Perhaps the cars weren’t really that small, but what I remember is that the size of the Islander boys who emptied themselves out of the cars looked like they could not have possibly fitted inside of them.
Within about 10 minutes we had a group of enormous young Islander men – at least a dozen of them, all milling about in front of our Youth Centre, like a football team in search of a playing field. Most of them were Christians too, as it turned out, and one of them had a guitar, and it didn’t take long before they were singing choruses together on the street. I still have a photo of this that I treasure.
The father and his gang never showed (or it they did, they didn’t make themselves obvious) and neither did the police. I enquired down at the Local Area Command the following day why the police hadn’t responded and was told that they had showed up but couldn’t see a problem. In other words, they saw a dozen or so enormous Islander men on the street and decided to keep driving. All’s well it ends well.
The second incident that stands out in my memory regarded one of the people our church put up in one of our flats. Years ago, before development work was done, we had two small flats alongside the rectory, and I had another room at the back of the rectory that was referred to as ‘the rehab room’, and we had different people stay in those flats and in that room over the years, and it was a real gift to be able to offer that service to so many in need, but in some cases it got us into real trouble too.
I don’t want to identify the person who caused us the most trouble as a resident in one of those flats but suffice it to say that we had to get the police involved on a number of occasions, due to criminal activity on the part of our guests, and this normally resulted in the guest moving on. On one occasion though we found we were dealing with someone who had experience in knowing how not to get evicted from places where they wanted to say, and this person caused us a lot of grief.
In the middle of this dilemma I received a late-night visit from Ray Hawkins, who was one of the most colourful characters I’ve ever known and who was, amongst other things, one of Australia’s greatest Elvis impersonators.
I knew Ray through Morna Molesworth, who some will remember as a beloved member of this parish and who sadly did a lengthy prison term during her years with us here as well, and I only mention that to indicate that she herself had some very colourful connections in her life, and Ray was, I suspect, the most colourful of all!
Ray showed up at about midnight and invited himself in. I offered him a drink and we had a quiet beer and talked trivia for a while, and then Ray asked me whether he could bring his mate in. I said, “You’ve got a friend waiting in the car!?” It was mid-winter at the time. Ray said, “Oh, he’s OK, but can I bring him in?” I said, “of course!”
Moments later Ray reappeared at the door with a guy who had the soma-type of a gorilla – short, with enormous trunk and arms – who was looking at the ground, and muttering, and it was immediately obvious that this guy had a mental illness.
Ray said, “Dave, this is Nick. Nick is a debt-collector. He’s a very good debt-collector. Nick has come to have a word to that person you have living in your church flat next door that you’re trying to get rid of”.
I had no idea what to do, except to offer both Nick and Ray another drink. Meanwhile, Ange called me into the kitchen and told me in no uncertain terms that, in her opinion, I should not utilize the services of Nick, the debt-collector.
I eventually returned to the lounge room where both men were enjoying their drinks – Ray quietly humming Elvis tunes and Nick looking at the ground, chuckling to himself. I said to Ray, “brother, I really appreciate you trying to help us but I’ve got the police involved and I’ve got other government departments involved, and I really think we’ve got this one covered.”
Ray paused for a while, then looked back at me and said, “I suppose a clean broom sweeps best, doesn’t it, Dave?” I said, “Yeah, Ray – a clean broom, a clean broom”
Ray then put Nick back on his leash and went home. Ray died shortly after that night in mysterious circumstances, but I can only remember him as a lovely man at heart and one who, in his own way, did his best to serve Christ’s church.
Now, I know I’m already well over the time allowed for the regular sermon, but what are you going to do – fire me? I want to share one more memory.
In truth, the most vivid memory I have of the last thirty years here in Dulwich Hill, and the most wonderful memory is of our church barbeques in the early 90’s.
It wasn’t really the food and drink I remember, of course, though I do recall once making the mistake of supplying free beer (at my own expense) at one of those barbeques, and at the following Parish Council meeting it was ruled that I should not do that again. We were a rough lot, in some ways, but those people were the greatest group of human beings I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.
I can still see their faces – not only when I think of our barbeques. of course, but when I look out at the church pews on a Sunday morning.
