Out of the Depths We Cry

‍ ‍Preaching the Passion:  Out of the Depths We Cry

The Revd Devin McLachlan

Good Friday 2026

I. Water and Spirit      

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 

Genesis 1.1-12

 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ 

Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ 

John 3.1-8

Darkness. Perfect darkness, covering the face of the deep. And over it a wind, moving over the water but strangely not yet stirring the water, insubstantial; a wind not of molecules dancing and waving: A wind of the Spirit.

Always a little dangerous in a sermon to share a personal memory, but I invite you to come on a short journey with me. We are in the pacific waters of the Pacific, the sheltered waters of the Salish Sea near Vancouver Island.  It is a warm summer night, late July, moonless. There is almost no breeze. The sky is clear. The sky is clear and blazing with stars. You slip into a kayak and head out into the water.

 When you put your blade in the water, you discover what happens in the Pacific on a warm summer night: The sea is alive with bioluminescence with invisible microscopic zooplankton bursting with light. A cool blue colour that takes up swirls from where your blade moves through the water. You spin galaxies behind you. You splash around for a time, enjoying the surprise, and then you go out into the stillness. You trail your fingers through and see streamers of light drifting behind you. And as your heart begins to calm and the waters go still again, you notice there is still light. light from the stars of creation. That same colour of light that you've made in the water is in the cosmos all around you.

Welcome back.

We know these waters are safe. They're there in our imagination, in the safety of this great sanctuary. And I knew those waters, knew them to be safe, and home just in reach.  And you travelled with me, the stars cool and in reach, the wind gentle and the waters calm.

Not so for Nicodemus. Nicodemus went out that night knowing he was on a fragile craft  above a fathomless deep, unknown fears submerged in the darkness, and the wind blowing hard as he flitted through the shadows of Jerusalem.

Nicodemus did not know if the waters were safe. And Nicodemus was right.

If you have found your faith as an adult, you might get these words right away; for those of us who were born in happy, comfortable churches, we had to learn them the hard way, if at all. Annie Dillard, in Holy the Firm, writes:

On the whole, I do not find Christians,….sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.[i]

Nicodemus is right. Faith swims over deep, dark, and dangerous waters.  Nicodemus is right. Some of the things that shine brightly in those waters are not safe. Nicodemus was right that the wind was dangerously strong, blowing him somewhere he did not think he wanted to go. Nicodemus knew his craft was fragile. Pride, and the powers and principalities of this world, are leaky and thin above that deep.

There is brightness and there are shadows. And we know as Christians above all the shadow of the cross.Dark things swim in this water. Not to our harm or our destruction, but indeed to the harm and destruction of all those dependable things of mortal life. All those ways we have insulated ourselves against the wonder and majesty of God.

Nicodemus's caution, his nocturnal questions, his skepticism at being born again, none of those were unreasonable fears. He is a hidden spring. He appears only three times in John's gospel and nowhere else. First in steep, uncertain headwaters, visiting Jesus secretly, asking theological questions; hungry and wondering but not so sure, being quite reasonable in his interrogation of Jesus.

But something was springing out from his heart. Nicodemus appears again defending Jesus when the council wanted to arrest him after Jesus proclaimed, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me. Let the one who believes in me drink. Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water.” We'll get to that declaration soon. We see Nicodemus as a daylighted spring for a moment, in an ecosystem where he is engaged with his community asking questions about justice, about the rule of law, about fairness. Nicodemus's personal spring has started interacting with an ecosystem of community with neighbours with the people to whom he is accountable with the people whom he feels he must protect.

And then we will see Nicodemus on Good Friday bearing myrrh and spices to tend the body of Jesus. There is a waterfall here. Nicodemus is risking his community and finding a new community of love. But he does not know where it is going to flow. And John will not tell us what happens to Nicodemus next. That stream has gone underground again.

Reformers like John Calvin look down on Nicodemus, in that determined “I am right and everybody is wrong” period in Western Christianity. For Calvin, Nicodemus was nothing more than a coward. Nicodemites is what John Calvin called those who profess to the reformed faith only secretly.

In the African American tradition, Nicodemus is in a more heroic light to a people who had to seek liberation, faith, education, and freedom under cover of darkness and secrecy. Those whose faith is known to you alone, as the old prayer has it.

