Homily from the Parish Priest for Good Friday
Thank you so much for coming today, that is those of you joining us on the livestream – of whom I am sure there are very many – and thank you to those who have braved coming in to central London. And if you’re here for the first time in a while, whatever the reasons, we simply want to say welcome back. With of course no pressure. It may be you have been badly hurt by the Church and we want to give our apologies for that sincerely; and say we want to welcome you back. It may be the pandemic has awakened you a curiosity, a desire to go deeper, maybe you’re at a crossroads in life – we are certainly as society at a crossroads and this is causing many to think of what really matters.
And if you wandered in for the first time in a while you might have been anxious, wondering what you would find at a Good Friday service. Well, of course for COVID reasons to keep us all safe we have a shorter pared down service. We have less music than usual. We still can’t sing any hymns. But what we will see shortly, after we have prayed for the needs of the Church and the world, is the most important part of our service today. We unveil and display the cross. And here in our midst on this Good Friday in this most extraordinary year when we have been through it together as a society, as a global society, the cross is what we all come here to encounter today. And I wonder if the cross in our midst may just speak to us more powerfully than ever this Good Friday. It does me. We won’t be able to come forward and take time to kiss the cross. We simply bow from our places in church or at home but we do so together, as a community, as a community of human beings who globally have somehow experienced something in this past year of that cross.
In the midst of what for many has been, still is perhaps, a barren wasteland when our lives has been churned up, we just have this man, this innocent man wrongly accused, this man standing up for the truth amid fake news, amid the dark side of religion too and how it can be used to manipulate society, amid the sheer lottery of a world ravaged by disease and violence where the poor and the good die young and the rich flourish, at least according to a false gospel of status and power. Wherever you have been in this last year, wherever you are – lost loved ones, experiencing the frailty of sickness ourselves physical, mental, emotional, or affected by that of others, lost jobs, struggling to keep your family financially, exams disrupted, lives disrupted, wherever you’ve been, the cross in our midst today means this to the Christian. We walk together in the light of our faith in the victory over evil and suffering and death. And the Church wants to say we want to walk alongside you, we want to walk together, aware of the frailty of all of us in the Church, hierarchy, religious professionals, believing and doubting, who all gaze on the cross today and see something of the mystery of our lives. And because our faith teaches us that this most final humiliating of deaths is not the end we can hope. We know still we will emerge stronger still as we have, like St Paul, seen our weakness is our strength, as it teaches us how to be human.
Sometimes in the Church too we’ve skewed the simple message of Jesus Christ dying for us all. We’ve said wrongly that you must believe and behave before you belong – and we want today to say the opposite: we want to say welcome, to say you belong – and come and see again whom we believe in and how we try to live according to his teaching. We want to say, regardless of what you believe, and who you are – whether you may feel excluded because, for eg, of a relationship, sexual orientation, or being treated badly by the Church, welcome back – we need you. We are Church together, with all the wounds of Christ, open wounds reaching out to say welcome. And we have a special programme to help you reconnect called Landings – details are on the cards in the pews and at the back of the church. And, more likely perhaps, if you know someone who’s thinking of coming back, please do nudge them, give them a prayer card, and tell them we are missing them and want to say welcome and answer any questions they might have and listen to their stories of what drove them away.
The cross is a symbol of hope for all peoples, inviting us to work hard for all that Jesus died for in our world: for a more just world where the gap between rich and poor, growing ever wider in our society, is addressed seriously as an urgent concern for a country we claim has Christian roots. The cross impels us to work for true reconciliation between peoples, especially between different religions at a time when religious identity is increasingly hijacked to support extremist political agendas. The cross is a real sign of welcome, of solidarity, inviting us as the Christian community who worship this Jesus to walk alongside especially those on the peripheries, those who are suffering most.
Let us watch with him, worship him, and hear his call to join ourselves with he who is our true hope, so we might bring something of our faith in this mystery to others who may be yearning in what Pope Francis calls not so much an era of change but a change of era to rediscover faith, re-engage with our Church, encounter anew the God who in simplicity, in frailty, in his death, offers us the fullness of life now and for all time.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