An Abyss of Love: A Homily for Good Friday

Saint Faith’s Anglican Parish
2 April 2010

In 1853 a middle-aged Anglican theologian teaching at King’s College London published a series of essays which attracted significant attention from the religious establishment. King’s College was already the subject of considerable scrutiny as an Anglican balance to the so-called ‘secular’ University College London. University College had been established to provide university-level education for non-Anglicans in contrast to the Anglican universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Together they were united in the 1830’s to create the University of London.

This middle-aged theologian, Frederick Denison Maurice, challenged a number of the commonly-held positions of the leaders of the Church of England, but he was especially critical of several held by the so-called ‘evangelical’ party. In the final essay he addressed the question of ‘everlasting punishment’, a principle that the evangelical party saw as crucial to maintaining society’s stability. Without this teaching, it was thought that the lower classes would cease to behave in a manner that preserved the social order of early Victorian Britain.

He criticized the idea of ‘everlasting punishment’ on two grounds. The first was a word study on the difference between ‘everlasting’ and ‘eternal’. He pointed out that the New Testament tends to use ‘eternal’, a term which means ‘outside of time’, rather than ‘everlasting’, a term which means ‘continuous time without an end’. This was an important distinction because it provided the rich soil for his second critique.

‘Everlasting punishment’ left no room, Maurice argued, for God’s love, a quality essential to God’s very nature. It was God’s intent that we become who we truly are, God’s beloved, made in the image and likeness of God. While we could resist God’s love, perhaps even into whatever awaits us after our death, God’s last word to each of us is not ‘endless death’ but ‘eternal life’, a ‘yes’ that shatters any ‘no’ human fears and desires for control can utter. Towards the end of his essay Maurice wrote these words, ones that continue to remain with me every time I begin to doubt what the future holds for me, for my Christian community, for our world:

"I ask no one to pronounce, for I dare not pronounce myself, what are the possibilities of resistance in a human will to the loving will of God. There are times when they seem to me --- thinking of myself more than of others --- almost infinite. But I know that there is something which must be infinite. I am obliged to believe in an abyss of love which is deeper than the abyss of death: I dare not lose faith in that love. I sink into death, eternal death, if I do. I must feel that this love is compassing the universe. More about it I cannot know. But God knows. I leave myself and all to Him." (From 'Eternal Life and Eternal Death' in Theological Essays, 2nd ed. published in 1853)

Maurice’s words led to his dismissal from the faculty of King’s College. While the remaining nineteen years of his life would bring some rehabilitation, Maurice remained a voice that the establishment tried to mute in many and various ways. For Maurice, the words of the prophet sound true: “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him and no account.” (Isaiah 53.3)

But Maurice’s confidence in the ‘abyss of love’ were grounded in the event we gather to remember today. In the death of Jesus of Nazareth we see the abyss of God’s love, an abyss which is far deeper than the human sin which led to his death. While there are many ways theologians have attempted to explain why Jesus’ death bridges the gap between God’s love and human sin, one thing remains clear: God’s ‘yes’ to humanity, a ‘yes’ embodied in the life and witness of Jesus of Nazareth, remains stronger and more faithful than any of the ‘no’s’ human beings can express, whether that ‘no’ is found in the worship of power, in the poverty of human greed or in the denial that there is any more to life than the sometimes flat surface many of our sisters and brothers call ‘reality’. Just as surely as plants will seek the sun, even human perversity will eventually seek the warmth of God’s love and follow the path that this love tracks in the universe.

We do not assemble here to celebrate a cult of death. We do not assemble here to rejoice in our own election by God and God’s rejection of those who do not share our beliefs. We do not assemble here to escape the challenges of human responsibility to shape communities and nations and a world in justice is done, in which steadfast love is honoured, in which humility in the face of the mystery whom we name as God is practiced. We assemble because we believe that life not death is God’s last word for all of us. We assemble because we believe that every human being is God’s child and our kindred. We assemble because we seek the strength and the wisdom to do justice, to honour steadfast love and to walk humbly with the One who created us, who walks with us and who renews our life.

We assemble and remember because, like Frederick Denison Maurice, we like swimming in the deep end of life, a deep end filled with the waters of God’s love. We assemble and remember because, like Frederick Denison Maurice, we seek God’s help to remain ‘firm in the hope [God] has set before us, so that we and all [God’s] children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise [God’s] name’. Amen.