We started with an ocean. But Nicodemus may be an underwater river.We heard last night in our Maunday Thursday sermon about water flowing underground, about underground rivers and cavern streams — and beneath that, millions of cubic kilometres of unseen water hidden in the mantle.

In Underland, Robert MacFarland travels deep underground in the Dolomites, where he is invited to dive  into the waters of an unmapped system of underground, starless rivers. This story of imagination might feel a bit more claustrophobic:

I took a series of deep breaths, lifted my arms above my head, joined my legs, expelled the air from my lungs in a rush of bubbles, and slowly sank.  At a depth of ten feet or so, the weight of water building on skull and skin,  I fanned my hands to keep myself steady, and opened my eyes.…  Ahead of me in the water was the black mouth of a tunnel entrance, leading away into the rock, more than wide enough to engulf me, its stone edges smooth. The pull of the mouth through that eerily clear water was huge.  Just as standing on the edge of a tower one feels drawn to fall, so I experienced a powerful longing to swim into the mouth and on…[ii]

Nicodemus felt that pull. You can hear it in his bluster and his defensiveness, his hunger and his yearning. There is a vast opening, in Jesus’ invitation — to be born again, we know as Christians, means we must first die to sin. Die to the glamour and dazzle, the smothering comfort, of the powers and principalities of this world.

Good Friday begins as it ends, in prison cell and dungeon vile, as the old hymn has it, Good Friday begins in darkness, as it ends in darkness underground and entombed. It is the only we we can be ready to be born again fromabove by water and the spirit.

Where are the caverns and underground rivers of your faith? Where do you meet God in the darkness, in the deep and starless waters? We’ve learned, in a world of consumerism and capitalism,  to avoid these dark places: to fill the darkness with bright screens, to fill the silence with noise, to fill the empty spaces with waste, to dam the rivers and lay waste to the waters, so that we can no longer drink from them.

Good Friday is the day to lower ourselves down into the starless waters. To know that Christ is there in the the caverns and underground rivers of our faith. To meet God in the darkness, in the deep and starless waters.

While I draw this fleeting breath,

When mine eyes are closed in death,

When I soar through tracts unknown,

See thee on thy judgement throne;

Rock of ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in thee.[iii]

II: A Bitter Cup

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.
I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.

But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.
At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me.
With your faithful help rescue me from sinking in the mire;
let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.
Do not let the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up,
    or the Pit close its mouth over me.

Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good;
    according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.

Insults have broken my heart, so that I am in despair.
I looked for pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.
They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

Psalm 69.1-3, 13-6, 20-21

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.’ And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.’ 

 Matthew 26.36-39

So, there's a man living on the flood plains in Mississippi and it's been a wet, stormy winter. A neighbour comes by in his pickup truck and says, "Hal, there's flood warnings. Come on, put your stuff in the truck. Let's get to higher ground." And how says, "No, no. The Lord will provide."

River starts rising. Comes up to his front porch. Boy Scouts come by in a canoe. “Come on, sir. Get on in. We're getting away from the water.” “Oh, no. Lord will provide.”

Hal gets up to the windows of that first floor. Deputy Sheriff comes by in a motorboat, says, "Hal, you've got to get out of here. The river is still rising.” Hal says, "No, no, no. God will provide."

Water goes up to the roof. Hal's climbed out through a hatch in the attic. Helicopter comes by from the Coast Guard man repels down, says, "Come on, grab hold of me." Hal says, "No, no, no. God will provide." Water keeps rising and Hal drowns. He hets up to the pearly gates and there he's standing. I like to imagine him dripping wet. I'm not sure how it'll actually work. 

And mad as a hornet, he says to St. Peter, "I told everyone, God will provide. And what am I doing here?" Peter says, “We sent a guy a pickup truck. We sent the Boy Scouts. We sent the deputy sheriff. We sent the Coast Guard. What more did you want?”

And…Among the many verses not written in scripture, most canonical might be: God helps those who help themselves.” Sophocles and Ovid and Benjamin Franklin, yes, but not the Scriptures. In fact, Isaiah 41.10 makes it clear that it’s quite the opposite: God is the helper of the helpless

And next to ‘God helps them who help themselves’ in the canon of non-scriptural Bible quotes is this howler: “God never gives you more than you can handle.”

