Bible reading: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11.

Julian of Norwich was an English mystic who lived in the late Middle Ages. In 1373 she was suffering an illness so severe that thought she was about to die; however she was healed after receiving visions of Christ’s suffering and (dare I say this?) of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Julian later put her experiences into writing: “It seemed to me that I could feel the Passion of Christ strongly. How I wished I had been at the crucifixion with Mary Magdalene and with others who were Christ’s dear friends, so that I might have seen in the flesh the Passion of our Lord which he suffered for me … I wanted his pains to be my pains, with compassion, and then longing for God … I wanted to suffer with him, while living in my mortal body, as God would give me grace”.

On a Wednesday evening in 1738 John Wesley, the Methodist, attended a meeting at Aldersgate Street in London. He went along, he wrote in his journal, “very unwillingly” but later he was glad that he’d made the effort. He describes what happened while someone was reading, not from the Bible, but from a commentary by Martin Luther on the Epistle to the Romans: “At about a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death”.

Nearly two centuries later, in the autumn of 1935, the Chinese pastor Watchman Nee gave a series of talks in Shanghai entitled “The life that wins”, later translated into English. He said, “What the Lord Jesus has accomplished on the cross not only can save you from the penalty of sin but can also deliver you from the pain of sin. He has prepared such a full salvation that we may daily live in victory as well as receive the initial salvation”. He continued, “We must simply come to the cross and accept the Lord Jesus as our Saviour. This is the gospel!”

Those are prose descriptions of what Jesus’ passion meant to three individuals. I’d now like to turn to three hymns. The first was written by Isaac Watts in 1707:

When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of glory died,
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.

The second hymn, in a style that’s rather out of fashion today, was written by a Scottish lady, Elizabeth Cecila Clephane, in 1868, shortly before her death at the age of 39:

Upon that cross of Jesus mine eye at times can see
the very dying form of One who suffered there for me:
and from my stricken heart with tears two wonders I confess,
the wonders of redeeming love and my unworthiness.

And the last is a modern song by Stuart Townend:

Behold the man upon a cross,
my sin upon his shoulders;
shamed, I hear my mocking voice
call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held him there
until it was accomplished;
his dying breath has brought me life –
I know that it is finished.

I wonder if you noticed a thread running through those verses? It’s this: all of them, in one way or another, are basically saying the same thing, that “Christ died for my sins”. It’s a devotional and personal approach which we might call thoughtful or even self-centred. These writers are – quite rightly! – looking at Jesus on the Cross; we must give them credit for that as what they are seeing is a cruel and ugly scene, one which television announcers would caution against us watching as we “might find it upsetting”. But, or so it seems to me, these folk are

also looking into themselves and thinking of the many misdeeds and imperfections – sins, to use the old-fashioned word – which Christ is taking from them as he dies. Through his suffering and death, they are finding freedom, new life and hope. “This”, says Watchman Nee, “is the Gospel”. And we wouldn’t argue with that.

But should we? You see, this definition of the Gospel is fine as far as it goes, for people certainly do want freedom from guilt and hope for the future. But I don’t think that it goes anything like far enough: it’s too limited, it’s too “me-centred”, in fact too spiritual. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a strong believer in personal religion, I don’t accept the idea that you’re a Christian simply because your parents had faith or because you were born in a so-called “Christian country”, I’d always say that people must make their own individual decisions to follow Jesus.

Nevertheless – and as my mother pointed out to me fifty years ago! – this Evangelical understanding of the Gospel can become very self-absorbed. At its worst we may appear to be saying, “I’m OK; I’ve believed in Jesus and I know I’m on my way to heaven – what a pity about everyone else”. That’s a caricature, of course; but there are inward-looking Christian spiritualities which seem to emphasise “my walk with God” while ignoring the needy, pain-filled and weary world in which we live. My belief is that there is far more to the Gospel than individual – or even human – salvation. As one writer puts it, “The mission of God is to redeem the entirety of his created cosmos. Somewhere along the line the Evangelical church lost the biblical vision of this huge mission, truncating the gospel from its cosmic significance to instead focussing just on the salvation of human souls”.

Let’s think about what Paul says in his letter to the church at Rome: that all creation “is waiting with eager longing” to be “set free from its slavery to decay and to share the glorious freedom of God’s children”. And let’s consider John’s vision in Revelation where he sees “a new heaven and a new earth … [and] … the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” and hears the glorified Christ saying, “I make all things new!” We recall, too, Isaiah’s prophecy of centuries before: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them … The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain; for the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters that cover the sea”. Surely these passages speak of salvation – which we could also call restoration, renewal or even resurrection – for the entire created ecosystem?

Of course, none of this has happened yet. Events such as the wars in Gaza and Ukraine or this week’s earthquake In Taiwan show that our world is still out of balance and groaning in pain. But the Easter story gives us hope; it is a promise or (if you like) a down-payment of what we believe is still to come. For Easter looks forward to the world’s future and says that, just as God raised Jesus from death, so he will rescue and renew all of his creation. As Tom Wright, the scholar and former Bishop of Durham, put it: “The central Christian affirmation is that what the creator God has done in Jesus Christ, and supremely in his resurrection, is what he intends to do for the whole world – meaning by ‘world’ the entire cosmos with all its history”. Or, to quote a Lutheran theologian, “Salvation means the transformation and redemption of the entire human family, and the entire cosmos that we call home”.

I don’t want to downplay the sadness and misery that seems to be part and parcel of our world today, indeed I sometimes get depressed as I watch or read the news, especially when I know that it’s humans who are the cause of so much that is bad. Nevertheless we Christians should be people of hope because we are looking forward to God’s cosmic salvation. Although that may seem a distant, even unrealistic, dream we should constantly be looking out for the tiny signs of God’s renewal which are faintly visible amidst the prevailing gloom. For on Good Friday, Christ took the woes of the world on his shoulders; and on Easter Sunday, his resurrection foretold the renewal of everything that God has made. Jesus’ shoulders were broad, his suffering was real, his love was off the scale, his resurrection was real; we believe that he has opened the way of redemption for all humanity, for the world, and even for the entire universe. Job done, once and for all!