...we who now stand at the foot of the cross have to face the most searching questions, the questions we avoid like the plague because we, too, find it desperately uncomfortable to look at the face of God's Image, the man, the king, and see the perfect likeness of the maker and redeemer of the world. We are so stuck in the systems of Caesar -his swords, his coins, his gambling soldiers- that we too have a hard time recognizing truth of any kind, let alone speaking up for it. We are so anxious to protect the philosophies upon which our modern world is built that we will do anything to declare that we have no king but Caesar, that when push comes to shove religion is just a private thing which musn't affect the public sphere, even when Jesus is reminding Caesar's representative that he only has power because God has given it to him. And perhaps that is one of the reasons why the church is in such pain at the moment, caught between 'what is truth?' on the one hand and 'no king but Caesar' on the other.
...We come to Good Friday like beggars to a banquet, starved of love and suddenly finding more than we can cope with. And if it is true that that love must transform our whole lives, our public life, our grasp on truth on the one hand, our dealings with Caesar on the other, this can only be if we are first grasped and transformed by that same love at the very deepest level of our own personalities. We are invited to stand with Mary and John at the foot of the cross, at the point where heaven and earth meet, so that the love from heaven can embrace us, creatures of earth that we are; so that the light of heaven can heal the darkness within us and within the world; so that, by the power of the creator God and in accordance with the scriptures, we can ourselves become part of the new creation which for the moment, for the still, sad sabbath rest, lies waiting, buried, within the womb of the old.
-N.T. Wright
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