During the cold spell in January I was travelling back from London to Liverpool. It was a rather surreal experience. The train was nearly empty. Anyone with any sense was escaping the snow that was falling outside and were indoors. We trundled through empty stations where no-body was waiting. I was the only person in the carriage and everything seemed silent. As we travelled through England it was almost as though the train was cocooned in a blanket of white. The frozen silence around me became a symbol of the world we live in, full of so much potential and possibility and yet held in the frozen grip of sin and brokenness. As I stared out of the window my mind was drawn to CS Lewis’ book ‘The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe’. I began to think of the story of the four children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy and their encounter with the Lion Aslan in the magical land of Narnia, a place where it is always winter, a place held in the grip of evil. Aslan’s battle with evil results in his becoming powerless. He is bound and eventually killed on the great stone altar as the children watch from a distance. That’s not the end of the story, however, and Aslan rises again to bring freedom to Narnia, the final breaking of the power of evil as Narnia once again begins to live and breathe as in days of old.

Death and Resurrection of Jesus that transforms the whole of creation

My mind was then drawn to the cross. For Christians it’s Jesus death on the Cross that has overcome the great battle. It’s his death and resurrection that transforms the whole of creation. Jesus, the human face of God, out of love, becomes powerless and absorbs into himself the mess, transforming it and breaking its power. It is not the powerful way or the clever way or the strong way that God chooses. It’s the weak broken way of the cross and it’s only those who are in touch with their own brokeness and vulnerability who really understand it. We have to face our own pain to understand the cross and to be able to proclaim the cross otherwise it’s just another philosophy. We have to know in our lives that death is the only way to life. Sadly many people don’t understand the way of the cross. The world avoids pain and brokenness. Most of us would rather do anything than become powerless. We build ourselves up with our own false illusions about the world and life. The way of Jesus is about facing what happens in life and trusting. But we pretend we’ve got it all together. We think that we know all about life. We try and stay in control. St Paul tells us is that there’s a type of knowledge communicated by Christianity which goes beyond our petty attempts to believe that we’re important and that we’ve got it together. This is the wisdom of God which is a paradox - that life comes through death, that brokenness is the way to wholeness, that the cross is the way to life.

When I was at the University Chaplaincy in Liverpool I met a man of the road one Maundy Thursday who asked me what day it was. I told him and he asked me when Good Friday was so I explained that it was the day after. He looked at me and said ‘that’s my day you know.’ I said nothing so he took a bottle of wine out of his baggy pocket and said to me. ‘It’s my day because I’m crucified each day with this and I’m crucified by the people who look at me and laugh or who are disgusted by me. It’s my day.’ Then he slowly went on his way with two tears rolling down his cheeks.

Our rejection and pain

I think about that man each Good Friday because he spoke truth to me and I realised that when we look at the cross we don’t just see a 2000 year old event. We see every moment when we have died within, every moment of rejection and pain that we’ve experienced, every moment of isolation and disappointment, every hope and dream that has been crushed and we see it all in the broken bruised body of the lamb hanging on the cross. That’s how great the love of Jesus is for you and me, so great that he absorbed into himself every moment of death that has ever existed or will ever exist and loved it into wholeness. You know, that this not some sort of appeasement to an angry God. As we look at the cross we see who God is for us, a God who pours out his life for us constantly, an action that can’t be defined in terms of time and space. God absorbing into Godself every negativity, every death and transforming it. In ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’ Aslan dares to believe that from his death life will come. Dare we have that sort of courage when we face the cross? Do we choose to believe that from the mess and seeming devastation of our lives God will be victorious and can we proclaim that to the world? That’s faith to live by.

Fr Chris Thomas heads up the Irenaeus Project. He is a member of the Emmaus Family of Prayer and a priest of the Liverpool Diocese.