The three most radical words Jesus said

Some Jewish friends recently asked me: ‘What is Good Friday?’ At first, they said, they had thought it was so called because of the peace agreement signed in Northern Ireland in 1998. Then they had learnt that it was a Christian thing, but they weren’t sure what. They wanted to know why it was ‘Good’. This put me to the test. You cannot explain anything about Christianity without paradox. It was Good, I hazarded, because it was bad: Jesus had to die to rise. My friends were scrupulously polite, but I thought I detected increasing perplexity. Many films of Christ’s Passion have been made, but all from a more or less Christian point of view. The film I should love to see would be one made through the eyes of a practising Jew. It was a Jewish (and Roman) sequence of events, after all, and in the holy city of the Jews. It is the story of the death of a Jew, yet one who has undergone what might be called the biggest cultural appropriation in history. Why did Jesus’s claims prompt such triumph, outrage and cruelty in that city that Passover? I am grateful to Bishop James Jones for repeating a point once made to him by the late chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks. In Sacks’s view, the three most extraordinary words Jesus ever spoke were, ‘But I say’ (Matthew, 5:22, and subsequently). Apparently no rabbinic literature speaks of scripture and tradition thus. They were utterly radical words. What did they start? 

Like most viewers, I was deeply impressed by the unselfishness of the words of the Princess of Wales in her sudden broadcast on Friday night. Her first thought was of gratitude for the public’s messages of support. Her last was for all those dealing with a cancer diagnosis – ‘You are not alone.’