SERMON FOR GOOD FRIDAY, 2011

The events we celebrate through Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, bear all the hallmarks of a Mystery Drama.  They mark the dying and resurrection of the God-Man.  A number of scholars see in them a version of the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries that was developed by Hellenised Jews in Palestine around 2000 years ago.  The founders of the Liberal Catholic Church recognised this and wanted this church to be one in which the Mysteries, mostly forgotten by other Christian churches in modern times, are remembered and promulgated.

This means that Gospel events are not necessarily meant to be taken literally.  Rather they hide a deeper and mystical truth.  Bishop Leadbeater writes (in the Inner Side of Christian Festivals, 2nd edition, 1973,  p140) that “Our attitude toward the events which these days are supposed to commemorate is so different from that of other Churches that the form of service which they prescribe is entirely unsuited for us.”

It is because the Liberal Catholic understanding is so different that I go so far as to say I wouldn’t be a Christian at all were it not for the LCC – I certainly cannot subscribe to many of the superficialities that are preached from other pulpits.

The normal understanding is that “Jesus died for our sins,” a doctrine known at The Atonement which was once described to me by a rather conservative Liberal Catholic as “unlovely,” not to say unconvincing.  After outlining the standard version of the Atonement, Bishop Charles Wicks wrote (in the Liberal Catholic Church and Some Facets of its Doctrine, 1977, p82): “It is a conception with which we in this church are unable to agree.”  He further adds: “A literal reading of these writings materialises a wonderfully mystical conception of ... man in his pilgrimage on this planet...”

Well-loved LC priest, Geoffrey Hodson, in The Christ Life from Nativity to Ascension (1975, p4) reminds us of the understanding expressed by a number of early teachers and philosophers.  For example, third century Church Father, Origen, says, referring to the Genesis creation myth;
“What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second and third days in which the evening is named and the morning, were without sun, moon and stars, and the first day without a heaven?  What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise, in Eden, like a husbandman ...?  I believe that every man must hold these things for images, under which the hidden sense lies concealed.”

And again, twelfth century Jewish theologian, Moses Maimonides, wrote:
Every time that you find in our books a tale the reality of which seems impossible, a story which is repugnant to both reason and common sense, then be sure that the tale contains a profound allegory veiling a deeper mysterious truth; and the greater the absurdity of the letter, the deeper the wisdom of the spirit.”

Hodson (in The Hidden Wisdom of the Holy Bible) points out some of the difficulties created by a literal reading of the Gospels which indicate that we must seek a deeper meaning.  One of these is that the events of the night before the crucifixion of Jesus are too numerous to have occurred within the prescribed time.  Traditional minded scholars, of course, endeavour to find all sorts of rationalisations to explain these things – such as the Bible writers getting their calendars confused etc (but if the Bible is “the word of God” presumably God got his calendars muddled too).  But the historicity of these and other tales shouldn’t worry Liberal Catholics one iota.

So what meaning do we ascribe to the Good Friday event?

We can discern at least two meanings apart from the literal, which we can think of as the Cosmic and the Personal.  The Cosmic is referred to in the famous Prologue to St John’s Gospel.  The Divine Life, the Logos, descends into matter of ever increasing density until, in the words of Robert Browning, “...wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in.”  As Geoffrey Hodson says: “The Divine Life metaphorically dies on the cross of matter.”  He adds, “eventually this Divine Life embarks upon a journey of return to its spiritual Source.”

At another level, Hodson says, “The Christ Drama is also enacted in the soul of man, for every individual passes through the experiences recounted in the Gospels.”  I see the Crucifixion story as recounting the final death of” the little ego” in us humans.  The cross symbol, a very ancient one long pre-dating Christianity, represents the “the crossing out of the ‘I’.”  Again, whether Jesus was crucified on a “tree” or on a wooden ‘T’ or whatever is hardly relevant.  It’s the cross symbol and its meaning that’s so important.

This story of involution and evolution – going out and return – is taught by Jesus himself in the lovely Parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:11).  The son went out and “wasted his substance with riotous living.”  He descended to rock bottom (literally into the mineral kingdom) and “he began to be in great want.”  He began to experience a great spiritual hunger.  He yearned for something he had lost, as so many people today yearn, while not knowing what that “something” is.  His hunger was such that, metaphorically again, “he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.”  At last, his soul re-awakened (”He came to himself”) and he said “I will arise and go to my father.”  And his father’s joy new no bounds: “For this my son was dead and is alive again.”

So, summing up the meanings of the Easter story, John gives us the Cosmic meaning, St Luke the Personal.  Aren’t these understandings so much more inspiring than the sad and gloomy literal?  The Atonement is really about “At-one-ment,” becoming one with the divine Self within.  We can all crucify the ego.  In the spiritual pilgrimage of each and every one of us, the Crucifixion is one of the great Landmarks and surely an occasion for joy and excitement as we near the end of our spiritual exile.  We are all One with the Divine Life and we will indeed rise again to the right hand of the Father at the last Landmark, symbolised by the Ascension.

God bless you all this Eastertide.
Fr Brian Harding, Vicar