³² There were two others with him, criminals, who were being led out to execution; ³³and when they reached the place called The Skull, they crucified him there and the criminals with him, one on his right and the other on his left. ³⁴Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.’ They shared out his clothes by casting lots.

Luke 23: 32-34 – The Revised English Bible

What is a nail? It’s such an everyday object; in our world we take its existence for granted, although for much of man’s time on this planet, nails didn’t exist. When we look on it, we’re so easily deceived. It seems such a mundane object in our world of computers and space travel and the Large Hadron Collider.

The nails used at Calvary that day would have been much larger than the ones you think of, when you use the word nail. They would have been seven to nine inches long; in cross-section they would have been square; a third of an inch thick at the top and then tapered through their whole length, to terminate in a sharp spike. Basically, they were like very sharp coach-bolts.

They wouldn’t have been throwaway objects in first century Palestine – they’d have been objects of rarity and high value. We don’t know where they’d have been made, but we do know that considerable skill was needed to make them properly, heating, bending, extending, filing, shaping, hammering, annealing. As in our world, their use would have been in construction; in building homes and boats, chariots, carts and a host of other purposes. They were of such value that they would have been re-used, many times over. What had the nails used at Calvary that day been used for before? What would they have been used for afterwards?

Mankind is so clever; we can take ore from the ground, melt it and turn it into valuable objects that make people’s lives better. Mankind has become increasingly resourceful and inventive and can now harness the power of nuclear physics, to produce electricity, warmth, light, and other things……..

Mankind is so clever that we can make three small objects that you can carry in one hand that between them can take the weight of a fully-grown man. Oh yes, we’re quite capable of taking an object designed for good, designed to make our fellow-humans’ lives better; and use it for the darkest, cruellest purpose that our wonderfully creative imaginations can conjure up.

What is it about the crucifixion that causes us, on this day of all days in our calendar, to reflect on our ability to do so much good, but so much evil? On Good Friday we focus on the torture of God. Yes, it takes some getting your head around, doesn’t it? We actually found a way of using a small everyday object to torture the very God who gave us the skills and inventiveness to make that object in the first place. We took an object designed to hold things together, and we used it to rip apart. We took an object designed to make life easier and we used it to inflict maximum pain. We took an object designed to be hammered into wood and we used it to destroy flesh and sinew and break any small bones in its path. We took an object that reflected the creativity that God gave us, and we used it as a way of killing a man that was so barbaric, so chillingly inventive that its horror darkens our world, almost two thousand years later. Even in our secular world, Christ hangs on his cross, depicted in art in churches, museums, galleries and in jewellery. The image condemns us; it is a stain on our history that can never be erased; it is a testimony to our inhumanity from which there is no escape, however many centuries may pass.

Lord, it’s so easy in our world to look at these events and think that they have nothing to do with us. They’re something that happened in a distant, barbaric era; we’re much more civilised, aren’t we? But today, Good Friday, is the day when we must accept that we all, every single one of us, crucify you every single day. None of us is innocent of what we did and what we do to you. You came to offer us a vision of a better world; a world with no hunger; a world with no pain, nor tears; a world where neighbour helps more needy neighbour; a world without injustice; a world where your divine gifts and blessings are shared; a world where the meek inherit the earth, where those who mourn are comforted and those who are hungry are filled. We didn’t listen and we don’t listen. We accept a world where not only are you rejected, but your values are treated with contempt and your vision of a better world is despised and ridiculed.

Christ, your hands were always open in giving, in mercy, in compassion, in healing, in feeding the hungry, in restoring sight and hearing, in blessing, in forgiving. And we took these nails, these cold, hard cruel nails, as cold and as hard as our hearts and we split open your hands with brutal hammer blows, so that your forgiving, life-giving blood poured out. And the feet that stood upon the high places, as you gave us your vision of God’s kingdom, we crushed and smashed, in a brutish attempt to ensure that you could never walk again, and never bring your message of mercy, forgiveness and peace to others. We disdained your message; we shunned everything you stood for; we left you hanging on a cross, held up by the pain of your rejection by us and by three simple objects that you had taught us to make for the good of others.

Today is a day to look upon your cross and accept our share of this. To look in shame at what we did and what we do to you every day.

But this is also a day to marvel. To marvel that pity and compassion and mercy and forgiveness, in the world as you designed it to be, not the one we’ve distorted to our purpose, are stronger than cruelty, brutality and oppression. Humility, gentleness and love, in the world you intended to be, are able to overcome selfishness, injustice and hatred. Equality and lack of want, in the world that we should have made, are deeper values than starvation, power over others and privilege.

That, ultimately, is the lesson for us this Good Friday and every Good Friday. When we look at the cross, with the Lord of Love and Life hanging there, we’re pushed to renew our commitment to your Kingdom, to recreating and changing the world into the form and shape that you made it. To turn our backs on the terrible distortions that we’ve made to how we live and how we relate to each other. To pledge all our energy and all our creativity and all our time and all our skill to bringing in your Kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven.

Any other response to seeing you hanging on the cross is not possible; any other reaction to your ultimate act of love for us, tarnishes us and diminishes us. Teach us, gracious and heavenly Father to look at you and love in return. We know it’s the only possible answer to your love. Thank you for reminding us this day of what we know, but so often choose to ignore.

Encourage us, Lord, to see you reflected in each other, and to be determined not to crucify you anew each day by crucifying each other. Reconcile us to you, to each other and to our own selves, that we might reflect your love in our broken and unjust world. Amen