Sermon preached at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, Good Friday 2026

Good Friday, the still point in the turning liturgical year.  Fixed. Nailed.  The cross of Christ is set before us, we tell the story of his death.  Years and years ago, when I was first thinking that I might be called to the priesthood I was interviewed by a slightly alarming, and eager senior cleric.  ‘What is the gospel, David?  Tell me, what is our good news?’  I started to say something slightly limp about the love of God.  He slapped the table hard, ‘No, the gospel is the cross, don’t you ever forget it’.  I never have.  The gospel is the cross.

Did you notice how we began the gospel of the cross this morning? 

‘Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.  And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns…’. 

The gospel has a Roman Governor, the representative of the Emperor Tiberius in his fortress, the Antonia, in Jerusalem, and surrounded by the garrison.  Before him is Jesus of Nazareth wearing a crown of thorns.  This gospel of the cross is about authority and power and legitimacy, about where you see them, what they look like.

A story about authority.  There are not many better places to be on Good Friday than His Majesty’s Chapel Royal.  A place to think about a Roman Governor, about great Caesar and Christ the King.  This is what St John wants us to consider

If we had picked up St Luke, we might be thinking about forgiveness –the penitent thief and Jesus saying Father forgive them’.  We did not hear that this morning.  We heard John and he has us thinking about authority and kingship.  Even before we got to this moment, with Jesus wearing the crown of thorns, Pilate has tried to debate the issue, asking again and again, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’  Jesus told him ‘My kingdom is not from this world…’

Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king”. John 18:37  

Pilate writhes in indecision.  He knows full well there is no serious crime here.  He tells the crowd as much and they scream back, ‘crucify him, crucify him!’  Pilate tries again, and still he labours the point about authority and kingship,

He said to the Jews, "Here is your King!"  They cried out, "Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!" Pilate asked them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but the emperor."  (John 19:14-15)  

Pilate and the crowd are debating just who Jesus is.  It is the question that the gospel keeps begging.  ‘Who do you say that I am?’  Looking at, listening to this man, what is it that you see and hear?  Do you see the blind receiving their sight and death being defeated?  Or do you see something seditious, unsettling, as Jesus literally overturns the way we do things round here?  Pilate and the crowd debate who Jesus is and wonder who and what they trust.  They bandy about the name of Caeser, Tiberius Caesar the man surrounded by lurid stories of cruelty and abuse, living in frantic seclusion on the Isle of Capri.  There are versions of kingship and legitimacy being held up for us to think about this morning.  What looks right?

Still, we are not done with this burning, presiding question.  It is John’s gospel, and only John’s gospel, that gives us the detail about a sign fixed to the cross of Christ,

Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, "Jesus of Nazareth,1 the King of the Jews."  Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew,1 in Latin, and in Greek.  (John 19:19-20) 

The inscription was carefully worded, what we are hearing is the clear, confident language of official documents – ‘Charles the Third, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and. Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories, King’.  This is an imperial proclamation.  "Jesus of Nazareth,1 the King of the Jews."

All this John wants us to notice and to consider.  In other gospels Simon of Cyrene is made to carry the cross, Jesus is weakened by the flogging, he must be helped. Not in John.  Jesus carries the cross himself.  The evangelist wants us to notice that.  Just as he wants us to consider that Jesus died, saying ‘it is finished’, even: ’It is accomplished’.  Jesus did not die defeated; even in death he had authority.  St John tells us he handed over his spirit.  This was his action, his initiative and choice.   Throughout the psssion, Jesus is in command, sovereign.  Then, finally, he was buried with royal honours.  Nicodemus came to the tomb

bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds John 19:39  

Jesus dies sovereign.  He is indeed the King.  John will not let us forget it.  The gospel is the cross and in this gospel story Jesus is authoritative.  It is his story in the sense that he is the author.  These are the events that he set in train.

Imagine that today you walk around Christ’s cross, seeing it from here…, seeing it from there.  Imagine perhaps, that your feet pace out a diamond shape.  You see the cross from four different angles.  It is what the four gospel writers offer you.  The gospel is the cross, and this story is profound.  No end of books and sermons will exhaust what there is to say and understand.  Today, here, we think of Christ as sovereign, the one and only human being who could do this.  It is his initiative, his work we see.  Doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves, making of human life an accomplishment even in death.

This is the gospel of the cross.  A salvation that we could not win for ourselves, a salvation completed and accomplished by Christ who is alpha and omega, beginning and end, king and Lord.  The story has been told and interpreted ever since that terrible day on Golgotha.  The gospel is the cross and gospel and cross are Christ’s work and Christ’s gift.  The accomplishment of our sovereign saviour.

Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. Jude 1:24-25