The Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev Dr Steven Croft, has shared his Easter message.
All across the world, women and men on every continent are walking through the events of Holy Week and Easter. We enter into the final days of Jesus of Nazareth in song and drama, in liturgy, in silence.
Saturday evening ITV’s Big Night of Musicals featured a remarkable premiere: a powerful performance of the song Gethsemane from Jesus Christ Superstar by Sam Ryder, who will play the part of Jesus in the West End revival of the show this summer.
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Each of the gospel writers explores the detail of the final days of Jesus life: the entry to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday; the Last Supper; Gethsemane; the arrest of Jesus; Peter’s denial; the trial before Pilate.
On Good Friday we listen to the crowds call out to crucify him; to mocking of the soldiers; to the place of the skull. If you have forgotten the power of the story, find a bible and read the final chapters of the gospels again.
All of life is here. The whole world is present represented by the Romans and the priests and scribes, by Simon of Cyrene, by the crowds, the soldiers.
The darkness of the human heart is here. Politics and scheming. Trickery, power plays and deception. The self interest, emptiness and cruelty of Pilate. The envy of the crowds. The savage mockery of the soldiers as they strip him and spit on him.
And the story explores the reality of salvation. Christ, who has done no wrong, dies in place of a murderer as Christ dies in the place of each of us.
Simon shoulders the cross for Jesus, as each of us is called to share Christ’s suffering. The veil of the temple is torn in two, the stone wall which separates the Holy of Holies from the outer courts.
The centurion in Mark’s gospel is is witness to everything. The mighty confession of the centurion, the high point of the story and perhaps of the gospel itself. The response each of us is invited to echo in our hearts in faith and wonder. Truly this man was the Son of God.
This Easter as every year the attention of the world is focused still on empty politics, on envy and violence, on power plays, on needless cruelty, on the clash of faiths and cultures, on the raging of the nations.
As we draw near and listen, we rediscover all of the agony and cruelty we see in the world around us in the the narrative of Jesus death.
But we are able to see beyond the vanity and violence to the person who stands at the centre of the story, who is largely silent, who by his goodness and his suffering offers his life for the sins of the whole world.
We find Jesus in this present darkness and we find the light shines still through death and resurrection on Easter Day. Joy bursts through our sorrow.
And we and all the world find in this moment immeasurable faith and hope and love to seek this salvation and this Saviour and to live lives of depth and meaning and holiness and truth.
We say again with the centurion, and with God’s people all across our broken world: truly this man is the Son of God.
