Sermon 2

But I’m not a wise preacher! St Paul gives us glimpses of what the cross might mean. Pictures, ideas, things ordinary human beings can hold on to to begin to understand the power of the cross. . Models for understanding.

For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

And this his is the starting place: three points in one sentence – we were weak, it was the right time and Christ died for the ungodly. 

First of all we were weak…. If we are every going to understand the power of the cross and meaning of Christianity then we have to know that we need help. Just as the addict needs to admit the addiction, just as there can be no cure without a diagnosis, we need to know that we need God if we are ever going to understand what he has done for us and how he is helping us. 

If you think that you’re doing all right, that your life is not really all that bad, that you can look after yourself and that you have everything you want. If you think that you never get things wrong, that you don’t say things you ought not to say or do things that you ought not to do, and that you never fail to do what is right. If you’re not afraid of growing old, or getting sick, or of dying and of what comes after – and if you think that you really don’t need God at all, then the cross will not make sense. Why would someone die to give you something you don’t need? Foolishness!

But if you know that you do not live up to being the sort of person you really want to be in your heart, if you know that you can be selfish, proud, stubborn and that you can make other people’s lives a misery – If you know that one day you will meet your maker and have to give an account of the gifts he has given you – the talents you have buried in the ground, the blessings you have squandered, - if you know that you are weak – then you may begin to see why the cross can save you.

The cross is the Christian answer – but we have to know that there is a question to ask!


In the right time …. A gentle reminder that God’s ways are not our ways and that the power of the cross stands for all time and for all people – we may want God to give us personal answers – but this is the answer – given at the right time. There is no other answer needed. 

Christ died for the ungodly …..how strong is that phrase – it is the Gospel in four Greek words. It doesn’t explain to us how one person dying can help other people - that will come later - but it does tell us that this is more than just a death – it is for us – above all it is for the ungodly. Christ died for those who do not know that they need him!

And so, having made those three points St Paul continues to say the one most important thing which can ever be said about the cross God proves his love for us. Whatever else we say about the cross, first and foremost it is always about God’s love for us. God so loved the world that he sent his only son…. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” What ever other image we use to understand the cross it is first of all about the love of God for us. 

So let’s have St Paul’s three images:
We have been justified by his blood. 
We have been saved through him from the wrath.
While we were enemies, we have been reconciled to God

First we have been justified by his blood. - this is the language of sacrifice, and it is the language of blood sacrifice at that. - nowadays this image doesn’t speak to us very clearly because we don’t sacrifice animals and we’d be horrified if the vicar slit a goat’s throat in the churchyard. But this image did speak very clearly to a Jewish audience and it also spoke very clearly to a Greek audience, and of course it still speaks clearly to Muslim and Hindu audiences who still have forms of ritual sacrifice. People sacrificed animals – they sacrificed them so that they could be forgiven; they sacrificed them so that they could be set free from obligations, and they sacrificed them to keep the gods happy! So somehow the death of Jesus is a sacrifice – it will set us free from sins, it will set us free from obligations and it will help us to please God. 

But three things to remember about the cross as sacrifice: 
First: as we have already heard - The cross is always about God’s love for us.
Secondly - God is not angry and he does not need a sacrifice – God’s doesn’t actually need anything and he’s already taught us that “the sacrifice of God is a broken spirit and a contrite heart” - the Father in the story of the Prodigal Son needed no sacrifice before he would accept the Son back – the fatted calf was for the party and belonged to the Father anyway. 
And thirdly – Jesus and the Father are one – “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me” this is God sacrificing himself for us. – it is – as always - a sign of God’s love for us!

So instead of the blood of Jesus being the bloody sacrifice of an innocent human being to placate an angry God, I like to think of it as the bloody sacrifice of an innocent God to sort out us angry human beings: you know, we are the ones who want blood! This is the sacrifice of God for us,- it sort of turns upside down the old notions of sacrifice doesn’t it. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. 


Then St Paul goes on to his second model for the cross: we will be saved through him from the wrath. – I’m afraid most Bible translations put in wrath of God – but the Greek text really does only say “wrath”. But what is the wrath? St John the Baptist talks about the wrath that is to come. 
Jesus talks about the distress and wrath of the end of the world – St Paul often talks about the wrath of God but it is nearly always linked to the day of judgement when the secret thoughts of many will be laid bare. 

There is both a danger and a truth in the image of God’s wrath. The danger is forgetting the very first rule - that God is love, and that the cross is first and foremost about God’s love for us. God is never ever an angry monster who needs to be placated. God is always the loving father who loves us. 

But that doesn’t mean that we do not need to be saved! Do we think that God doesn’t care when we destroy his creation? Do we think God doesn’t care when we attack one another and think only of ourselves? Not one sparrow will fall to the ground apart from your heavenly Father 
On judgement Day, when we will understand the full weight of every misdeed we have done and of every good deed we have failed to do, do you think it will be a light thing to bear? The way we misuse the world and one another pierces God’s heart - in the cross we are saved from this wrath which will come to us all, because we have already seen and understood the price of forgiveness.

