Dean’s Lent Addresses 2017: Cross – God’s Instrument of Salvation (Good Friday)

On this page you can find details of the sixth of the Dean of Melbourne’s Lent Addresses 2017, “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done” – Knowing Jesus Christ: Finding Salvation. You may also watch or read the firstsecondthird, fourth and fifth addresses.

You can read the readings Dean Andreas reflects on in his talk, and you can watch his talk.

When you have done so, you may wish to use the questions for group reflection our congregations are using for their Lent discussion, and the ‘thought for the week’ for your personal reflection. You may wish to conclude by praying the prayer used at our Lent discussion.

Readings for Good Friday: Isaiah 52 : 13 – 53 : 12, Psalm 22 : 1 – 21, Romans 6 : 5-14, John 19

Dean’s Address:

 

Questions for Group Discussion or Individual Reflection:

  • Reflecting on Dean Andreas’s sermon and the events of Holy Week from Palm Sunday to Good Friday, consider the emotions that Jesus’ disciples might have experienced as one event moved to the next throughout that event-filled week. How might you have reacted if you were among them that week?
  • If someone who had never heard the story of the Cross asked you how the Cross became God’s instrument of salvation, what would you say?
  • In his sermon, Dean Andreas said, We stand and we are silenced at the enormous gift of God’s love that led his own Son to die the lonesome death of a criminal. Who in his dying put an end to all death, and in his agony took away all sin. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all. The life he lived, and the life he will live, he lives to God.” How have you, how do you, or how will you, respond to that “enormous gift of God’s love that led his own Son to die the lonesome death of a criminal”?
  • In his sermon, Dean Andreas reminded us that we have “boundless opportunity to life our lives for the author, and restorer of our life”. How can we live in such a way?  What does such living mean for you?

Two verses from Romans on which to reflect in the days before Easter Day:

‘The death he died he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”  Rom. 6 : 10-11

 A Prayer at the end of your Study Time:

Lord Jesus Christ, my Saviour and my King, thank you for living and dying for me, so that I might know your saving grace in my life and have the assurance of everlasting life.  There are no words sufficient to express the depth of my gratitude for your forgiveness and love.  Thank you for that “amazing grace that saved a wretch like me”.  Help me to live every day in love of you and of my neighbours, to your glory.  Amen

 

© The Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne, 2017

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