God. Gives. You. More. Than. You. Can. Handle.  All the time.  All the time.

Which is why Jesus, who loved to go up to the mountain top alone, who sometimes took late night walks alone atop the waters of the Sea of Galilee invited his most boisterous disciples, Simon Peter and the sons of thunder,  to come pray with him.  He didn't pick quiet Barnabas. He picked his really noisy friends in the hopes they would say something stupid and cheer him up. Because sometimes we've got a lot more going on than we can handle alone.

When the flood waters rise, when the cup you are given is bitter vinegar and gall,  don’t go it alone. It’s the first rule of water safety (it’s the rule of water rescue as well)  not to go into those dark waters alone. After all, God is never alone – there is but one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Creator, Word and Spirit. The three in one and one in three, and that Trinity is made of love, is always relationship. I and Thou making We, the Trinity always in relationship, always Love, before all things came into being.

Through Jesus Christ we dwell in God; and, amazingly, God,  mother and father to us all, God dwells within us.  We are never never truly alone.

When faced with loss and fear  Jesus told his friends before his death,  ‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.  In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” (John 14.18-19)

Abide.  

 Abide.

God was there with the deputy sheriff in the outboard, and the Coast Guard pilot in the chopper.  Not because God helps those who help themselves, but because God helps us to help others. Because God reaches out to us when we are in need,  through the saints and strangers all around us.   Because you have been given the logos spermatikos, the Seed of the Word of God.[iv]  You have been given a message to someone who needs to hear it. And I have no idea where or when in your life you will share that, but I know you will.

St Bene’t’s is a church that knows this lesson very well. You know it well in the recent years following Anna's death.  And you've known it over the thousand years of plague, wars, riots, tyranny, heartbreak, and confusion. This church has stood a thousand years echo of the rock of ages, as witness to the truth that when we are given more than we can handle, by the grace of God, we bear one another up.

And when our neighbour is given more than they can handle, by the Grace of God we hold one another up. And when no one seems near,  God is still with us — a vast ocean of love stretching down to the very mantle of our being.

My father died of pancreatic cancer when I was a teenager, and I lost my faith when he died — and it felt like there were none to bear me up in the flood water.

I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. (Ps. 69)

It took me years. It took me years not before I found my faith. And there's a sermon for another time. It was actually after I came back to a faith that had and has lots of questions, and it took years to see where God’s healing hand had been at work, not amidst the broken strands of mis-transcribed DNA in Donald’s cancerous cells, but in the reconciliation we began to experience as a family in the last year of his life. In the faith my father quietly held to. In the care we began to take for one another.

That’s a wound and scar I share todaybecause that experience would, eventually, change how I see the cross: That Jesus drank of the bitter water of the cross, not to satisfy an angry tyrant — neither emperor nor God — Jesus drank that bitter cup, not because he knew it would get him out of suffering, but because he know it was the course by which all of creation would be saved from the flood, the cross becoming an ark great enough for the whole cosmos.

Soul of my Saviour, sanctify my breast,

Body of Christ, be thou my saving guest,

Blood of my Saviour, bathe me in thy tide,

Wash me with water flowing from thy side.

———

 Strength and protection may thy passion be,

O blessèd Jesu, hear and answer me;

Deep in thy wounds, Lord, hide and shelter me,

So shall I never, never part from thee.[v]

III: Violent Floods

The Israelites, the whole congregation, came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month, and the people stayed in Kadesh. Miriam died there, and was buried there.

Now there was no water for the congregation; so they gathered together against Moses and against Aaron. The people quarrelled with Moses and said, ‘Would that we had died when our kindred died before the Lord! Why have you brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness for us and our livestock to die here? Why have you brought us up out of Egypt, to bring us to this wretched place? It is no place for grain, or figs, or vines, or pomegranates; and there is no water to drink.’ Then Moses and Aaron went away from the assembly to the entrance of the tent of meeting; they fell on their faces, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and your brother Aaron, and command the rock before their eyes to yield its water. Thus you shall bring water out of the rock for them; thus you shall provide drink for the congregation and their livestock.

