Story

The Bible presents itself as a story of everything: Genesis begins with the words, 'In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth', and John's Gospel echoes that cosmic scope by starting with, 'In the beginning was the Word'. But with the failures of Adam, Cain and Noah, the Bible becomes a story of how God chose one people, Abraham and his descendants, the twelve tribes of Jacob. What began as a wide-canvas epic becomes a lyric tale of God's love for Israel, whose destiny continually hangs by a thread. Israel is starved in Canaan, enslaved in Egypt, lost in the wilderness, outnumbered in the Promised Land, leaderless in the time of the Judges, overrun by the Assyrians and the Chaldeans, exiled in Babylon, and almost obliterated by the scheming Haman in Susa. At every stage everybody wonders, and usually somebody says, 'God has abandoned us' – and who can blame them for imagining so?

At the centre of the Old Testament is the covenant that God makes with Moses on Mt Sinai. The story of the Old Testament is of how that covenant came to be made and of whether that covenant will survive the tragedies and tribulations of Israel's faithfulness and folly. Perhaps the crucial moment in that unfolding drama comes in Babylon, when Israel reflects back on the thousand or so years since the covenant, and realizes it's as close to God in exile as it ever was in the Promised Land. The prophet Hosea tells this story in all its simplicity and poignancy. 'When Israel was a child,' God says in Hosea 11, 'I loved him ... I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks ... The more I called them, the more they went from me ... How can I hand you over, O Israel? I will not execute my fierce anger ... I will not come in wrath ... I will return them to their homes.' Here we see God's side of the story.

All of this shapes how we understand the cross. The Gospels present Jesus as the embodiment of the covenant, utterly Israel and utterly God. Jesus re-enacts the great events of Israel's history; being baptized at the Jordan to reflect Joshua entering the Promised Land across the Jordan, spending 40 days in the wilderness to mirror Israel's 40 years, calling twelve disciples to echo Israel's twelve tribes, delivering a sermon on the mount to imitate Moses' time with God on Mt Sinai, right up until his body is destroyed on the cross like Israel's temple was destroyed by the Chaldeans. At the same time the rejection of Jesus by the scribes and Pharisees and Sanhedrin is presented as the final among Israel's long list of failures to honour the covenant. And yet, just as Israel was closer to God in exile than ever elsewhere, so we are closer to God at the moment of Jesus' crucifixion, his ultimate exile from God and from us, than at any other moment.

Jesus assumes the mantle of Israel, suffering for all Israel's sins, and finally achieving what the temple was there to do – make good God's relationship with Israel through repentance embodied in sacrifice. But Jesus also thereby makes a new covenant, not just with Israel, but with all humankind. This is the great gift of St Paul, who in his life and his letters demonstrates how forgiveness and eternal life are extended to all who believe.

And this is where the problem arises. We could call it one problem with three manifestations. The problem we can call history – or to put it more aptly, what happens when story meets history. The first manifestation of the problem is a moral one. In order to explain why God opened the covenant up to Gentiles, the Church started to tell a terrible story of what was wrong with the Jews. And that led to centuries of persecution and culminated in the Holocaust. That legacy of persecution is so damaging that it threatens to leave the moral credibility of Christianity hanging by a thread. But it has more subtle aspects. It's fashionable in some congregations to express misgivings about conventional doctrines of the atonement that suggest Jesus died as a sacrificial victim in our place, or took the world's sins on his back, or that portray Jesus as a conquering hero destroying death and parading down the heavenly way. But notice that all of these atonement theories have one thing in common: they attempt to tell the story of God in a manner that airbrushes out the Jews altogether. The scar of the Church's conscience about the Jews isn't limited to historical oppression: it's riven through conventional doctrine too.

The second manifestation of what happens when story meets history is a factual one. What do we do when textual scholars and archaeologists cast serious doubts on whether some crucial parts of the story measure up to historical scrutiny? If there wasn't, say, an Abraham, or if there's no evidence of an exodus – if Haman's threat in the book of Esther to exterminate the Jews is a made-up fable? What do we make of the Bible, if important elements may never really have happened? When story becomes 'just a story'? Is our heritage hanging by a thread?

And the third dimension of history is a philosophical one. Even if one grants that the most significant parts of the story do indeed match with the historical record, how can one event, that happened once in one place, have significance for the meaning of everything, everywhere? As one eighteenth-century philosopher put it, how can accidental truths of history become the proof of necessary truths of reason? Isn't there a yawning chasm between faith, that holds great store by particular events and people, and history, that derives conclusions from universal phenomena? Doesn't this leave faith hanging by a thread?

