Feast + Fast: Good Friday

For each day of Holy Week, Christina Rees offers a reflection for our hearts and minds, and a recipe for a simple meal to nourish our bodies. All these recipes and many more can be found in her book Feast + Fast: Food for Lent and Easter.

Friday 10^th April – Good Friday

Yesterday, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus accepted that he was going to die. His agonised prayers to his Father were answered with the arrival of Judas and the soldiers, holding flickering torches in the darkness, bristling with weapons. Jesus submits to being arrested and taken for questioning by the current and former high priests. The remaining disciples desert him. Only Peter and one other disciple, presumably John, follow the soldiers as they lead Jesus away.

Inside the high priest’s house, Jesus is questioned, then beaten, whipped and mocked, while out in the courtyard Peter denies even knowing him. In the early hours of the morning, Jesus is taken to Pilate, the governor, who questions him further about his identity and authority. Even though Pilate doesn’t think that Jesus has committed any crime, nevertheless he has him whipped, perhaps as a warning to watch his step. But the crowds are not satisfied: they demand that one of their prisoners is released and allowed to go free, as was the custom at the Passover. Eventually, Pilate gives in, frightened of upsetting the uneasy political balance between the people and the occupying forces. Jesus’ death is sealed. By three o’clock in the afternoon, he is dead.

The accounts in the Gospels of Jesus’ last few hours are almost unbearably painful to contemplate. His physical agony, the emotional anguish of saying goodbye to his mother and to John and Mary Magdalen, the only friends who remained loyal to the end, and Jesus’ resolute faith in his Father, even while feeling utterly abandoned, are unspeakably sad. It does not require too vivid an imagination to be overwhelmed by the sheer human distress of the scene.

But what of the spiritual and divine purposes and consequences of the cross? What was happening, over and above - and through – the desperate human tragedy? Gerald Priestland, the late religious correspondent of the BBC, thought that whatever happened on the cross ‘altered the moral chemistry of the universe’. Because of the cross, something changed, not just for all people but for all of creation, for all time.

I don’t think it is possible to understand the full meaning of the cross and I don’t think we have to, this side of heaven. What is important is that we do think about it, wrestle with it, and read the Gospels over and over, not skipping the crucifixion. That we read what St Paul and the other writers of the New Testament had to say about it, that we read what trustworthy contemporary writers are saying about it, that we allow ourselves to discover what it means to us.

Over the years my understanding of the cross has changed. I no longer believe Jesus had to die in order to appease an angry and hostile God, a bitter but necessary transaction to put things right. I now see Jesus’ death on the cross as an unfathomable act of transformational love, making it possible for us to be new creatures, able to live and love in a new way. Because of the cross I know myself to be free, forgiven, loved and saved, though I cannot fully explain what all that means. The last verse of Isaac Watt’s great Passiontide hymn, ‘When I survey the wondrous cross’ goes some way towards expressing the effect of the mystery of the cross:

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were an off’ring far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

If you are eating lightly today, this recipe in Feast + Fast – Food for Lent and Easter is for the simplest and most basic of meals. It includes gruyere cheese but I expect any kind of fairly hard cheese will do. It can even be made with slightly stale bread, as the broth will soften it.

RECIPE

Soupe de Sauge

Contributed by CRYSTAL WOODWARD

This is a simple recipe for when you’ve got nearly nothing in the house but sage leaves and a bit of bread. (If you only have rubbed sage, it will be necessary to pour the sage broth through a sieve before adding the rest of the ingredients.)

Serves 2

2 pints/1.2 litres water

6 fresh sage leaves or a tablespoon of rubbed sage leaves

1fl oz/25ml olive oil

2 slices of bread

3½oz/100g Gruyère cheese

a pinch of salt

My cousin Crystal sent this recipe to me from France and I pass the rest of it in her own words:

‘Let the sage leaves boil in water a little. Wait a bit then put some of the water in your friend’s bowl and some in yours. Add olive oil. Toast two slices of bread (and the bread can be hard, as it will soften up in the sage bouillon), and put one in each bowl. Grate a little Gruyère cheese on top. Preferably add salt. Say a little prayer and enjoy!’