The scheme for May – June can be found here

1 Ch 2-3; Mark 15; Psalm 18:1-30

Following on from yesterday’s comment, we may not therefore abandon the people of God, for a world which behaves better – for the whole world is complicit in the death of Christ. He comes not to save his own, but for the Salvation of the World, thus the World, in the person of Pilate is also involved. All of humanity.

What kind of faith can say with the centurion ‘Truly this man was God’s Son’ To see here in this naked, utterly broken, tortured, dead Jew, the Son of God

Of course we are trained in thinking that somehow Who Jesus is is utterly veiled and hid from our sight at this point. Because it is by the gift of faith that we say the Crucified One is God’s Son, suggests to us that this is hidden . . . and of course it is in a sense – for we are blind. We would rather with many many heretics in the church suggest that the eye of faith sees beyond the mangled flesh of Jesus of Nazareth, to see ‘a deeper truth’, thus revealing our own blindness.

No, the Centurion sees clearly – ‘This is your God’ – the one in whose image we are made.

We flee from this so far and so fast – we sing and speak of Christ glorified and triumphant as if this is not seen clearly at the Cross. As John’s gospel reminds us – Here Is Christ in His Splendour and Glory.

The Cross is not to be reduced to a doctrine of Salvation, or ‘a sign of the love of God’.

No in this dead Jew, nailed to rough timbers of a first century gallows, we see God – Clearly.

It might be well worth asking, how do our churches bear witness to this, for unless we get this, then the Kingdom of God is a closed book to us.