Much thought has been put into rescuing Christianity from the dangling thread of history that these three dimensions bring about. When we look at the cross, we see the agony and the isolation of Christ, but to believe it's all in vain, that it's pointless to imagine one moment of sacrifice can represent everything or change anything – that makes the agony all the more excruciating. How can we keep hold of the tiny thread of faith in the face of the dismantling tendency of history?

Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities tells of two men who look extraordinarily alike. One is Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat whose relatives have caused untold suffering to the common people in the decades prior to the French Revolution. He marries the winsome Lucie, even though both realize that his family have caused her terrible grief, including her father's long imprisonment. The other man is Sydney Carton, an alcoholic and depressive English barrister, who also loves Lucie, but fails to win her hand. At the climax of the novel, Charles, who returns to Paris, is arrested and faces the guillotine. But Sydney, playing on the resemblance between the two, in love of Lucie and desire for once to make something worthy of his life, drugs Charles and goes to the guillotine in his place, saying, 'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.'

What Sydney's gesture shows us is that Jesus' cross may be inseparable from his place in Israel's story; but that all of us can take up our cross and follow him. We can't make sense of Jesus detached from God's covenant with Israel; but we can imitate Jesus in the way we make and renew our covenants with one another. We can't insert ourselves in the turbulent events of first-century Jerusalem; but we can allow ourselves to be enfolded by God's story, transformed by Jesus' sacrifice, and moved to walk in his steps. If left to our intellect alone, we will constantly find reasons why our connection to a faraway figure in a faraway country at a faraway time moves little, matters less, and means nothing. But, like Sydney Carton, we each face moments in our existence when we have the chance to say or do something that shows what we believe life is for, existence is about, and truth is made of. Jesus' sacrificial death is that far, far better thing. Our connection to it may seem, for much of our life, to hang by a thread. But when we face the moment of truth, we come face to face with the cross. And we discover that, hanging by the thread, is none other than Jesus.

Trust

In the face of the onslaught of critical historical and scientific analyses in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Christianity turned inward. The test of truth became not so much 'Did this happen?' or 'Can it be proven?' but 'Has it changed my life?' and 'Does it make me feel close to God?'

In 1995 the Committee on Standards in Public Life issued what are known as the Nolan Principles for guiding those in public office. They are Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty and Leadership. It was a commendable attempt to elucidate what authority involves today. The trouble is, that ship sailed a long time ago. Authority is tied to an extensive and stable network of relationships and a hierarchy of duties and responsibilities. The TV series Downton Abbey was almost entirely made up of adventures that involved some trespass of these expectations; almost every plot was resolved by the imaginative reassertion of the hierarchy of duty. People are perpetually suspicious of authority, be it police, teachers, clergy or politicians, not simply because of egregious personal failures, but because our culture has largely repudiated the whole idea of hierarchical roles and relationships. Once we may have not have liked authority figures, but we still trusted them; today we may like them, but we don't trust them.

A similar change has taken place in relation to community. Almost everyone regards community as a good word – a place of stability, trust, shared values, joint efforts and abiding respect. But I wonder how many people reading these words are still living in the neighbourhood in which they grew up. Very few, I'm guessing. And how many are sad about that? Not that many, I'd imagine. Why? Because community may offer trust, but that trust comes at a price of indelible prejudice, small-mindedness, long memories for things you'd prefer to be forgotten, resistance to change, and the death of ambition. You go back to your home town and suddenly you feel infantilized: everyone expects you to have pigtails and wear short trousers. We say we want community, and the trust that comes with never locking our doors; but we make social choices that suggest the opposite. And for good reasons.

So that means we place a colossal weight of expectation on intimate relationships to bear the whole burden of trust that once used to be shared across authority structures and local communities. I often wonder how it is that for all our tolerance about sexuality and our dismantling of many time-honoured taboos, almost everyone agrees that betrayal in a relationship is a terrible thing. I think the reason is that when we've stopped believing in almost everything the romantic idea that two people can be so in love that it can last for ever is one of the few sacred things society still holds dear. But our sense of intimate trust isn't restricted to sexual partnership. Take the acronym BFF. Instagram would die out tomorrow if we couldn't declare one another Best Friends Forever. There'd be no teenage television if we abandoned the plotline about the person you thought was your friend turning out nasty and then making up. In short, we've domesticated trust, instrumentalized most of the relationships of the market or the workplace, and evacuated public life of mutual responsibility.

