Sermon

22nd March 26

I remember my first Good Friday in prison for two reasons.  Firstly, the organist had chosen the hymn “My song is love unknown” including the lines “a murderer they save, the Prince of Life they slay”.  I saw the expressions on the faces of a couple of our lifers, and banned that hymn in the prison chapel for the rest of my time there.

The second reason was that, of all weekends to take off, the Roman Catholic Chaplain had gone back to Ireland for a few days.  As a result, I took the only services in Chapel on both Good Friday and Easter Day, bringing together Catholic, Anglican and Free Church inmates.  There were 120 women in the prison that weekend.  There was free association on both mornings, in other words the women weren’t banged up in their cells if they didn’t come to Chapel.  Yet there were 48 in Chapel for the Good Friday Liturgy, and the same number, 48, there on Easter morning.

Prisoners understand what Good Friday is about.  They know that they are not sinless: indeed, the system is there to continuously remind them of the fact!  They identify with Jesus going through the process of arrest, trial, and punishment.  And, although we had got rid of the death penalty by then, there was still one woman with us that weekend in 1983 who had been sentenced to death. But that had been back in 1952 and her sentence had been commuted by the Royal prerogative of mercy (although she had been in Holloway three years later when Ruth Ellis was hanged).  Prisoners certainly know what Good Friday is about!

I often wonder why the attendance of so many Church of England folk at services in Holy Week is so appallingly low.  Is it because they only go to Church on Sundays? (although most manage Christmas, even if it falls midweek!).  It is because they feel ashamed about the suffering and humiliated Jesus, and only want the nice bits of the story?  Yet the events that we commemorate on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, occupy a substantial portion of each of the Gospels.  

I’ve previously quoted the Priest who got up in the pulpit on Easter morning and said: “if you’ve kept a good Lent, you will know what today is about.  If you haven’t, there is nothing I can say to help!”.  I think that applies as much, perhaps even more so, to the services of Holy Week, and would encourage you to join us for them.

Finally, the bonus for attending any of our services between now and Easter morning: there will be no sermons.  For, with scripture at its most powerful, and liturgy at its most dramatic, there is nothing that anyone, apart perhaps from the most eloquent preacher, could usefully add.

Amen