This book I’m reading by Stephen Cottrell is really terrific. It’s part theology, part mediation, part devotional, and incorporates a section on Christian practice into each chapter, connecting the meditation on Christ’s cross with Lenten practices like fasting, almsgiving, Bible reading, prayer, etc. (which really are just Christian practices). He takes the passion according to John as his main text, but draws connections to other parts of the biblical story throughout.

Cottrell, the Bishop of Reading, uses Jesus’ words “I thirst” to illuminate the passion story. “They are such sorrowful words, so simple and yet so very human: Christ, the thirsty one, one who shares deeply in the mess and muddle of human living” (p. 12). He emphasizes the themes of divine solidarity with human suffering and the love that is poured out through the life and death of Jesus. God not only shares our lot, but the cross is the definitive revelation of God as love, demonstrated by Jesus’ determination to love “to the end.” This is the victory that he wins over the powers of sin and evil.

On the flight back from DC this morning I finished chapter 4, “The Tenacity of Love,” which I think is fair to call the heart of the book. In previous chapters Bp. Cottrell has dealth with the events leading up to the passion, but here he deals with the crucifixion itself.

[What happens on the cross] is what I call ‘the tenacity of love’: Jesus keeps on loving those who keep on hating. He defeats sin and death by the resolute persistence of his love. To the soldiers who nail him to the cross he speaks words of understanding and forgiveness: ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing’ (Luke 23:34). To the thief who hangs alongside him he promises a share in Paradise (Luke 23:43). These beautiful words spoken out of the horror of the cross embody his life’s teaching, that we should love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, walk the second mile. It is the love that carries on loving, right to the end. (p. 115-6)

But, of course, for Christians Jesus is not just a good man who persevered and died a martyr’s death. He reveals the nature of God as Love:

If Jesus had given in to the taunts and indignity and sheer bloody awfulness of the cross, then love would have failed. It would have become less than love, and less powerful than hate. But by allowing himself to be handed over to this passion, and by fulfilling the vocation of love, God triumphs. He triumphs in the all-too-human flesh that Jesus now redeems. He risks the possibility of failure, as today he risks the possibility that we may never recognize the nature of his triumph. But that is the way with love. All it can do is go on loving. It can never coerce, and it can never wantonly hurt or manipulate that which it loves.

The words ‘I thirst’ sum up this love because they witness to the frightful horror of what is happening — the indignity, the humiliation, the pain. But they also penetrate the deepest purposes of God. ‘I thirst for you,‘ says Jesus from the cross. ‘I do this for you: I am the faithful one who lays down his life for his friends. I do this for God: I drink the cup the father sets before me. I desire your salvation. Like a dry, weary land where there is no water, so I thirst for you and I thirst to do God’s will. See how much I love you. See the depths of the Father’s love. See my arms stretched out in love for you. Allow yourself to be embraced by my love. Allow yourself to be transformed.’ (p. 116)

To use the all-too-familiar typology, Bp. Cottrell seems to be combining elements of an Abelardian and Christus Victor understanding of the cross. Jesus, in loving to the end, reveals God’s love to us, or, maybe better, enacts it, pours it out. “His silence before his accusers, his forgiveness of those who persecute him, his complete lack of hatred, most reveal the true nature of God’s unconditional love” (p. 108). And yet at the same time, this is the defeat of sin and hatred: “Sin and death are brought to submission by the persistence of Christ’s love. All their forces are spent upon him, but he carries on loving” (p. 116). Love, not hate, has the last word. God in Jesus takes the brunt of our sin upon himself and absorbs it, “[l]ike a lightning conductor pulling the energy of the storm out of the sky and burying it safely in the earth” (p. 115). This turns penal substitution on its head in that it’s not God punishing Jesus, but us (which is clearly much closer to the literal truth of things). And yet this fury and hate is absorbed and defeated by God’s inexorable love.

Bp. Cottrell goes on to connect this profound understanding of God’s love with the Christian’s practice of prayer. Prayer, he says, is founded on “God’s affirmation of love for us, and our responding with the same heartfelt desire” (p. 132):

Prayer is first of all about what God says to us. It is about allowing ourselves to be changed and shaped by God’s agenda for God’s world. We come into the presence of God with thankful hearts for all he has done for us in Christ. We thank him for the gift of life — and this can happen anywhere and at any time. We still ourselves: we are in the presence of the one who loves us and we allow ourselves to hear his voice speaking his words of love. Sometimes we need the voice of God that speaks to us through the Bible, or through the liturgy of the church, to communicate this message of love. Or sometimes it is expressed to us through songs of praise. Sometimes we arrive at a place of complete silence, where it is sufficient just to know we are in God’s presence. In each case we allow God to nurture within us, through his Holy Spirit, a deep sense of our being the beloved, of knowing we are loved. Then we can live and act with the same affirmation that sustained Christ, which enabled him to love others, which even made it possible for him to love his enemies. Only by knowing God’s love for us, by knowing that we are worthy of his love, and therefore able to love ourselves more, can we reach out with love to others. (p. 132-3)

By my lights this is good evangelical stuff in the best sense of the word. Our response to God and to the world is based on the good news of God’s prior act of love in creating, sustaining, and redeeming us. God’s favor is sheer grace, but that grace, which is simply the love of God, calls forth a response from us. And the “the old, old story of Jesus and His love” is one we need to rehearse, in prayer and liturgy, word and sacrament, to make this good news a living reality in our lives.