Thought for the Week - 2nd April 2023

Dear Friends, 

I’ve just finished reading the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell’s book for Lent and Holy Week entitled Godforsaken, The Cross – the Greatest Hope of All. It focuses on Jesus’ cry of dereliction from the cross, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mark 15:34), and which are the last words of Jesus in Mark’s gospel. They are a direct quote from Psalm 22, a psalm of David, which has been described as a prayer that carries us from great suffering to great joy, and that despite the apparent rejection of his friends and God, David believed that God would lead him out of despair, and in that sense Psalm 22 is a psalm of hope. That hope today we find in the person of Jesus Christ and the events which we will remember this Holy Week, particularly his passion and death. The Biblical account of Jesus praying in Gethsemane, before Pilate, his crucifixion and being laid in the tomb are known as his passion. The dictionary defines passion as a ‘strong and barely controllable emotion’; the root of the English word passion comes from the Latin pati, which means ‘to suffer’; and the Greek word for suffer is pascho which carries a sense of ‘enduring’. Cottrell says, ‘the story of the cross is the story of God’s passion and love for us; the love that God demonstrates in the life, death and resurrection of his Son. The Christian faith is God’s love song’. On Good Friday this year we will sing Samuel Crossman’s hymn, ‘My song is love unknown’, which ends with these words: ‘Here might I stay and sing, no story so divine; never was love, dear King! Never was grief like thine. This is my friend in whose glad praise I all my days could gladly spend’.    

Grace and peace,

Neil

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