So Moses took the staff from before the Lord, as he had commanded him. Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, ‘Listen, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?’ Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff; water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their livestock drank. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.’ These are the waters of Meribah [that is, ‘Bitterness’], where the people of Israel quarrelled with the Lord, and by which he showed his holiness.

 Numbers 20.1-13

Pilate said to them, ‘Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?’ All of them said, ‘Let him be crucified!’ Then he asked, ‘Why, what evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Let him be crucified!’

So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.’

Matthew 27.22-24

Among the many complexities in the history of the attributions for books of our holy scriptures, is the longstanding tradition that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. What makes this astounding to contemplate is that of course Moses dies partway through. Now, there are rational and mystical answers to this, including perhaps Moses sitting there writing his own death some long dark night before his death occurs.

Moses had been through a lot — from the very beginning, set off onto the Nile in a fragile reed boat…Moses was not a young man, certainly not by the end of those 40 years through the desert. There are any number of reasons why Moses might have died.

This passage in numbers tells us why Moses died. There's a lot going on in this reading. It might have slipped past you, but it's there. God tells Moses “You shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”

There's a great deal of midash about this passage.( One of the wonderful traditions of Jewish biblical scholarship, prayer, and faith is that scripture is accompanied by an entire canon of stories and commentary, midrash, and commentaries wrestling with Midrash. An old friend, Rabbi Yehezkel, taught me:  You get three rabbis together, you get five opinions.)

You might be wondering, “Wait, wait. So, the vicar just said this is why Moses died. What did he do to die?”

God said, "Take the staff, assemble the congregation, you and your brother Aaron, and command the rock before their eyes to yield its water.” But Moses took the staff as he Lord had commanded him, "Gather the assembly together. Listen, you rebel. Shall we bring water for you out of the rock?” Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff.[vi]

That was not in the rubric. Somebody called the archdeacon. There were no instructions to strike the rock.

Rabbi Rashi of the 11th century argued that Moses tried to lessen the greatness of the miracle by hitting the rock. Instead of speaking to it, Moses and Aaron failed to show the Israelites how even the mute and deaf stones obey the word of God's commands. Maimonides, the greatest of the medieval Jewish philosophers, in his discussion of the sin of unjustified anger, explains that Moses’ sin lies not in deflating the grandeur of the miracle, but in his violence.[vii]

But Rabbi Cheryl Peretz, a contemporary Reform Jewish rabbi, points to Miriam’s death. I don't know if you caught that at the beginning of the passage. This is where Miriam dies. We have this story of water from the rock twice. Once at the beginning of the story of the journey, in Exodus, and then once towards the end, here in Numbers. And this story begins with Miram’s death.  Rabbi Cheryl writes:

“Miriam’s death robs Moses of his ability to govern. Not yet having had a chance to mourn the love and loss of his sister,  Moses lashes out at God, at people, and even at rock. His sister’s death takes from him the very ability in him that she inspired to courageously and unashamedly intercede with God on behalf of the Jewish people. In those moments of sorrow and hurt, Moses is a human being crying out in pain. And perhaps, God’s words about entering the land are less of a consequence and more a way of helping Moses to acknowledge that he and Aaron, like Miriam, had limited days in this world, and would die soon as well.” [viii]

Mortality is terrifying. I don't like it. And Good Friday is a day of terrible violence and of terrible injustice. The violence of institutions terrified of change and in denial of their own mortality. It is a day about the violence of the state of institutions — Pilate, temple soldiers, the crowd, the appeal to higher authorities, the threatening with riot and with shame. A day of power, control, fear.

Today is a day where we tell the story of the violence of the state. The violence of communities when they are frightened, unjust, unable to change, unable to face the reality of mortality. To fear death above everything else is to worship death. It is to make death into our idol. So often our nations have done so.

Good Friday is a day of terrible violence of religion as well.  (And here, let me flag up because it's a Johannine year, that there's a long Christian tradition of taking John's gospel as proof of blood libel. “His death be upon us and our children and our children's children.” Our responsibility is to the log in our own eye, including using this passage to justify pogroms and Holocausts.

