How would you go about calculating the value of a human life? How about the value of your life? That's a hard question to answer. We all assume that we're valuable, but are you valuable because of how much money you make or what you contribute to society through your job? Are you valuable because of how many people consider you a friend? Are you valuable because you have a family? The question makes us feel uncomfortable and the answer's even more, because if our worth is calculable in those ways, we could easily find ourselves worth not very much. Money, jobs, friends, even family can come and go.

Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters explains you are worthy. You are valuable, not because of what you do, or how much money you make, or who loves you, or what relationships you have. In fact, your worthiness, your value is totally out of your hands, just like the worthiness of the person sat next to you.

For you and for them and for all people everywhere, Jesus has looked at you in your totality and decided that you are worth his life. How you respond is up to you.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? These words echo through Good Friday. They're raw, violent, terrible.

They're the silence which follows a question everyone was too afraid to ask. The heartbreak of a child crying in fear and pain. The wailing of a bereaved parent.

Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters explains the events that occurred in the lead up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and that those who followed him until this day and through all days would be able to know the fullness of joy of being in the presence of the Father, led by Jesus the Son, empowered by the Spirit. In the hope that overcame his fear, our fear was saved. His fear gave way to the surety of the life of the Trinity, the goodness of the Father, the power of the Spirit.

In him our fear gives way to him. He who has gone before us has proven himself our good shepherd. And now, even when our path leads through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, because his rod and his staff will guide us where he has already gone.

We are sure that goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life, and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Thanks be to Jesus that he was afraid for us.

Yet when they made beings in the universe who could choose to reciprocate that love, those beings chose not to. We humans chose and continue to choose selfishness more than love, power more than generosity, riches more than contentment, the ability to dominate more than the ability to serve. Of course it would be easy to lay these traits at the doors of people like President Trump but truthfully they lie within all of us.

Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters invites each of us to love one another as Jesus has loved us. This is to dedicate ourselves to love so much that we have to share it. We have to share it with people who don't understand it, don't appreciate us, don't thank us for it, even hate us for it, but who need it just like we do. This Maundy Thursday as we prepare to walk with Jesus through the valley of the shadow of death, knowing that he goes in our stead, may we ask for his grace to love as he loved, to love so abundantly that kings and emperors are shamed by it.