I can still see them sitting there – Bob and Glen Thomas, Rashed and Margaret Saleeb, Marge Yarham (who used to ring me up late at night sometimes after she’d had too much to drink and tell me how much she loved me), Jean George, Madge Aspinall, Inis Dalgarno, Jan’s mum, Theresa, and, of course, Richard Smith, who used to play the organ for us, often with my darling Veronica sitting at his side and helping him with the music sheets, back when she was still a toddler. Veronica is in her 30’s now, but it still all seems like yesterday.
Then there were our Sri Lankan friends – Kumar, Heddy, and her husband Nihal, who died of pneumonia while still in his thirties, and I remember sitting with him all night in the hospital as he died, and then being in hospital myself the following week with the same illness.
There were Bill and Ena Pattison, dear John Thurling, Alf Davies, Ruth Paddle, Elvie Boehme, and all the old girls we used to bring up by car to the Youth Centre every Friday morning for what was colloquially referred to as the ‘stitch and bitch’ session.
I mention those names but I can see other faces in my memory whose names I can no longer remember, whether by virtue of my own advancing age or as a result of the number of hits I’ve taken to the head, I do not know.
So often I so wish I could go back there. Those great souls were my mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and I loved them all. I still sense their presence with me – a part of that great cloud of witnesses who stand with us in worship in this place. I’ve sensed them celebrating the Eucharist here with me every week!
So often I wish I could go back, but we can’t go back. “The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on” as the great Persian mystic, Omar Khayyam, wrote a thousand years ago, and we must move on too – arms outstretched, being led to places where we do not want to go – because that’s where Jesus needs us to go.
We don’t know what the future holds. It’s hard enough coming to terms with our regrets over the past without having to deal with our fears for the unknown future, Even so, we look forward together to the day when all the saints will from their labors rest, and when we, together with all those who’ve gone before us, cast our crowns before Him, lost in wonder, love and praise. Until that great day comes though, the Lord only requires of us that we answer Him one simple question: “do you love me?”
First preached by Father Dave Smith at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill, on Sunday the 19th of April 2020.
I know many of you have already seen this gift I received from my friend, Luke Cornish. It’s an image of a crucifixion, but not of the crucifixion of Jesus, of course. You don’t need to look too closely to see that it’s the crucifixion of Julian Assange.
I probably should have put it in a frame by now as I do treasure, but Luke is a graffiti artist, known (amongst other things) for doing graffiti art in the streets of Aleppo, shortly after its liberation by the Syrian Arab Army (with images of Dora the Explorer emblazoned across the walls of burnt out buildings) and then there was his amazing depiction of the head of Khaled al-Asaad that he spray-painted on to a metal door inside the Roman Amphitheater in Palmyra, shortly after Khaled al-Asaad was beheaded there by ISIS, and shortly before ISIS retook the area and blew up the amphitheater.
Luke has also done some more light-hearted works too, of course, including the depiction he did of me on the wall of the MLC building in Martin Place. Even so, his artworks always make a serious point, and the point he is making here is indeed a serious one.
Our brother, Julian, is indeed being crucified (in a very real sense) as we speak. While other prisoners (even those convicted of quite serious crimes) are being paroled at the moment and having their trials delayed, the prosecution in Julian’s extradition hearing is pushing ahead full-steam, and from what I hear from Julian’s father, the treatment Julian is receiving is simply sub-human.
Julian is locked in some sort of plastic box even while appearing in the courtroom, unable to communicate with his legal team. It’s as if he’s some super-villain with special powers, such that if they let him out of the box he may use those powers to melt the judge or put a death choke on the prosecuting attorney.
And why are they pushing ahead with the extradition hearing so relentlessly now while so many others cases are being rescheduled for later dates? The answer, of course, is because they know they can get away with it now – that nobody will mobilize to protest at the moment because nobody is allowed to mobilize.
And even if we could mobilize, who would be interested right now? There is only one item in the news at the moment and only one thing on everybody’s mind. It’s like when you have a toothache – you think about your tooth and you think about a dentist and there’s not much room left to think about anything else. Pain and fear have a way of making us look in on ourselves and narrow our horizons. Julian who?