Today is the day where we tell the story of the violence of religion. All the kinds of violence the church has and still carries out — a history of slavery ,some of which funded Lambeth Palace, the Church of England, some of our churches here in Cambridge. The violence in our failures in safeguarding. The violence done to those whom we should protect. Precisely because the failure of safeguarding comes when an institution is so terrified of its own mortality that it will harm anybody else rather than speaking up — failures to take responsibility, acknowledging sin and failure, facing change, consequence, responsibility…

But Good Friday tears in two the veil which disguises the violence of every power and principality. Oh, I don't want to go here, but I'm going to go here. Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of War and member of a self-described Christian Nationalist church, prayed last week for  “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy….Let every round find its mark  against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation”[ix]

In the words of Pope Leo, quoting the Prophet Isaiah: “Jesus does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’ ”[x]

With every word of Hegseth’s sinful prayer, with every munition falling on Iran, falling on Israel, falling on Palestine, Lebanon, on Ukraine, on Sudan…with every round, I hear the soldiers pounding their nails into our Lord’s hands and feet, trying to bloody hands that never were curled into fists, that never struck the rock, were always open and raised in love, were always ready to heal, to comfort, to feed.

Pilate may pour out his libations of smooth words, he may dribble his water from his golden ewer into his silver bowl, but it will not wash away the violence of Good Friday. 

Thank God for this day, this Good Friday. That at least one day a year we might not flinch and look away. That we might not water down our faith and make peace with war. Thank God for this day, which teaches us to grieve at loss, at injustice, at cruelty and violence, at the devastation of creation and the fouling of our waters, at the exploitation and abuse of those who should be most protected, at the genocide and erasure of whole peoples.

Listen to the crowd. Feel the skin-crawling hypocrisy and cowardice of Pilate. And then Look on the Cross, and know it to be the Tree of Life. O Tree of beauty, Tree of Light![xi]Jesus even in his agony choosing mercy and forgiveness, that a river might spring up from the foot of a cross, not by violence, not by pride, not by avarice, but by mercy and fidelity and love, so that justice may roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream![xii]

IV: Everyone who Thirsts, Come to the Waters

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”’

 John 7.37-38

Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out.

John 19.32-34

One of the questions I'm asked when teaching First Communion and Confirmation classes is, what's up with the pouring a little bit of water into the chalice of wine?

The first answer, and not the only answer, but the first answer is because that's how wine was drunk. Transporting wine by clay amphorae across distances was expensive and difficult. Storage was complicated. A strong fortified wine will keep better, travel better, and takes up less space, but doesn't taste very good unwatered. It is the orange squash problem.

Now, that's actually not a bad thing to teach because it's not a secret and it is part of the anamnesis, the remembrance that happens here at the eucharistic table. We remember that last supper. We remember Jesus's words and action at that table. It doesn't invalidate the other meanings hid within.

The mystery of the wine and water outpoured runs through the whole of Christian mysticism, sacramental theology, and illustration. Wonderful images of angels holding chalices at the wounded side of Christ.It's echoed in the pelican here at our door when you come in. That beautiful, beautiful set of handles that Sarah Airriess here in this congregation designed. The story, the legend, of the pelican is that when she doesn't have food for her children, she pierces her own side and feeds her children with her blood. A medieval bestiary telling the story of the sacrament.

The water mingled with blood from Jesus's side was not entirely unusual. It is a bit grim and gory, but one of the effects of crucifixion is drowning. The inability to take a full breath. The lungs filling up with plural effusion. It was for John a miracle and a medical point as well, which is to say the water and blood was confirmation of Jesus's death. And the reality of Jesus death is an essential condition for the resurrection.

For some early church fathers, mingling of Christ's nature, human and divine, is visible in that mingling of the water. For Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage in the third century, the mingling of water and wine symbolises the mystical union between Christ the wine and the faithful baptized. Ambrose some centuries later writes, "The water flows into the chalice and springs forth into everlasting life.” An incredible transformation. The act of adding water to the cup brings our mind to our baptism. Brings to mind the river of life that flows from the heavenly city. Brings to mind what Nicodemus heard.

