Sermon for Good Friday 2026

preached by Dr Bethany Sollereder, Associate Professor in Science and Religion at the University of Oxford

Isaiah 52:13-end of 53, Hebrews 10:16-25, John 18-19.

When I am asked what kind of theology I do, one of my standard answers is: “Anything that is grim and depressing.” Animal suffering, why God allows evil things to happen to good people, climate change… If it isn’t loaded with existential dread, I tend not to be very interested. This interest follows me into my hobbies too: I love war movies, and history books about dark times.

What is it that so fascinates me about these grim and depressing topics? That might need the services of a professional psychiatrist to properly answer, but what I find so fascinating about these extreme circumstances and big hard questions is that they reveal so much about human nature. We see the best and worst of people come into play when life and limb are on the line. People are transformed by suffering, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. In extreme events we see what people are really made of and begin to see how they will be remade. We see what kind of people we would perhaps like to be, wonder who we might be if faced by similar circumstances.

All through the Gospel of John there is a debate about who Jesus is. People debate his motives, his source, and his identity. Here, in the culmination of the Gospel, Jesus begins to drop all the veils, revealing himself truly to any who would see, any who would listen. In Jesus’s suffering, in his passion, we see most plainly who he is.

His first announcement is when he is arrested. Jesus announces himself as “I am he” or even just “I am”. The Gospel writer is trying to punch home the significance of this moment: Jesus is using the same words, “I am” which were used when God reveals his name to Moses: “I am that I am”. John is proclaiming Jesus’s divinity and then goes on to show us the nature of that divinity. When Jesus proclaims himself, those who hear it fall to the ground. We are shown by this that if he wanted, Jesus could easily overpower those who came to arrest him, but he does not use that power. Jesus and Peter are starkly contrasted in this sense. Peter does try to use the power of force available to him: the strength of his arm and the blade of a sword. But Jesus rebukes Peter, and Jesus goes quietly with those who intend him harm. This is what God looks like: God does not work by overpowering. God’s way of defeating evil is not by smiting.

As Jesus repeatedly tries to tell Pilate, his kingship doesn’t look like the rulers of Rome. He doesn’t have a standing army of soldiers (indeed, by the time Jesus is standing before Pilate, even his friends have deserted him—Jesus’s threefold “I am” in the garden is contrasted with Peter’s threefold denial of Christ “I am not.”) Jesus’s army, in so far as he has one, is as it says in the Te Deum, is the noble army of martyrs: those who follow Jesus’ example in submitting to suffering and even death for the sake of God’s love.

But why? Why this painful way? When we encounter evil, I think most of us feel that at least a little smiting would be justified. Just a lightning bolt here and there, from time to time. But occasionally. For the Really Bad Ones. It would be nice to have a king who acts with force. But what we get is the king whose purple robe is only a mockery, whose crown is of thorns, whose throne is a cross… whose great act is not a victory in battle or a piece of brilliant legislation We get a king whose great act is simply to suffer quietly and to die. Is this really the king we want? Is this the God we want?

This is the heart of the New Testament message: that God does not raise his hand against even his enemies. That God’s love is ALL-embracing. And through that love, evil is in fact defeated. It is out endured, it is outlasted, it is out suffered. And when every blow that evil can deal is dealt, love will still be there. As Jesus dies, he says “It is finished”. In Greek, there is a clear link between the “finished” here (teleo) and the beginning of yesterday’s Gospel which began with: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end (telos).” We see the end of God’s love, its work is finished.

What is finished? The end of all that sin and evil can do. What is finished? The full expression of God’s love. What is finished? The example set by Jesus for those who follow him.

In Jesus’s passion we see both the best of humanity and the heart of divinity revealed. The power of love is not ‘power over’ that crushes evil by force, not even evildoers who richly deserve it. Because force only makes enemies. But love transforms them, loves rescues even its own enemies. Its work is slow, and painful, and costly. But at the end of the day love transforms and sustains the world.

At the time Jesus died, the project of love seemed hopeless. But (spoiler) this is not the end of the story. At the time Jesus died, Tiberius Ceasar was the emperor of the known world, the most powerful figure in the world. But who follows Ceasar, any of the ceasars, today? Followers of Tiberius Ceasar have all long since turned to dust. As have those who have followed all the power-over, smiting, tyrants of history, from Alexander to Napoleon. Tyrants have power, and to be sure, but it only lasts a short time, and they and their followers fade away. Christians meanwhile, those who follow this gentle King, number in their billions. At the end of the day, it is love’s project that sustains the world, that lasts throughout the long ages of history, transforming the world heart by heart, defeating evil and sin through the deep endurance of suffering love.

Few people have said it better than WH Vanstone in his poem “Morning Glory”:

Love that gives, gives evermore,
Gives with zeal, with eager hands,
Spares not, keeps not, all outpours,
Ventures all, its all expends.

Drained is love in making full,
Bound in setting others free,
Poor in making many rich,
Weak in giving power to be.

Therefore He who Thee reveals
Hangs, O Father, on that Tree
Helpless, and the nails and thorns
Tell of what thy love must be.

Thou art God, no monarch Thou,
Throned in easy state to reign;
Thou art God, Whose arms of love,
Aching, spent, the world sustain.

This same gentleness to the evildoers and enemies is just why we can also approach God with confidence. It is why you and me can come to this table, assured of welcome. As we eat and drink at this table, what is the body and blood of Christ become our body, our blood. And we too are transformed into those who love, without qualification, until the end.

Amen.