Our journey through Holy Week brings us metaphorically to the very heart of darkness. But if Holy Week is a time of silence and of absence, it is paradoxically also a time of glory.

‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’

With that agricultural parable John’s Jesus tells his followers that the time has come for him to take up his cross, suffer and die, in order to bring to perfection the work for which he came into the world. That work of atonement which was foreshadowed in Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary, emerged in Bethlehem, matured in Nazareth for some thirty years and flourished in Galilee for a one to three year ministry of teaching and healing, now moves to its completion and fulfilment on a cross; and does so, not just for those who followed him, nor just those who stood by at a distance and watched, but for every woman and man, boy and girl from any and every time and place who will look upon him and call him Lord.

The old Christus Victor theory of the atonement is helpful to understand this point, even though it might sound a bit mythological to our 21st century ears. This view sees the cross not so much as the man Jesus moving with great courage and conviction through the violence of both hostile and friendly fire (as they say of war these days), to his destiny. He is that. But he is so much more than that.

The Christus Victor approach sees the cross as God taking responsibility for God’s world in all its glorious wonder and all its violent disability. God in Christ takes the fight right up to the heart of darkness that lowers in the breast of creation. And strikes that dark heart with the sword of love, piercing it to its depths with the fatal wound of life.

The battle is God’s. In the final analysis it’s not one we can participate in. We can stand on the sidelines; we can watch (and sometimes like the disciples in the garden we can fall asleep); we can speak (and sometimes, like Judas we can betray); we can listen (and sometimes like the servant of the high priest whose ear Peter cut off we can lose our hearing).

But we can’t do it. Nor are we asked. This is something God does. Does for God’s sake and for the sake of God’s creation. God will not see creation battered to a violent death. God takes violence into God’s own life in the cross and overpowers it with love, justice and peace.

In this Holy Week it’s worth contemplating what in our own seeing and speaking and listening contributes to the violence of this world God loves, contributes even to violence against God’s very self. But at the centre of the story is not our seeing or lack of it; not our speaking or lying or mishearing. The centre is God’s journey in Christ to the very heart of darkness, where alone and on our behalf, which means on behalf of the whole threatened creation, God makes it clear that life and love are God’s hallmarks. This is the majesty of God, the majesty of Christus Victor.

And so, in Paul’s words to the Galatians, ‘May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.’

1. Our world is deeply marked by violence, injustice, greed and exploitation. Where is the heart of darkness manifested in your world? Where do you experience darkness in your daily life?

2. The myth of the age is that we are free and autonomous. The Gospel message is that we are creatures radically dependent on our creator? How does this apparently inconsistency impact on your everyday life?

3. Powerlessness is one of the most debilitating of human feelings. Yet we are ultimately powerless to shape our destiny. What does it mean to you to acknowledge your radical dependence on God in Christ for your ultimate security?

4. Paul tells the Galatians, ‘May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.’ What do you boast about? Where does Christ fit in? 5. What is left to do for you to be crucified to the world, and the world to you?

5. Looking back over the past 5 weeks, what questions have made you really challenged your faith? Have you come to terms with the answers you have come up with? If so how?

6. Has the studies challened you to re-think again about your Easter pilgrimage and if so how? What might be some of the challenges that you feel will be ongoing?