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There is never a Good Friday when I do not think of this cathedral church and the impact that a Holy Week art installation here made on me, thirty or so years ago now. And so I am thankful to Dean Catherine not only for her invitation to give these addresses but also for the opportunity to acknowledge a debt of gratitude for half a lifetime of spiritual sustenance which began here.

It was a sculpture of Christ on the cross erected on one of the pillars to the right of the great west door. Although life-sized and elevated, it was made from crumpled wire netting so that as you walked towards to it, it seemed insubstantial. Yet when you stopped in front of it, you realised that there was another, unexpected element to the work – a lighting system that made this see-through sculpture cast a solid shadow of the crucified Jesus on the adjacent pillar. Your eyes were irresistibly drawn to following the light and as you looked, there was another surprise, or shock would be a better word – your own shadow was part of the scene. You saw yourself standing at the foot of the cross, a participant in the story – and suddenly, speech, thought even, became impossible and it was all I could do to keep breathing.

Familiar as we are with the story of Jesus’ death, I wonder if we are ever ready to stand at the foot of the cross. Suffering and brutality are impossibly hard to watch, but just as the gospels do not focus on the details, nor should our attention linger there. The endless images of violence in our media-saturated world have made us develop strategies of keeping them at a distance, like the bystanders at Calvary watching from afar. Instead, I’d like to reflect on the silences amid the noise, the absences amid the clamour, and what happened in the dark away from the glare. These, I hope will create spaces in the story where we can find a place to stay and watch, and wait.

The Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama speaks of a beautiful Gaelic proverb, ‘In the shelter of each other we live’, their equivalent of ‘No man is an island.’ In Irish the words for shelter and shadow are the same. The cross is lifted up among us today, and may we find a place of belonging in the shelter of its shadows.

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‘He gave no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed.’ Matthew 27.14.

Roman rulers expected conquered peoples to remain passive and silent in the face of domination by an oppressive, insatiable occupying force. The methods they devised to enforce this included crucifixion – not just a means of execution, but a weapon of terror too.

Yet Jesus’ whole ministry was a speaking out – whether he was healing the sick, eating with the poor, restoring outcasts, upending notions of power and importance – by his words and actions he exposed the abnormality of what had become business as usual, of what so much public religion and civic life had accommodated themselves to. A showdown was inevitable as God’s truth and the world’s reality collided.

In the passion narratives we see those who want Jesus out of the way working themselves up into fury as their prisoner won’t answer their questions or play by their rules. We can picture the early morning scene in Jerusalem after a chaotic night of rough and summary justice, as the city’s priests and politicians, thinking themselves more powerful than they really are, ‘confer together against Jesus to bring about his death’. Their minds are made up and we can feel that visceral and intoxicating lust for vengeance, born of certainty that they are right, rising in them as they deliver up their prey to Pilate, who can carry out what they so desire. In this maelstrom of fury, Jesus remains a still and calm centre. Why doesn’t he say anything to try to save his own life? Why, even in front of Pilate, who seems disposed to help him, does he say so little?

Perhaps some of the other silences in Jesus’ life will help answer that question. Right at the start, silence is the background against which the Word incarnate begins to be heard. For Luke it is the silence of old Zechariah, struck dumb at the news of all that was about to befall that extended family. For Mark it is the long-forgotten voice of prophecy piercing the silence of the desert; for John the Word comes forth from the silence before the beginning of creation, and for Matthew it was the strained silence of Joseph trying to come to terms with Mary’s pre-wedding news.

While Jesus waited in the wings, John the Baptist’s alarming preaching raised such expectations of a firebrand Messiah that no-one, not even John, recognised the figure who made such a quiet entrance asking to be baptized.

Instead of stirring up revolt against the occupying forces as a Messiah was supposed to do, Jesus told stories, often with surprise endings which left wide open spaces in which his hearers could join in the making of meaning. When asked for answers, he responded with questions, creating great pockets of silence that gave people room to dream, imagine, speak, act. His teaching was often met with stunned silence – love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. Any questions, anybody?

In the life of Jesus God finds a whole new way of speaking. So why did that voice fall silent at such a crucial moment?

If the silences in Jesus’ stories and teaching were open and inviting doors, his silence before the chief priests and Pilate is altogether different. Jesus does not answer the high priest’s questions about who he is, because the high priest is incapable of hearing anything Jesus says as the truth. This is a silence that closes the door on all that is false.

Bound and defenceless before Pilate, Jesus appears as weak and passive a figure as you can imagine. Yet this is a strenuous and costly silence that absorbs the violence and hatred visited upon him, and exposes the limits of the power of evil. It will go no further. It will not be returned. Its self-perpetuating power is broken.

Little do they know it, but Jesus’ silence is dismantling all the armoury of his accusers. As the shadows deepen around the cross and the silence becomes absolute as Jesus dies, they will believe they’ve achieved their end. It will not be long until they discover how wrong they were. It’s galling to realise our own powerlessness. But powerlessness is not where Christianity ends – it’s where it begins. We may look askance at today’s tanks and missiles, not because they’re too strong, but because, ultimately, they’re too weak. In the cross and the empty tomb, God has given us two events that undo all our notions of self-sufficiency and control.

The Spanish mystic and poet St John of the Cross said that Jesus accomplished more in his motionless silence, dead on the cross, than in the whole of his ministry. Why? The death of Jesus allows all that is disordered in creation to descend into its inner chaos, to return to the emptiness before creation began, the utter silence in which God has room to be God, the formless void that waits to be addressed and remade by this God.

I don’t imagine that any of us came here quite alone today; we brought with us all the voices clamouring in our own lives. If we wait for them to quieten down, we will never get to the cross. And so the invitation is to come as we are and let the silence fall, let God be God for us, let go of our attempts at control, and allow ourselves with all our confusions, anxieties and desires to fall into the abyss, into the silence, which is the fathomless love of God for us.