Seven words from the cross that challenge our politics
The Christ points to a new way of living as he dies, writes George Pitcher
It’s one of those stories that could start a sermon. It was the morning after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001 and we’d opened our church in south London in the morning for anyone who wanted to stop and pray on their way to work.
We had a board on which visitors could post sticky notes of their thoughts and prayers and I thought I’d make a start. So I wrote “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” and stuck it on the board. It fell off, so I stuck it on firmly again. And it fell of again. I tried a third time – and it fell off once more.
So I thought for a moment and crossed out a couple of words and wrote “Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.” This time, the note stuck fast to the board.
The prayer had become real. I had asked for forgiveness rather than demanded it for someone else. And it took the first words that Jesus utters from the cross into the world we inhabit now. In doing so, it brought the power of the cross into today, in a Victorian church in Herne Hill.
Rowan Williams has written that “the person who asks forgiveness has renounced the privilege of being right or safe” and that “the person who forgives has renounced the safety of being locked into the position of the offended victim.”
Forgiveness isn’t forgetting, it’s transformation. It rejects the violence of hate, not the justice of anger. So these breathtaking words from the cross are not simply within the capacity of the infinite love of Christ, but an injunction for our own behaviour in the way we choose to live. How we order our politics, if you like.
Political purpose
His other words from the cross can serve the same political purpose. “Today you will be with me in paradise,” he tells the penitent criminal crucified next to him. Not some future utopia, but right now, today. This is not an earthly, political manifesto that promises a better future, but a present (in both senses of a gift and in the now) in which a human heaven is constantly accessible.
In his Lent book, The Falling of Dusk, Paul Dominiak speaks of a new “kin-dom” born of the cross, rather than the “kingdom” word we’re more used to. This is a kinship that transcends human family and tribe. And it’s articulated in the Nazarene’s next word from the cross: “Woman, here is your son. Here is your mother.”
Too foreign
It’s a kinship all too foreign for today’s politicians – and indeed to many of their voters. The idea that we might share a kinship with desperate people in small boats is subsumed in a plan to dissuade them from making their journey, by making their destination as uncomfortable as possible. It’s difficult to see the gospel in that.
The opening words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” speak not to the non-existence of God, but a God who exists but is seemingly absent. And, in doing so, it addresses our despairing question in the face of failure and frustration: “What’s the point?”
Cry of dereliction
It’s a cry of dereliction, but it also challenges us to address the problem of the world’s evils, from Ukraine to famine zones. It’s truly a dereliction of political duty to look away and absent ourselves by pretending that the evil doesn’t exist.
“I thirst”, says the Christ, close to death now. For sure, this is acute dehydration from his torture, but gospel reportage doesn’t work like that and it is freighted with meaning. It’s in the perfect tense, with which we’re unfamiliar, but means something like a present action that is also eternal.
Meta-narrative desire
So it’s about meta-narrative desire. A desire for the “living waters” of which he has spoken, which course not just through humans, but throughout their history too. It demands that we raise our eyes to the eternal and ask what our desire is for the world in which we have a temporary role to play. That’s about as far from dog-whistle policies to win a general election as it’s possible to get.
The dying words “It is finished” speak of the completeness of God’s work in the world, finished at the cross. In one sense, it is echoed by the prayer, erroneously credited to Sir Francis Drake: “It’s not the beginning, but the continuing of the same until it be thoroughly finished, that yields the true glory.”
Nothing complete
Nothing, however much we pretend otherwise, is ever complete in politics or religion. These words interrupt and disrupt both with that truth. It’s only with an honest acknowledgement of that - and all the words from the cross that have gone before, that we can say with him, at the end: “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”
It’s final, but it’s also transformational and promises the hope of a new beginning. At the foot of the cross, we see that – and also see that nothing in our politics can match it.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest
Brilliant, George! There is a connection between Too Foreign and the Cry of Dereliction. I have a slightly different take from yours on the small boats, in that I don' t think most of those in the boats are all that needy and there's a good reason to discourage the villains who make millions from the business. But yes, behind these tens of thousands of fit young men with the money to pay for their Channel passage there are hundreds of millions - billions? - of poor people, our brothers and sisters, who deserve a better life. Food, clean water, shelter, decent work, decent living standards, education, safety of life and property, and the rule of law. It's our duty as Christians, as fellow humans, to find ways to help them obtain these things we take for granted in our own country. Which takes us to your Meta-narrative Desire, I think. On this day Jesus completed His task on the cross, and we here must carry on. Sorry, I don't have an easy answer, but then there probably aren't many of those. Have a blessed and very happy Easter.