"PASSION SUNDAY"

          The story of how and why Jesus died can inform us about the purpose and significance of his life and ministry. It is a difficult story to reflect on…such pain, such torture, such disappointment and despair. Let’s consider the cast of characters that tell us a little something about ourselves, if we are willing to look closely.

       Pilate, procurator or governor of Judea, has no interest in Jewish religious affairs except as they impact Rome’s civil authority. There is no separation of church and state. For Pilate, Jesus is a political problem. He threatens both Rome and the Jewish leaders. He challenges Rome as an oppressive presence in the life of the Jewish minority. Jesus takes the Jewish religious authorities to task for their legalistic interpretations of scripture. He criticizes their failure to reach out to the oppressed and outcasts among them.

       There is great irony about Pilate, a seasoned political figure, who doesn’t understand Jesus’ true identity and, on the other hand, Pilate’s wife, a woman with status only because of her husband, who understands that he is an innocent man who deserves no ill will. It reminds me of the story in Matthew 26, the chapter before this story, where Jesus is dining with a Pharisee and an unnamed woman enters the home and anoints him with expensive oil. The Pharisee is disturbed by the

 physical contact between an ‘unclean’ woman and Jesus. He completely misses the fact that Jesus will die soon. However, the woman is anointing his body with oil just as is custom prior to burial of a body of a beloved one. The woman is compelled to show Jesus her love and devotion to him. Both the unnamed woman who enters the Pharisee’s house and Pilate’s unnamed wife challenge male authority figures and the powerless recognize the truly powerful.

       Pilate is concerned about sentencing an innocent man to die… concerned enough that he washes his hands to symbolize that he has no responsibility for Jesus’ death. He tries to have a way out by offering up Jesus and Barabbas to the crowd. In what ways do we silence the voice of justice, perhaps God’s own will, coming to us through another person, as Pilate did his own wife, in order to maintain the status quo?

Pilate failed to trust God’s hand at work in his wife’s dream. Do we discount another person’s experience of God, because their encounter with God does not resonate with our own experiences? Are we, through our own passivity, complicit in evil perpetrated upon others?

       There is a little Pilate in each of us…the one who will dodge one’s own sense of moral agency in an unjust situation because to stand up against a crowd because it might mean losing popularity or even power. It takes courage to stand as Jesus did before an authority figure and not compromise one’s true identity. When Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you King of the Jews?” Jesus knew if he answered ‘yes’ then Pilate would have no choice but to execute him as an enemy of Roman rule. Jesus also knew that he could not honestly say that he wasn’t King of the Jews.

Jesus was a truth teller. Truth telling is far more than being honest. It is a commitment to defend, no matter what the cost, a deep truth that will always set us free.

I had the pleasure a few weeks ago of being interviewed by a high school student named Corey. She lives in rural Missouri and is taking a broadcasting class. She is a brave soul because she chose to do her project on Gay Rights.

 Corey’s eyes welled up with tears as I talked about Fred Phelps and his followers who picketed Matthew Shepard’s funeral with messages of hate and condemnation. She asked me, “How can you have hope for the future?” I smiled and told her that kids like her, straight young people, who are brave enough to do a school project on Gay rights give me hope. Corey risked the animosity of her peers and the ‘dreaded high school rumor.’ She stands with us in a small rural school where the religious right has a strong hold on the youth. It is courage like Corey’s to stand up for all people that inspires me.

Martin Niemoller, German writer, puts it this way, “When the Nazis came for the mentally challenged and physically disabled I said nothing because I am not mentally challenged or physically disabled. When they came for the gays and lesbians I said nothing because I am not gay or lesbian. When they came for the Jews I said nothing because I am not a Jew. When they came for me there was no one to speak up for me.”

In thinking about the brutality done to Christ by the powers that be and the crowd, I can’t help but think about Barabbas. Barabbas is a notorious criminal. Ironically, Barabbas means ‘Son of Father’ Bar means ‘Son of’ and Abba means ‘Father’. Barabbas might have been the Son of a prominent rabbi, rabbis were sometimes called father. The crowd called for the release of Barabbas, a known criminal, who according to Luke’s gospel was guilty of insurrection and murder. I am not advocating execution of anyone, guilty or innocent. I ask myself could I have shouted for the release of Jesus while standing in a sea of people shouting ‘Barabbas’? I like to think that I could have found the courage to call for Jesus, but to tell you the absolute truth, I’m not certain. Are there places in your life where you call for the release of Barabbas? Do you get caught up in the mentality of the crowd even if deep in your heart you know they are wrong? Perhaps you hold a prejudice that you were taught without fully examining the assumptions you have made about a group of people different than you.

       The Roman soldiers stripped Jesus and put a scarlet robe on him. Scarlet was a color worn by Roman officers…it would be quite insulting to a Jew living under Roman rule to be dressed in scarlet.  They twisted thorns into a crown and placed it on his head. The soldiers were mocking and taunting Jesus. How hard it must have been not to yell out at them! He said nothing.

       Jesus knew that even his own followers could not understand that his kingdom was not of this world. Surely, his enemies would not comprehend his sovereignty. Jesus was focused and, not on what soldiers with political power and might on their side but, rather, on God and God’s plan of salvation for all.

Matthew, more than the other gospels, is interested in presenting Jesus as a thoroughly Jewish fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures. The sense of Jesus fulfilling his destiny through his life, suffering and death is pervasive throughout the Gospel. The people mock him with the same words used by the devil in the temptation story, ‘If you are the Son of God….’ The chief priests, elders and scribes said, “He saved others but he can’t save himself! He’s the King of Israel! Let him come down off the cross and we will believe in him.’

       Do we doubt the power of Jesus? Do we report to God what God’s power should look like in our world? The chief priests, elders and scribes would believe if only Jesus comes down off the cross and we believe, precisely, because he doesn’t. Jesus knew that, in order, to save us he could not save himself.

       In Hebrew thought, nature is seen as responding to the presence of God. And so the earth darkened for three hours over the whole land. The light of the world was flickering and he would be snuffed out in the cruelest way imaginable. The Earth could not help but to respond to the darkest hour of humanity.

       Jesus called out ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ We have all called out our own personal version of the same thing. Words of desperation, pangs of abandonment, the pain of the absence of God or, rather, the perceived absence of God …states we can all relate to some extent. Jesus is actually reciting Psalm 22. The psalm is heavily quoted in Matthew’s version of the Passion, again to prove Jesus as fulfillment of the scriptures.

       Jesus died just as he lived, with outstretched arms, open to all, among the outcasts of his day, the robbers on both sides. Those who were supposed to stand by him did not. The disciples abandoned him, Peter denied him and Judas betrayed him. Those who were powerful did not understand his life and mission on earth. The last people you would expect, the governor’s wife and her dream, the Cyrene named Simon and the Roman soldier, a centurion, bravely became truth tellers, ‘Surely this is the Son of God.’

       Will we, like Pilate, wash our hands of the responsibility of the destruction of Christ in our midst? Will we shout for Barabbas or live a deeper life with God and examine the depths of our own conscience? Will we see the plan of God even through our own pain and suffering?

       Jesus lived and loved more fully than anyone else ever had. The powers of this world find nothing more threatening than loving all people. Jesus had to be killed for he threatened the significance of death, itself. After all, if you live a life filled with nothing but love can you really ever die? Love, truly, is the only eternal truth. Today, we heard the Passion story, a story about a life so fully lived, and a heart so committed to love, that Jesus was willing to risk it all so that we, too, might know the fullness of God’s love.

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