And that’s what the cross was all about! I don’t mean that’s what the cross meant for the early church, but the Christians weren’t the ones who invented the cross, and they weren’t the first to use it as an icon either. Long before the cross became a symbol of faith for the Christ’s followers, it was a symbol of imperial power for Rome.
People look at Luke’s artwork and say he’s being blasphemous, as if Jesus of Nazareth were the only person ever to die on a cross. On the contrary, the Romans killed hundreds of thousands of people this way – anybody who stood up to them.
The cross was not only an efficient way of torturing someone to death. It was a way of making a public statement – ‘this is what will happen to you if you stand up against us.’ People would die slowly and painfully on their crosses, in full view of the public so that all might be suitably admonished.
The cross was Rome’s way of declaring to the world that ‘we are all-powerful’ and ‘you are nothing. We hold the power over life and death. Who are you to dare to question us?’
After the failed revolt of the slaves, led by Spartacus, in 73 BC, the Roman Empire crucified 6,000 slaves and put their tortured bodies on public display over a two-hundred kilometer stretch of the Via Apia.
They didn’t post these crosses in some remote field of execution, tastefully out of the sight of civilised society. They lined the highway with the tortured and dying bodies of those who raised their hands against the Empire so that everybody would see. – so that everybody would get the message!
Of course, that was a long time ago, I hear you say, and thankfully we don’t live in Ancient Rome anymore – let alone in occupied Judea, where Jesus spent His earthly life. Life is a lot easier now than it was then. Back then the Romans could stop you meeting for worship on the Sabbath if they chose to, and indeed, you couldn’t really even leave your house without risking being interrogated by an armed member of the occupying forces, asking you where you were going and what business you had being out of doors!
Perhaps things haven’t changed that much? Indeed, when you look about the world, Greece seems to have collapsed, Rome is in deep trouble, and everyone’s worried about what the Persians are up to (in Iran). Welcome back to Biblical times!
Ok, I am exaggerating in order to make the point, but I do think that our current crisis in the midst of this virus pandemic should at least give us one clear insight into the mindset and culture of Jesus’ contemporaries in first-century Judea.
We are now in a society where there is really only one news item and one thing on everybody’s minds. It governs our thoughts and our conversations and our decisions for the future and it governs our prayers. Next time you read the New Testament and find yourself asking, “why were all Jesus’ contemporaries so obsessed with political liberation from the Romans?”, remember what this feels like.
They weren’t free to worship. They weren’t walk the streets except under the ever-watchful eyes of the Roman military. Their entire lives were circumscribed from morning to night by Roman rule and Roman law, and the people of Judea hated it! No wonder when Jesus came along speaking of ‘Good news for the poor’ and of the ‘liberation of the oppressed’ His contemporaries could only see His good news in terms of the end of Imperial oppression.
What is amazing about the New Testament church is that it started to proclaim a message of liberation and hope, not after Rome had fallen but during that same period where Rome still had the power of life and death over them! And what is even more amazing, in some ways, is that Christ’s followers took as their symbol the cross – Rome’s own weapon of mass destruction, and the symbol of their Imperial power!
It seems almost perverse! Was it initially intended as a form of irony?
I remember when I was quite young, working with (what was then) the Sydney City Mission, and helping to staff the ‘Missionbeat’ van, where we would drive around the city, picking up homeless people and taking them to places of shelter.
One of the guys I was in regular contact with then who worked at the Salvation Army Men’s home used to have a fantastic tattoo of a rolling stone on his arm. He explained to me that, as a Christian, he didn’t think it right to focus on suffering, so he didn’t like the image of the cross. His focus was on resurrection and new life, and so the image of the rolling stone seemed far more spiritually appropriate to him.
He had a point! The question is, why hasn’t the church throughout history grasped that point? Why aren’t we all wearing images of rolling stones rather than crosses?
As I say, it could be the church’s sense of irony. Was the image of an empty cross (most especially) the church’s way of saying to Rome ‘is this the best you can do?’
I suspect that was part of the point – that the cross is itself an anti-imperialist parody. The Empire thinks it is all powerful, but it is not all-powerful. The principalities and powers did their worst to Jesus, and their worst was not bad enough!
