by CCW | 7 May 2023 10:00
The fourth word of the crucified is the most intense of all the words of the Passion. It is the cry of dereliction, the sense of utter abandonment in being God-forsaken. Taken from the Passion accounts of Mark and Matthew it shows the real depths of sin and evil without which we can make no sense of the Resurrection. It is, I think, powerfully complemented by the classical Gospel for the Fourth Sunday after Easter which grounds human redemption in the mutually indwelling life and work of the Trinity. Here Jesus teaches us about the coming of “the Comforter” whom he names “the Spirit of truth,” the spirit and bond of the Father and the Son. But he does so by naming the depth and meaning of sin.
How are we to understand this disturbing word? Theologically and psychologically, I think, and by pondering its meaning through the readings for this day.
Christ’s Passion and Resurrection teach us about the radical and essential life of God, something which we come to understand and grow into by the Holy Spirit. In Christ’s comings and goings which belong to his humanity we are opened out to the abiding reality of God, the essential life that is greater than human sin and evil, greater than suffering and death. The Comforter, meaning the paraclete, who is called “another paraclete” or advocate along with Jesus himself, brings to light the radical evil that is overcome in the Passion of the Christ.
That radical evil is shown to us in the fourth word. Christ bears in himself the radical evil of our humanity and the world. We have sadly lost sight of this. We have domesticated sin and evil and reduced it to the sociological and psychological agendas and projects of our day which betray the true meaning of social justice for no other reason than we make it a matter of our doing. The deeper meaning of the Passion and the Resurrection has been co-opted to the managerial and therapeutic culture of our postmodern world and to the particular issues of sexism and racism which belong to the endlessly divisive nature of our culture of victimhood. Instead of redemption in its much more universal and radical sense, we have only guilt and blame; in short, division not unity. It is not that there aren’t real social and political problems. The problem is that we refuse to see these things as essentially theological and spiritual problems and thus reduce them to the politics of self-righteousness and sentiment.
In today’s Gospel Jesus is wonderfully clear about sin and evil, the very things which he takes upon himself on the Cross and especially in this word. It expresses the full meaning of sin which is far deeper and far darker than we can possibly realize on our own power and strength. He experiences the full weight of sin, the fullest expression of the distance and separation, and therefore the contradiction of sin and evil itself. He voices the words of Psalm 22 but this is not mere rhetoric. In his crucifixion we see their deeper meaning which we really only begin to come to understand through the constant teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
“He will,” Jesus tells us, “reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgement.” This is quite powerful. “Of sin, because they believe not on me.” All sin and evil is in effect atheism, a denial of the truth of God as the principle of all life and knowing. It negates what is presupposed, namely, life itself. We are not the creators of the world nor of ourselves. To forget that life is presupposed, that life is given is folly and a negation of what belongs to the truth of our humanity as knowers. It is the meaning of sin as self-separation and alienation, God-forsaken because we have forsaken God. Christ is “made sin for us” in bearing precisely that ultimate sense of desolation and abandonment which all sin occasions.
The world is reproved of “righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye see me no more.” It is not the righteousness of the world but of God as Trinity that is the true principle, and indeed the unity of mercy and justice. It is found precisely in the motion of the Son to the Father in the bond or love-knot of the Holy Spirit. Human justice and righteousness is always imperfect and incomplete and, indeed, a kind of evil when it presumes to be everything; such are the evils of our self-righteousness.
The world is reproved “of judgement, because the prince of this world is judged.” This identifies the principle of evil itself, Satan, the principle of all that opposes God. The Passion and the Resurrection are the overcoming of all sin and evil. Thus this phrase also brings out the deeper meaning of the fourth word of the crucified.
Our understanding of these things is always partial and incomplete but the Holy Spirit is given to guide us into all truth, the truth and righteousness that is grounded in the co-inherent life of the Trinity, in their mutually indwelling love. As the Epistle reminds us, “every good gift and every perfect gift” is not of our making; It “comes down from the Father of lights.” His righteousness is the true measure of justice and mercy, a gift to be received in us by “the implanted word,” the word of God born in us.
