Homily by the Rt. Revd. and Rt. Hon. Lord Chartres for Good Friday, April 3, 2026

The Rt. Revd. and Rt. Hon. Lord Chartres, GCVO, served as Bishop of London from 1995 to 2017.

Transcript

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Father, all those words and thoughts that come from thee, wilt thou bless them and make them fruitful? And all those words that come not from thee but from our own vanity wilt thou forgive? Amen. I expect, like me, you've been following the thrilling Artemis. Artemis two. Orion is heading for the dark side of the moon, and it's a preparation to another moon landing at some later stage. It's the most extraordinary project and produces the most beautiful vision of the earth, united and lovely. It's thrilling that humanity has conquered so many of the outer spaces. The frontier are now further from Earth than any human being has ever been before. Meanwhile, the inner spaces remain obscure and baffling. There is all Africa and her marvels inside us. And you know, I know, there's so much evidence of distress, spiritual hunger, spiritual thirst in these inner spaces. In any anemic and sickly body, health is restored by an infusion of fresh energies. Jesus Christ worked to establish a new community animated by sharing in the love that binds the Father and the Son together in the Holy Spirit. The word of God came into the world and addressed individuals, and they were to form, we were to form, a new community. They were to find the answer to their hunger and their thirst in eating the bread of life, drinking the cup of salvation, and feeding on the water and the blood flowing from the side of the crucified Savior. They were to be grafted into the vine, whose cultivator is God, and experience the love which those who are united with God enjoy. The new community is gathered around Jesus Christ and his body. We saw this vividly in that picture from the cross. Father Ian spoke about it earlier today. We see the mother of Jesus, we can imagine her distress, the disciple whom Jesus loved standing together, and Jesus saying from the cross, Mother, behold your son, son, behold your mother. A new community is gathered around Jesus Christ, and he has gathered us together today by some mysterious paths, and we are commanded to bear fruit in our lives, and day by day share and practice his commandment that we should love one another as he has loved us. Love, of course, in modern English is a shop soiled word. It's used very often so lightly. John Updike, that great novelist, in his marvelous book, A Month of Sundays, says, Love, you old whore of a word, will let you in this once, but only fumigated by quotation marks. So we've got to ask ourselves, what are the marks of the authentic love which we are commanded to practice? The authentic love that bears the characteristics of the love of Jesus Christ. Some characteristics. First, love for God is not so much an emotion. After all, you cannot be commanded to have emotions and warm glows about everybody. What we are commanded to do is self-giving. And love for God is not so much an emotion, but it is self-giving. That's the first thing. The second thing is that if you are practicing the love of Jesus Christ, you're always striving to push back the limits on that love. He told a story. He told a story about somebody who was mugged on the road to Jericho and lying by the wayside, and all sorts of very respectable and godly people passed by, no doubt hastening to some meeting about suppressing street crime in the area. But then a Samaritan, who you remember was a heretic in the eyes of Orthodox Jews, came along. And Jesus said, Who do you think was a neighbor to this man? Love your neighbor, and God's love involves always pushing back the limits on our loving. But there is one very important limit. This is the third mark. God's love is unconstraining. It does not force us. He dies on the cross, not railing, not cursing, forgiving his enemies. He is someone who loves without demanding payment and return. C.S. Lewis, that great Christian writer, refers to a man who lives for others. And you can tell the others by their haunted expressions. It isn't always a good thing to be so overt. So the love of Jesus Christ is unconstraining. I think again of parents, I'm the father of four. One sometimes tempted to smother them with love, keep them dependent, keep them at home. But then you realize that if you're on the way of Jesus Christ, love very often lies in the letting go, not controlling or demanding a response. So it's not so much an emotion as self-giving. It's always at work pushing the boundaries on our love. It's unconstraining. And fourth and last, what we see so clearly on the cross. Genuine love involves a gift of power. I remember doing a confirmation, and there was a girl there, she's very vividly in my mind's eye, and she said, Father, I mean so little to my father that I can never make him angry. She realized that genuine love involved a gift of power, and that we see so clearly on the cross, Jesus Christ in the hands of those who wish him ill and beat him and mock him. The more profoundly you love, the more profoundly you suffer. But looking beyond ourselves, with these four marks of the love of Jesus Christ in our minds, what do we see this holy week? We have in this world enough food to feed everybody, but seemingly we do not have the will to do so. We have made huge technical progress, and I'm as exhilarated by that as anyone else. But it's often devoted to more and more ingenious ways of killing. In Holy Week, we simply allow the story of Jesus Christ and his love to sink in, not waking ourselves, working ourselves up into some pseudo-spiritual lava, but becoming open to whether there might be for us a light or a revelation here as we contemplate the cross. Revelation is not so much new facts. The crucifixion has a firm anchorage in history. But revelation is a transformation of seeing and experiencing, which can bathe our lives in a new light. Revelation can transform our lives through the channels of energy opened by the Holy Spirit, which flows from the side of Jesus in the blood and the water, as we encounter him as the light of the world. So as we contemplate the cross this good Friday, we say with one of the greatest of the Holy Fathers, Gregory Nazianzon, is it not evident that the Father accepts the sacrifice? Not because he demands it or feels some need of it, but in order to carry out his own plan. Humility and humanity had to be brought to life by the humanity of God. We had to be called back to him by his son. Let the rest be adored in silence. Amen.