This is indeed the central proclamation of the New Testament – that Jesus of Nazareth, whom the Empire nailed to a cross, came back! Rome’s weapon of mass destruction turned out to be not as destructive as it first appeared! If that was as terrible a torture and as terrifying a weapon that the Empire could come up with, perhaps there is nothing to fear! The cross can’t hurt you! Is that the message?
I don’t think that is exactly the message – that the cross can’t hurt you – as I think the Gospels go to great lengths to make clear that the cross did in fact hurt Jesus. It’s not as if Jesus sails through the experience of crucifixion unharmed. Jesus is tortured on the cross and it does kill him. It’s just that His story doesn’t end there!
Read through the Gospel of Mark. It’s been described as a crucifixion narrative with an extended introduction! There is no by-passing the sufferings of Jesus, and no way of sanitizing them either.
I was brought up Protestant, of course, and our religious artwork rarely features much blood when it comes to depictions of Jesus. Contrast that with the artworks on display at St Paul of the Cross and St Brigid’s – our two local Catholic parishes. There’s blood everywhere! Jesus bleeds. Mary is always likewise depicted with a bleeding heart. It’s hard to find someone who isn’t bleeding!
In truth, I think Catholic artwork actually captures the culture of the New Testament far better than our sanitized Protestant alternatives. Read the Gospel accounts. There’s blood everywhere. Look at the central sacrament Jesus left us with. It’s all about blood. And then look around our world.
You don’t only have to look at battlefields in far-flung countries. One of the disturbing statistics I read recently was that lockdown procedures in Italy have led to a 34% increase in levels of domestic violence. I haven’t seen comparable figures from the local scene, but I have been told that whatever figures are coming in, they are likely being massively underreported.
Think about it – if your abusive spouse never leaves the house, are you more or less likely to be able to report what is going on to the police?
I don’t mean to sound overly dramatic about all this, but our world is awash in a sea of blood. There’s violence in the home just as there’s violence on the battlefield. We struggle, mentally and emotionally, to come to terms with it all and we do our best to rise above it but sometimes it’s just too much. We want to fight the Good Fight and be good rebels for the cause of Christ, but the principalities and powers are strong and so often they threaten to overwhelm us.
I know that not everybody experiences the cross in this way. There are some people who, whether for reasons of privilege or good fortune, seem somehow to avoid the pain and the fatigue and the bloodshed. There may indeed be a lot of people like that, and God bless them, but my key point here is that Jesus wasn’t one of them!
Jesus didn’t just die on a cross. Jesus lived the cross, and those disciples who came after Jesus – they took up their crosses, just as He told them to (Matthew 16:24), and followed their master down that same dangerous and painful path.
This is why, I believe, the cross became the symbol of the faith of the early church. It wasn’t just the way Jesus died. It was something they lived, and lived together. Even so, the great thing about the cross, in the light of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, is that you realise that imperial power and human suffering don’t have the final word.
“If we suffer together, we shall reign together”, says the Apostle (2 Timothy 2:12). Those who endure the cross will ultimately experience the resurrection. When all seems dark and hope seems to have disappeared, know that Jesus has been there. Jesus has experienced that darkness. Jesus has suffered that darkness. Jesus is with us in that darkness, and ultimately, as He rises, so we will rise with Him!
Sisters and brother, the Good News of the Gospel is not simply that ‘He who was crucified has risen’. It is, I believe, even more importantly, that ‘He who is risen is the one who was crucified’.
Things are not good at the moment. I know that. We feel lonely, isolated, cut off. We miss our friends and our families. We miss our familiar lives. We yearn to find our way out of this dark tunnel and get back into the light. Perhaps this cross seems to be more than we can bear.
Don’t despair. Listen carefully and you will hear the sound of the stone being rolled back from the empty tomb. A new day is dawning. New life is on its way, for the one who was crucified is now risen – risen indeed – and this one who is now risen is indeed the one who was crucified!
Love’s redeeming work is done
Fought the fight, the battle won
Made like Him, like Him we rise
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!
(Charles Wesley)
First preached by Father Dave Smith, at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill on Sunday the 12th of April, 2020.
