13/04/2025
Archbishop Stephen preached at Trinity Church, Wall Street, New York during the Holy Eucharist Service on Palm Sunday. The sermon follows in full. You can watch a recording of the sermon here.
“The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’
Luke 23: 36-38
Sometimes jokes backfire.
This was graffitied in large letters in the porch of the church where I served as a curate in South London: ‘God is black.’
A few weeks later, some would-be joker wrote below it: ‘If he was, they would have killed him.’
But the joke backfires.
Jesus was born into a persecuted minority. As a tiny child he and his family fled vicious persecution. The occupying forces that oppressed his people, did kill him.
I am here in New York this week to speak at an event hosted by Kenya’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations titled: Reparatory Justice and Institutional Accountability: An Open and Candid Dialogue with the Church of England on Historical Injustices. This is part of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent taking place here this week.
The ‘candid dialogue’ with the Church of England comes out of a piece of work initiated by the Church Commissioners, who look after the Church of England’s historic endowment fund, to examine and face up to our part in the oppression, subjugation, enslavement and commodification of human beings.
Like so many institutions, the Church of England made a lot of money from the African chattel enslavement. It is a shocking and shameful story.
Moreover, the legacy of this evil lives on today in the inequalities of wealth and opportunity, the racism, and the unexamined prejudice that still shapes and often oppresses individuals and institutions right across our world today.
But didn’t all this happen a long time ago?
Is it something the Church should be concerned with today?
Shouldn’t we just move on?
Is this really a gospel issue?
Sisters and brothers, you bet it is!
At the very heart of the gospel is the revelation that in Christ we are a new humanity where all the old barriers of separation, be it barriers of gender, race, ethnicity, class, caste, or kin are done away with. Dismantled. Reconfigured.
The apostle Paul describes those who make up this Church as being like a body, where no one bit of the body can say to another, I don’t need you. The pancreas cannot say to the elbow, I have no need of you. The least have the greatest honour.
This church that we are part of, this motley band, this keystone cops bunch of muddled humanity, we are here this morning, sisters and brothers, not because we're so good, not because we're so wise, not because we're so holy, we're here because, we're what's available. I mean, God may wish that he had a more promising bunch of people to work with, but sisters and brothers I'm afraid it's us. We are here simply because we are sinners taking the cure. We have recognised our need of what God gives us and shows us in Jesus Christ. We have seen in him a better way and a new humanity and for this church, the gift of the Holy Spirit is the blessing of diversity: not at Pentecost, the whole world speaking the same language, but the people of God speaking every language, blessing every culture.
And the promise of this scandalously beautiful, inclusive and diverse invitation to a new, better, more collaborative and more joined up life for individuals, families, communities and nations is one where every tribe and every tongue is gathered before God (see Revelation 7.9).
I’m here in New York to say sorry for the ways in which the Church itself has failed to live out these precious, beautiful and sacred truths. But also to speak up for a better future; a better future the world urgently needs as we see again around us what happens when we forget our responsibilities to each other and start living, planning and investing only in ourselves.
Tragically, the appalling attack on the Anglican-run al Ahli Hospital in Gaza last night, a place of caring and healing for all communities and all peoples, only reminds us just how urgently we need to change.
Sisters and brothers, we belong to each other. This is the new humanity that Christ made possible by his dying and by his rising.
It is a commitment each of us makes when we say just the opening word of the Lord’s prayer. Have you ever considered what a revolution, the opening word of the Lord's prayer is - Our. Not my God, not your God. But the God who makes us children and sisters and brothers, whether we like it or not, whatever our tribe, whatever our nation, we are sisters and brothers in Christ.
And so Jesus comes to Jerusalem. To his own city and his own people. The city that had stoned the prophets that came before him.
He comes on a donkey, which may appear to us to be a sign of humility, but is actually a carefully choreographed enactment of Zechariah‘s prophecy about how the Messiah will come.
Jesus is laying down a gauntlet.
The Messiah is coming. But not the Messiah the people were expecting.
For this Messiah is now going to wash feet, break bread, turn the other cheek. Even love and forgive his executioners.
It is all too much for those who invest in themselves. For those who want their own empires and their own kingdoms.
The crowds who sing Hosanna today, will snarl Crucify in a few days’ time.
We must not be like them.
Or perhaps, it might be more accurate to say that we must recognise that we are like them. That we too, like our Messiahs powerful and all victorious. That we need to learn that the power Jesus shows us is the power of undefended loving; that self-emptying love that Paul writes about to the Philippians; that equality with God is not something to be exploited… that he humbled himself… (even) to the point of death.
And God exalts him.
Christ’s victory is through suffering and through death.
Another joke backfires.
In John’s gospel we hear how Pilate gets someone to write, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’ and hang it as a sign above his cross (see John 19.19-21).
It is a good joke. And to make the most of it, they dress him up in a purple robe and bow before him. They even twist some thorns into a crown.
And so that everyone can get the joke, because a good joke is always worth sharing, they write it in three languages: Latin, Hebrew and Greek. What a laugh.
But Caiaphas is anxious. He, perhaps, can see the joke backfiring. ‘Don’t write king of the Jews, he says, but this man said he was king of the Jews.’
But that isn’t so funny.
Jesus dies a criminal death, an outcast death, with a sign above his head proclaiming the deepest truth about his ministry and what this Holy Week means.
Jesus is our Messiah. Jesus is our king. But not as we expected.
His kingdom runs through human hearts and joins together in the great commonwealth of God all that we lost, abandoned, rejected, tore asunder or cast aside.
We are made whole by his dying and rising: a new humanity with a new hope. And we must urgently live this out, confronting the injustices and separations of the world right now.
We hold our palm crosses today and follow Jesus where he leads. To the cross and to the empty tomb. Into this holy week. But also into holy lives; that we might make a difference and bring God's healing and reparation to the world.