This sermon was preached on Good Friday, 18th April 2025.

Bible Reading: John 18-19

This is the Passion of the Lord. 

Have you ever wondered why we call this the Passion of the Lord? Why do we call this week the week of Christ’s passion? When preparing the services for this week, my service book describes the holy week services as Passiontide. It is the season of Christ’s Passion. But how does the word passion make sense to what happens on Good Friday? 

The word passion relates to strong feelings or emotions. It relates to enthusiasm and having a lot of heart. We might even talk about passion in relation to love and romance. But the story of Good Friday is one of torture, pain and death. Where is the passion in that? 

It’s hard to see where the passion is in Good Friday, but when we look at Jesus, we can see that today, Jesus shows his greatest passion. If passion is to do with heart, strong feelings, love, romance, and giving your all, then Good Friday is the most passionate of all days. For today, Jesus in his unrelenting, unbounded love, gives his whole heart, his whole life, his everything in love for us. Jesus gave his life on the cross because of the immense passion of his love for you and me. 

This is the Passion of the Lord. That on Good Friday, for God so loved the world, he gave his only Son Jesus to die on the cross to cleanse us from our sins, that we may have new life with God. In the Passion of his love, Jesus gave his life for ours. 

This is the Passion of the Lord. 

So, if we have been loved with such a passionate love by Jesus, will we love him in return with the same passion? Do we give him the passion of our love? It is what Jesus has given us. Could we give it to him in return? Could we love as we have been loved? 

Jesus stretched out his arms on the cross and said, ‘“It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.’^[1]

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^[1] John 19:30 [NRSV].