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”’[xiii]

Nicodemus heard those words, John’s gospel implies,  because a few lines later, the Chief Priests and Pharisees are shouting at the Temple police for not arresting Jesus.  They had one job to do. But they were wise enough that when they heard Jesus they thought, "Oh, something bigger than us is happening here.” But the chief priests and Pharisees are angry. It's much easier being the one sending out the violence than having to carry it out.

Nicodemus, himself among the leaders, pours oil on the stormy waters by saying “‘Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?”[xiv]

It’s a procedural trick, perhaps — we’re in an era now of police procedurals, but for old fogies like me…I remember Matlock. I remember when the hero of the procedurals was the defense attorney. At some point in the 21st century, the public defenders became the bad guys, prosecutors always the good guys.

But Nicodemus uses a word trick worthy of Matlock or of Rumpole of the Bailey. A trick that worked because it was justice. Because Nicodemus knew there is a reason for procedure, for safeguarding, not just for Jesus whom he visited at night, who perhaps Nicodemus wanted to hear more of, or who perhaps was a little worried that Jesus might look up and say , "Oh, there you are. I remember you.” But because Nicodemus knew what might happen to his whole community if the law could be used as a weapon, careless where it lands and who it damages.

And then on Good Friday, Nicodemus is somewhere there in the crowds standing in the shade, perhaps with the other religious leaders. He told himself he had to show up because otherwise his colleagues would begin to suspect. Suspect what? Well… suspect.  Suspect that he was an enthusiast. A follower. A gullible Galilean.  He told himself it was for his own safety, a life-preserver of respectability and compliance…He had worked hard to get to this post. He was not going to let the tug of his heart endanger all that hard work.

Living here in Cambridge, many of us have heard the voice of this temptation to never rise above a dry and private faith: rational, quietly hidden and shy of any public confession. And like all sandcastles, a dry faith can crumble when the tide comes crashing in.

For when the water and blood flowed from Jesus’ side,Nicodemus knew that he was drowning. Knew, as sure as he was standing there on the dry stones of  the Jerusalem hills, that he was drowning. Drowning beneath a flood that washed away every dry sandcastle of his life, the pitiless violence of all he had esteemed laid bare, and on the cross, the gentle teacher with whom he had quietly spoken so many nights ago.

The day had grown strange and dark. The crowd silent and sullen, but for the weeping of the Galilean women.The blood and water flowed from Jesus’ side, and it roared in Nicodemus’ ears, roared like tempest and gale, cataract and flood.

And then silence. Terrible silence.  Tears coursing down Nicodemus’ cheeks. And in that silence, a still small voice whispers: Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.[xv]

Pierced by the spear, from thence there flow

Water and blood from out his side:

Baptise me in that cleansing stream,

 Jesus, my Lord, the crucified.[xvi]

The water flows into the chalice, and springs forth unto everlasting life.  With tears of grief and hurt; with the warm lifeblood of love and joy; by your baptism, by your participation in the eucharist; out of your heart shall flow rivers of living water.

V: Drought

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’

Ezekiel 37.1-3

After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

John 19.38-42

We began our journey hovering over the deep, dipping our oar into the star-swept ocean. But now we find ourselves in the desert. A valley full of bones.  We walk with Ezekiel, led by the hand of the lord around the valley,  and everywhere he stepped, bones. Femurs and ribs, ulna, clavicle, tibia and fibula, metacarpals, tiny malleus, incus and stapes, all silently rattling in the wind. And they were very dry.  Very dry.

I’ve known deserts. Lord I have known deserts. I’m guessing you have as well.  Times that were so very dry when prayers turn into dust before they can move from the heart to the mouth—  and the heart withering in the heat of anger or loss, anxiety, exhaustion. I've known deserts with no faith at all and deserts where I knew I had a faith, but it kept turning to sand.

One of the great comforts of the gospels is that the consequence of Jesus’s baptism in those lush waters of the Jordan, named after its swift flowing waters, was not transportation into a green paradise, but being driven out into the desert. We can struggle sometimes if we expect that our faith in God, our journey with Jesus Christ will be easy all the time. But Jesus, baptized with water and the Holy Spirit, goes out into the desert, tested, struggling, thirsty, and alone.

Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water. But God knows what God is about,  and the scriptures tell us clearly:  I  am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.[xvii]

Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water and so the Spirit drives us into the desert.  We stretch out our hands, and are taken where we do not wish to go.  To bring to the desert the waters entrusted to us, to pour out our hearts onto the dry and stony ground, so that new life might begin.

It is into that desert that Nicodemus, almost ludicrous in his grief,  fresh in his desert-spring eruption of faith, comes staggering with nearly a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloewood. Even adjusting for the relative lightness of the Roman pound, it’s an impossible amount, a sort of desert madness. Joseph of Arimathea must have been shaking his head when Nicodemus came lumbering up to the tomb, bearing enough myrrh to anoint a whole village. But whatever sarcastic comment might have been on his lips withered and dried at the look of grief on Nicodemus’ face.

He sets the jars down at the entrance to the tomb, wipes his eyes and whispers: ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’

“All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,” the psalmist tells us.[xviii]  All the paths — even the ones into the desert. Nicodemus went out that first night  knowing he was on a fragile craft above a fathomless deep, unknown fears submerged in the darkness, and the wind blowing hard as he flitted through the shadows of Jerusalem.

Nicodemus did not know if the waters were safe. And Nicodemus was right.

Nicodemus suspected there was blood in the waters. And Nicodemus was right.

But until that moment, standing by the open maw of the new hewn tomb, Nicodemus did not know that the waters were bearing him, not directly out to open, star-filled seas,  but underground, drawn into the dust of desert and death as if the living waters had never been:

Lifeless lies the pierced Body,

Resting in its rocky bed ;

Thou hast left the Cross of anguish

For the mansions of the dead. [xix]

The living waters cannot be held down beneath the driest sand, nor the living waters damed and kept from flowing out of the believer’s heart.  But this day, this day we will not leap ahead to Easter.  We will wait in the desert, so very very dry. We will step with Nicodemus into the darkness of the tomb, our arms shaking with the weight of our grief, our aloes and myrrh.

We will step into the desert. with those made homeless and bereaved by war. With refugees near and far. With friends bearing unbearable grief.  With the woundedness of creation, with the agony in our own hearts, with our scars and wounds of betrayal and loss. We will step out into the desert.

We come to the desert of Good Friday, to the darkness of the tomb with no answer of our own but Ezekiel’s cry: O Lord, You know.

From deep within, behind the shadows and the rocks in that tomb, maybe there is that trickling golden sound of water flowing underground? On this Good Friday, we strain to hear.

But loud in the desert, the wind howls. Nicodemus takes our hand, gently, still trembling with faith and grief, and tells us:  The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.[xx]

ENDNOTES

[i] Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41.

[ii] Robert Macfarlane, Underland https://lithub.com/why-are-we-driven-to-explore-the-very-depths-of-this-earthly-abyss/

[iii]Rock of Ages, Augustus Toplady, 1740-78 (NEH 445)

[iv] cf Justin Martyr, d.165 AD, though my use here is admittedly little nebulous and would probably annoy both the Stoics and Bishop Justin

[v] NEH 305, Soul of my Saviour, sanctify my breast (Anima Christi), Latin 14th century, translation anonymous

[vi] cf Numbers 20.7-20

[vii] https://www.thetorah.com/article/moses-strikes-the-rock-his-sin-depends-on-your-worldview

[viii] https://www.aju.edu/ziegler-school-rabbinic-studies/our-torah/back-issues/caught-between-rock-and-hard-place

[ix] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/26/hegseth-prayer-violence-pentagon

[x] https://www.reuters.com/world/pope-leo-says-god-rejects-prayers-leaders-who-wage-wars-2026-03-29/ , Isaiah 1.15

[xi] The royal banners forward go (Vexilla Regis prodeunt) Venantius Fortunatus, 530-609 Translator: J. M. Neale, 1818-66. NEH 79.

[xii] Amos 5.24    

[xiii] John 7.37-38

[xiv] John 7.51

[xv] John 7.38

[xvi] O come and stand beneath the cross,  © The Canterbury Press Norwich (NEH 98)

[xvii] Isaiah 43.19

[xviii] Psalms 25.10

[xix] ‘It is finished! Blesséd Jesus’ (NEH 99), William Maclagan, 1826-1910

[xx] John 3.8