All this provides the context for our reflection on the Coronation of Charles III because the coronation is essentially a religious service with political overtones. The coronation of the monarch is a kind of deaconing because the entire ceremony emphasizes the idea of service and sacrifice, of duty and dedication to the good of the Commonwealth and of all peoples. It is a profound counter to the idolatry of the ‘sovereign self’ in our current confusions and disarrays. It reminds us instead that all authority is of God. What we see in the Eastertide readings are the motions of mercy and compassion.
The Parish of Windsor has its origins in 1771 during the reign of George the Third. In its two hundred and fifty-two year history, the Parish has functioned under the reigns of monarchs from the House of Hanover and the House of Windsor. The royal connection is part of our history and life. Bishop Inglis who played such an important role in the building of the original Christ Church was a loyalist who rejected the American Revolution and American independence from the British crown. The principle of sovereignty, of ultimate authority and rule, takes one of two forms: either as diffused throughout the body politic as in the forms of republican democracy or as concentrated in the person of the monarch and its family dynasty. But what kind of monarchy? The whole history of our Parish and country and commonwealth has been under the aegis not of absolute monarchy but constitutional monarchy.
Charles III is the first king named Charles in our history. His name looks back to Charles I and Charles II, the Stuart kings whose reigns bookended the devastating English Civil War in the mid-17th century and which led to the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 with the emergence of constitutional monarchy. What is that? It is the idea of shared power between the sovereign, the legislative and the judiciary. A remarkable achievement. Our Parish was founded in part by the Crown. There were gifts “given by King George the third through the Archbishop of Canterbury,” namely a set of communion vessels consisting of two flagons, each engraved with the Royal arms, a chalice, two patens and a collection plate. Some parts of the silver plate date to 1729. They arrived in Windsor in 1790 before the church itself was finished. We are using those vessels today in honour of the Coronation of Charles III.
One hundred and thirty-four years of our history has been under the reign of two remarkable queens, Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II, the one the last of the Hanoverians, the other whose name looks back to the last of the Tudors, Elizabeth I. The Windsorian dynasty has its origins in Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert of the House of Saxe-Coburg, Gotha. Their son Edward VII reigned from 1901-1910. His son George V changed the dynastic name to the House of Windsor in 1917 owing to the animosities and tensions of the First World War.
What connects our worship today with the coronation is the theological idea that all authority derives and belongs to God and to the higher properties of mercy and justice that ultimately belong to God and to the concept of service and sacrifice, of duty and devotion to God and people. That was what was seen and celebrated in the seventy years of Elizabeth II’s reign. Perhaps no one has thought more deeply about the idea of kingship than Shakespeare and perhaps nowhere more profoundly than in Portia’s great speech from The Merchant of Venice.
“The quality of mercy,” she famously says, “is not strained,” meaning that it cannot be forced nor can it be held back. “It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.” It is not of our making. “It is twice blest;/ It blesseth him that gives and him that takes./ ‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes/ The thronèd monarch better than his crown./ His scepter shows the force of temporal power, /The attribute to awe and majesty,/ Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; /But mercy is above this sceptred sway,/ It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,” and even more, “It is an attribute to God himself,/And earthly power doth then show likest God’s/ When mercy seasons justice.” Mercy does not supplant justice, does not override and negate justice but perfects justice. This is to speak theologically about what belongs to the truth of politics, to kingship. But it speaks to us about our duties and devotion. Mercy and compassion are to rule in us just as we pray that they will in Charles III. We are reminded of the divine mercy and compassion that alone redeems us from the forms of radical evil that bedevil us all. Christ’s fourth word convicts our hearts and minds but gathers us into the life of the Trinity, the God “who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men.”
Fr. David Curry
Easter 4, 2023
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2023/05/07/sermon-for-the-fourth-sunday-after-easter-14/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.