All of which makes the passion narrative horrifying reading. On Palm Sunday everyone wants to be Jesus' friend. The tidal wave of popularity that has on occasion looked like carrying Jesus to national prominence lifts him high on a crest of the palm branches and cloaks and hallelujahs. But a few days later the same crowd has turned sour and their eyes have turned to hatred as they screech 'Crucify!' You can't trust a crowd. You can't place your faith in popularity. It blows with the wind.

But what about Jesus' nearest and dearest? One of the twelve, Judas, can't bear the way things are going. What's his problem? Is it that he believes Jesus has everything but is tossing it away, just like the woman who tossed away a wealth of perfume by using it to wash Jesus' feet? Is it that he wakes up and realizes he's backed the wrong horse, and violent confrontation is the only way to displace the Romans? Is it that he envies Jesus and aches to get the limelight himself? Or does he think he knows better than Jesus and wants to force Jesus to defeat the Romans by triggering a dramatic showdown? We'll never know. But at the most intimate moment of friendship, the Last Supper, Judas and Jesus dip their bread together – before Judas runs out to give the game away. It's a fundamental betrayal: deliberate, planned, devastating. And what of the other disciples? They go to Gethsemane, Jesus asks three of them to watch while he prays, and they nod off, away with the fairies, stashing zeds, not once, not twice – but three times. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. That's the kindest possible interpretation.

Then the soldiers arrive and the disciples scarper. So much for all their promises to be by Jesus' side until kingdom come. When the going gets tough the tough get lost. And all roll over till there's one left. Peter. In the courtyard, cock-a-doodle-doo. Not once, not twice, but three times. This isn't flaky Judas or soon-to-be-doubting Thomas. This is Peter, the rock, the one with the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the first pope, the Church's one foundation.

What a scene of devastation. Don't let the fact that you know the story so well allow you to ignore how catastrophic this is. We have a script half-written in our heads: Jesus is misunderstood by the masses, double-crossed by the authorities, cynically disposed of by the Romans – but his tight-knit band of brothers, his beloved disciples, these happy few, who lived that day and saw old age, would yearly on the vigil feast their neighbours; those that outlived that day, and came safe home, would stand a-tip-toe when that day was named. And those who had been a-bed would think themselves accursed they were not there, because these household names would forever be celebrated for the wonder that togetherness, and comradeship, and unflinching bonds of loyalty could achieve. That's the story, straight out of Henry V, we so want to believe – that arbitrary duty and outdated responsibility are vanquished, but true commitment, profound trust and eyeball-to-eyeball loyalty conquer everything.

But it turns out that story's in tatters. Our trust in human goodness, in the power of love and best friends for ever and manly handshakes and undying commitment is practically spent. It's hanging by a thread. You know that winsome phrase, 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.' It sums up our contemporary conviction that institutions and authority are bunk but the power of trust and loyalty and commitment can achieve anything. Well, whoever coined that phrase hadn't read the Passion narrative for a while. The Passion story tells how a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens totally disintegrated into betrayal, snoring, flight and denial. It's as if Jesus anticipated our contemporary faith in personal relationships and said, 'Don't be so sentimental. You're loading on to personal trust a burden it can't bear: look at what the disciples are really like. What makes you think you're any different?'

The first of the great five points of Calvinist doctrine is the notion of total depravity. Total depravity doesn't mean we human beings are utterly evil: it simply means we're incapable of doing good. Such good that we appear to do is flawed in both its intention and its action. What looks like altruism is in fact cleverly-disguised egocentrism. As the prayer of confession puts it, 'We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.' Our trust in ourselves is hanging by a thread.

But it's not as simple as that. Humanity is also capable of grace and kindness beyond our imagination. And that goodness is visible in the Holy Week story too. A woman anoints Jesus' feet and prepares him for burial. Simon of Cyrene carries Christ's burden. The women gather at the cross. Joseph of Arimathaea steps forward to provide a tomb. There's excitement, noble service, sacrificial love, humble devotion. Humanity doesn't just touch the depths of depravity; it reaches the heights of glory. That's what makes the story so poignant – so painful. There's still that tiny thread of grace. It would be so much simpler if we could simply say we were all good or all bad. As John Cleese said, 'It's not the despair I can't stand. It's the hope.' Hanging by a thread.