Finally “while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God” 
It is so sad. So many people read this beautiful scripture the wrong way round. They read it as if it is God who needs to be reconciled to us! They imagine that God has turned his face away from us, that he has gone off in some sort of eternal grump because of what we have done, and so we have to bribe him back so that he will look at us again … a lot of atonement theories have this as their understanding – trying to persuade an angry God to come back to us …. That is not the Good News! The Good News is exactly the other way round! This is God, who has never turned his face away from us, God who longs for our return, as the Father of the Prodigal Son longs for the son to return to his senses. This is the Father who desires that everyone is saved and come to a knowledge of God. However many times St Paul spells it out to us in the right order : God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself - Be reconciled… Even so, so many people have preferred it the other way round making it read – God was in Christ reconciling himself to the world! Instead. If anyone needs to be bribed back to reconciliation it is us, we are the ones who have gone astray – God has bought us – he has paid the price - he has bribed us with a ransom of love. 

For we are the ones who have turned away from God. We are the ones who are in the eternal grump - we are the ones who have that age old human failing that when we know that we have done something wrong, we want to blame the very person we have wronged, and we turn our face away from them and avoid them. 

And so, while we were enemies – not just sinners, but enemies – actively turning ourselves away from God – God came down to bring us home, to reconcile us. God went the extra mile, - but we have behaved like spoilt children who beat their parents in a tantrum because they have done something wrong and are being told off – and God has let us beat him until we have no more beating left in us and all we can do is break down and cry in the arms of our Father. 

Sermon 3

In this third sermon there are two more things to say about the cross: They are very short and very simple and very profound. The first is that in Christ we have nailed God to the cross and the second is that God has triumphed. 

First, we have nailed God to the cross. 
What greater sin can there be than killing God? Can you imagine anything worse? – however horrible, cruel and wicked our sins are against one another, even the destruction of the world itself – still it cannot be as bad as killing God – the creator and life giver. And yet that is what we have done. We have taken Jesus – in whom the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily and we have mocked him, whipped him, tortured him and killed him. We have killed God …. And God has said “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” - even when we kill God, God forgives us. There is now no sin in heaven, no sin on earth, no sin under the earth which cannot be forgiven. There is nothing we have against us, no written accusation however true and lurid and wicked and dreadful it might be, which cannot be nailed to the cross for nothing can be worse than killing God. 

I do not know what the sin of blaspheming against the Holy Spirit is - the sin of which Jesus said “Whoever speaks a word against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven, neither in this world neither in the world to come” I think it can only be the sin of not accepting forgiveness – for if we refuse to accept that we are forgiven then we are trapped – and if we refuse to let the Holy Spirit heal us, then even God cannot release us from our prison.

And the second point : God has triumphed. He has disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it. 

What does this mean? The Orthodox sing a hymn – and we will sing it on Saturday night – 
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the grave restoring life … 

For “death is swallowed up in victory” “ Our Saviour Jesus Christ has abolished death” “I was dead, and see I am alive, and I have the keys of death” “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” 

Indeed the last enemy to be destroyed is death…. but so many of us still live in the grip of it. Death is seen by so many as the final tragedy, the loss of everything, it is the thing we most fear, the worst thing that could happen to us - we fear death for ourselves and we fear death for our loved ones. … it is the reason why many people give up on God – how could God let him or her die? They ask..

What, I wonder, could God tell you to convince you otherwise? What could God ever say so that you would not be afraid, so that you would know that death is not the enemy? How could he persuade our unbelieving minds that death is not an end, but a birth? 

Perhaps he could send his prophets to tell us and write it into his Scriptures ? … His prophet Isaiah told us that God will swallow up death for ever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces. But did people believe him ? And so some four hundred years later his prophet Daniel told us that Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake .. … But did people believe him? Not really… Death still had it’s grip over us.

So perhaps God could send his Son, his only son, to tell us that God is the God of Abraham, and of Isaac and of Jacob, and that God is the God of the living and not of the dead, and perhaps he could say “I am the resurrection and the Life, Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live” perhaps then people would believe him….. or perhaps we still wouldn’t. Perhaps his Son could raise people from the dead to prove the point, perhaps then they would know that death is not the end? But perhaps people would not even believe that, even if they saw it with their own eyes. What then could God do to break this power which the fear of death has over us? 

And so perhaps God himself could die and rise again – to show us not to be afraid, to show us that death is not the end – however gruesome, however painful it looks. God could show us that God is the God of the living and the dead, - perhaps then we would believe. 

If God himself as a human being could be seen to fight with death, to go through death, to die fully and truly and really, and then be seen to rise victoriously, then perhaps, just perhaps, people would be set free from this final fear and death would be conquered… …. And so that is what he did.

The Rev'd Paul Kennington