The words were spoken by a Palestinian doctor who had lost four daughters and were quoted by the Israeli lady who spoke at the January meeting of the Three Faiths Forum. She had lost a son in the conflict at the hands of a sniper; the other speaker had lost a brother and the doctor had lost four daughters. They belong to a support group of five hundred families who are comforting and consoling each other across the political divide and, as you may recall, they happened to be here in January with the result that Rabbi Hulbert cancelled the planned meeting for the month and tramped round in a most appalling blizzard to rally people to a scratch meeting where these two ladies spoke. I am glad to say that the meeting was well attended and glad to add that this included a visible Christian presence, many from St Mary’s because it would indeed been tragic had there only been the Jews and Moslems present. This is the problem for ALL of us.
I had heard of this group on the World Service and (they told me) that the doctor of whom they spoke was indeed the same one I had heard. When I listened to him I felt that I had come as near as I ever had to understanding the Cross, because although we are used to the cross as the symbol of our faith, and hear about the death of Jesus every time we come to the Eucharist it is a very difficult thing to understand. We are so familiar with it that it can lose its full horror for us.

• Why must the innocent suffer?
• Why is there always a price which some one has to pay?
• Why so often does nothing get done until some one has suffered and /or died?

I don’t know that I can answer the first two of these questions any more than Job could do so, rather than attempt the impossible, I am going to look at the results of suffering and what it may achieve. I want to add another example of suffering achieving much.
I have been in South Africa recently and one of the places I visited, as do many others, was Soweto. I first went there forty years ago when I was living South Africa and have been many times since on visits because I knew people who were engaged in projects there which were gradually transforming it even before the end of Apartheid.
The tour had one other passenger, a lady from Cape Town who was staying in Soweto. This lady whose name was Rosa was staying in Mama Lola’s Bed and Breakfast place and very grand it was. Mama Lola is also booked out for the World Cup after which she will doubtless have an even grander place in this very plush part of Soweto. There have always been nice houses there because, even in the days of Apartheid, there were rich Africans who had to live there because of the Group Areas Act. Many of could now live elsewhere but are choosing to stay there, and are joined by others who are building more nice homes. The corrugated iron shacks we see on TV are only part of the story.
One of the key features of a tour of Soweto is a visit to the Hector Peterson Museum. Hector Peterson, you may recall was the teenager, who was the first person to be killed in the Soweto riots of 1976. When I was last there, there was a memorial to him, now there is the Museum and it is indeed harrowing. Among other exhibits is the relentless filming of those horrible days and one comes out feeling stunned to say the least. I certainly did, although I already knew the story and I am white. Rosa is black; she is a mother of two children of primary school age and I doubt if she were born in 1976 and, if she were, she would have been too young to be aware of what was happening. She came out of the Museum looking pale, sank back into the car saying, “We must never forget; we must make our fragile democracy work... such suffering cannot be allowed to go for nothing.”
They say violence never achieves anything. I cannot agree. The violence on Soweto in 1976 lead to immense action of the part of many communities in South Africa, black, white English speaking, Afrikaners, an amazing change of power took place and although things are far from perfect, they are better.
And I daresay that you will remind me that every Armistice day we remember the sacrifice of so many in two World Wars the Second of which has given most us in this church today a very privileged life in the context of human history.
So here we have examples of sacrifice leading to achievement and another where the father of the victims says it MUST lead to achievement. People want sacrifice to be FOR something. Those who lose loved ones in a road accident or a hospital mistake campaign tirelessly so that that corner becomes a recognised danger spot or the hospital error does not happen again.
Much of the despair of the disciples of Jesus on the first Good Friday must have been because they thought His life had been for nothing. They did not expect anything of His death and it seemed that their own sacrifices, leaving home and family, the whole three years in which they had followed Him had all been to no avail. What were they going to do? When the body had been buried were they going to go back to their families and say, “It was all a terrible mistake” and how would they be received?
In fact I suppose we could say that one of the achievements of the Cross is that we tend to regard personal sacrifice more kindly than the ancients did. But there is more than that. Unlike the Palestinian doctor’s daughters or Hector Pieterson, Jesus was not in the wrong place at the wrong time. He knew what was going on, he was a willing victim. Our second reading today was from the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is central to the theme of the writer that Jesus is the victim, the lamb who must be sacrificed by the the High Priest before he can enter the Holy of Holies on behalf of the people on the day of Atonement and keep open the way to God. But Jesus is not only the victim he is also the priest, priest and victim in the words of a hymn and the writer of this Epistle goes on to describe the Priesthood of Christ.
Here, it is the Romans, not often considered a people of great spiritual insight, who can help us. The Latin word for a priest is “pontifex” ; the Pope is “Pontifex Maximus” is he not? But the word “pontifex” also means a “bridge builder” What did the Palestinian doctor say about the blood of his daughters? It must be the BRIDGE to peace.
Jesus is the Priest who builds the bridge across the gap that has divided man from God. And bridges can be crossed both ways can they not? Jesus is the Supreme High Priest who, in His birth and life built the bridge from God to Man ... and in His death built the bridge for man to return to God.