Occasionally someone comments on the gold cross I wear on the lapel of my jacket (as does Fr Ossie). It is the badge of a society of priests to which Fr Ossie and I both belong, the Society of the Holy Cross, often referred at as SSC from its Latin name, Societas Sanctae Crucis. The cross is of course the badge of all Christians, the most potent emblem of our faith. This particular version has on it the words In hoc signo vinces - ‘In this sign conquer’. The cross, a particularly brutal means of execution used by the Romans, would be a strange sign to adopt where it not for one man who was put to death on a cross and transformed it from a sign of shame to a sign of love and hope. Even more astounding, this sign of death was transformed into a sign of victory over death. That man, Jesus, died on the cross to demonstrate God’s love for us, love which stopped at nothing in order to restore the relationship between God and humanity which had been damaged by sin. The cross was no pointless act of self-sacrifice or deluded heroics but a loving act which achieved something extraordinary. We talk of Jesus paying the price for our sins, but we should not think of God as a blood-thirsty tyrant demanding an arbitrary punishment - instead the cross reveals God to be a loving Father who out of his infinite mercy takes on himself the consequences of his children’s sin. The cross only makes sense at all because the man who was nailed to the cross was - and is - both fully human and fully God, acting in perfect harmony with the Father and the Holy Spirit to bring about our salvation. If the cross had been the end of the story, it would have shown us that God was loving but ultimately powerless. Instead, by rising from the dead on the first Easter day, Jesus demonstrated that death no longer had the power to held mankind in its grasp. His resurrection was the most significant moment in the history of creation, for it opened up the possibility of eternal life, no longer subject to death and decay, a new life that all of us are invited to share.

Each year the liturgies of Holy Week take us through the dramatic events of the last supper, the arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, the trials in the houses of the High Priest and Pontius Pilate, and the hill of Calvary, and only then to the empty tomb of Easter Day and the encounters with the Risen Christ. Easter Day is the most wonderful day of the year, the queen of festivals, marking the beginning of a new order in which mankind has been set free from sin and death - but we can only get there via the cross, with its intense suffering, and the highly significant events leading up to it. Just as the cross makes no sense without the resurrection, without the cross there can be no resurrection; without Good Friday there can be no Easter Day. For in order to rise from the dead, our Lord had to experience a very real death. In order to embrace those furthest from his Father, the Son had to descend to the very depths of hell and share in their sense of abandonment.

The cross has become such a commonplace symbol, worn by so many simply as a piece of jewellery without any regard to what it means (you may have heard the story about the person who goes into a jewellers looking for a cross and is asked if they want one with the little man on it!), that it is easy to overlook how it represents a complete reversal of many human values. St Paul reminded the church in Corinth that the cross was a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. The faith which the cross stands for is deeply counter-cultural. It was so in the time of the earliest Christians, and it is today - and we need to recognise this. Our society as a whole has no need or place for God, still less for a God who takes sin seriously (perhaps because our society has no real concept of sin). The idea that we need to be saved or redeemed goes against the notion of human progress and self-suficiency. Notions of self-sacrifice, self-giving and valuing those who appear weak go against the grain in a society in which places so much store by wealth and influence. But none of this is really new. The very first Christians were persecuted and died for their faith - and this is one of the most compelling counter-arguments to those who allege the resurrection was all a con. As individual Christians and as a church we must avoid the twin temptations of presenting ourselves as victims in a hostile society and trying to conform ourselves to society in order to blend in - we must stand up and teach the world what the kingdom of heaven has to offer, far beyond anything it can achieve by itself. For a society which has no place for God, or for salvation, inevitably has a very a limited hope for the future and consequently an impoverished view of humanity. The resurrection of Christ gives us hope for something much greater and we are compelled to share this vision of life transformed by the cross. Our boast is not of wealth or success by of the salvation Christ was won for us.

We should glory in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for he is our life, our salvation and our hope! By him we are saved and made free! For Christ is truly risen, Alleluia!

All are welcome to join us in celebrating the great events of Holy Week and Easter. More information about these services is available on this website.