He saves by Sacrifice
Sermon given in the context of the S John Passion at Holy Trinity Sloane Square, Palm Sunday 2023 The S John Passion was written as a liturgy to surround the sermon, and while tonight we perform it as a concert, there is justification for a few remarks about the religious import of what we are listening to. This is a Lutheran work but draws on the tradition of the Catholic Church to read the whole of the passion narrative of Saint John on Good Friday. On Palm Sunday one of the other gospels is read but St John comes round every year on Good Friday. Bach wrote for a Good Friday evening worship in which the passion lifted from Luther’s German translation of the Bible, specifically the 18th and 19th chapters of Saint John’s gospel, sung interspersed with hymns and interpretive Arias, and with a sermon at the heart. As we have heard, it begins with the betrayal and the question which is put to those who come to arrest Jesus but also to the congregation, Wen suchet ihr? whom do you