Homily Text: Canon Pat Browne on Good Friday
Canon Pat Browne gave this homily at the Celebration of the Lord's Passion on Good Friday, at Holy Apostles, Pimlico.
The word scapegoat is about singling out a person and putting all the blame on them for something they didn’t do and are not responsible for. The word has its origins in the Old Testament, in the Book of Leviticus.
Once a year, on Yom Kippur, part of the ceremony the High Priest performed was to take two goats They then cast lots. This decided which of the two goats was to be killed and offered as a blood sacrifice, and which was to be the scapegoat – the one to be sent away into the wilderness. The blood of the slain goat was taken into the Holy of Holies behind the sacred veil and sprinkled on the mercy seat, the lid of the ark of the covenant.
Afterwards the High Priest laid his hands on the head of the other goat and publicly confessed the sins of all the people and put them on the innocent goat. Then that goat was sent out into the wilderness taking those sins away from the people.
What was Jesus doing carrying a cross to Calvary? He was that scapegoat sent out beyond the walls of the city. What he was carrying in his person was all the sins of the world – yours, and yours and yours….and mine. All our sins had been put on his head - onto his person – innocent though he was, he was blamed. After carrying those sins to Calvary in his body that sacred body was nailed the cross and when that body died on the cross so too did the sins of people which he carried in his body die too. That is what St Paul means when he tells us in 2 Corinthians….. 'For our sake God made the sinless one into sin. And in another place God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf….'
In other words Jesus trapped sin in his own body, put it on the cross and killed it off. What was killed on the cross that first Good Friday was sin itself. All WE have to do is let our sin go, put our faith in Jesus who has done this for us, and
You know those nature programmes in which you see the exotic flower or plant that attracts all the insects into its reach and when it has got them there it closes in on them and eats them up. It is something like that.
The Son of God by becoming human allowed the sins of the world to come within his orbit. All the violence, the hatred, the hardness of heart, the bitterness, the jealousies, the destructiveness that humans are capable of – he was now in the middle of it. All of this he took it into his person, trapped it in there and by dying on the cross destroyed it once and for all.
As the Prophet Isaiah reminded us in the First Reading today.
Ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried.
We had all gone astray like sheep, each taking his own way, and the Lord burdened him with the sins of all of us.
By his sufferings shall my servant justify many, taking their faults on himself.
In a few moments you will come up and kiss the cross. Why? Because it is the object on which all YOUR sins…and MINE, the sins of the world, got killed off.
The cross is also the object from which Jesus the one who has done this for us has risen, victorious over the death they had seen him go through and the sins that had put him there.
How right was GK Chesterton, when he wrote in 'The Everlasting Man' that Christianity on that day… had a God who knew the way out of the grave’
Looking at the cross in a few moments we see the most beautiful, loving, kind and sacred human being that ever lived – Jesus. He has taken into his beautiful person, the most evil, dangerous, hateful side of human nature and he has killed it off.
“Do you know what I have done for you?” Jesus asks each of us. “Try to - And don’t go back to that way of living; those attitudes of life that I have just freed you from this day."
As you and I approach the cross to kiss it today let each of us ask the question of Jesus himself:
“My Jesus, is my soul worth this much to you? And then be silent enough in our hearts to hear the answer.