Good Friday - 2018

The Dispassionate Dismissal of Jesus’ Life (Mark 14:55; 15:12)

Good Friday Worship – March 30, 2018

            Recently, I heard someone say, ‘we don’t think about death and that’s the only reason we can live.’  It’s nagging at me that I can’t remember the source of this statement.  I find it fascinating.  The only reason I can live and not be constantly, obsessively worried about death is I just don’t think about it.  The idea of my own death doesn’t frequently cross my mind.

Is that right?  Maybe. 

Many years ago, I was swimming and could not get into the shore.  In my frustration at swimming against the rip tide, I uselessly swam against it, and thus magnified my frustration.  And fear.  I had a moment where I thought, “This is it.”  I started telling God, I don’t want this to be it.   A surfer saw my struggles and calmly towed me in. 

I don’t think about my death.  However, in moments when I do contemplate it, I feel ominous, horrifying fear creeping around the edges of my consciousness.  It’s not the only feeling.  I know I am a new creation in Christ.  I know that he gives life everlasting.  Imagining being in the physical presence of Jesus rapturously swims through my brain when I contemplate my death; not just any death, or death in theory, but my death.  Depending on the day, such thoughts bring horror or bliss. 

But, it is never casual.  All thoughts of death are serious.  All talk of death stops me in my tracks and commands my attention. 

Mark 14:55 says, “The chief priests and the whole council were looking for testimony against Jesus to put him to death.”  These religious leaders, spiritual guides, were charged with teaching the word of God and the way of God to the chosen people of God.  God, as Jesus teaches in John’s Gospel, is God of the living.  Yet these temple leaders, Israel’s pastors, easily talk of killing Jesus.  Without regard for the weight of what they were saying, they spoke of ending his life. 

Then, in Mark 15:12, Pontius Pilate says, “What do you wish me to do with the man you call King of the Jews?”  Do with?  In the kitchen, I wipe down the wet counter and then hold the rag up and say to my wife, “What do I do with this?  Hang it up or throw it in the dirty clothes hamper?  Do with?  Mechanically impaired as I am, when a handyman like my brother-in-law John is fixing something at our house, I fish a strange looking piece of metal out of his tool box and ask, “What do you do with this?”

Do with?  Pilate asks, “What do you wish me to do with [this man called Jesus]?”  Is Jesus a used up rag?  Is Jesus a tool?  Pilate seemed to see him that way.  The temple council seemed to value his life about like the animals they ritually killed in worship.  How did men come to the place where they could so devalue a life? 

Do we still do that?  Do men and women in our day and time still show a callous disregard for the lives of people they deem unworthy of their respect or esteem?  Every person shot in a violent encounter with police is a human being made in the image of God?  That includes the guilty criminal.  That includes the police officers who often get shot.  That includes the unarmed civilians shot by mistake, or by callous disregard.

Do we devalue life the way the Roman Pilate and the Pharisee Caiaphas disregarded Jesus?  Every school child or church goer or night club reveler or high schooler killed in a mass shooting in this country are human beings created uniquely by God; God’s image bearers.  That includes the shooters. 

“The chief priests and the whole council were looking for testimony against Jesus to put him to death.”  “What do you wish me to do with the man you call King of the Jews?”

These first century leaders acted with inhuman callousness.  The Pharisees and council members intentionally stacked the evidence, framed the testimony, and vetted the witnesses.  They manipulated the illegitimate trial to get the verdict they planned ahead of time – a death sentence.  Then they manipulated a man they hated – Pilate – to get that sentence carried out in the cruelest of ways.  It seems they never stopped to ask, “What are we doing?”

A few of the leaders did; Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and others saw the kangaroo court for what it was and called their colleagues on it, this miscarriage of justice.  These minority voices were summarily dismissed.

For his part, Pilate was only vaguely aware of Jesus.  He did not think Jesus committed a crime at all, and he was certain Jesus had not done anything worthy of death.  However, his motivation was not justice, but appeasement.  If killing Jesus would keep the right Israelites calm and quiet, he would kill Jesus.  And that’s what he did. 

Besides the dispassionate dismissal of Jesus’ life displayed by the Council of priests and by Pilate, both groups also exhibited an appalling presumptuousness.  Both assumed life – Jesus’ life – was theirs to take or give.  They would not grant Jesus autonomy over his own life; both assumed the authority to determine whether Jesus would live or die. 

This is authority is God’s and God alone.  Only God creates life; only God should take life.  Anytime human beings take the life of other human beings, they are wresting away from God what is His right.  To kill another person is the ultimate usurping of God’s authority.  The Council and Pontius Pilate both did this without a thought.  And we do it today.  The slate of violence in America is one example.  The treatment of entire groups of people as political tools in places like Russia, Syria, and North Korea is another.  The assumption affluent people have that they deserve to hoard a disproportionate number of the world’s resources for their own comfort knowing that people in the world are starving is yet another example. 

That last one is really uncomfortable because it lumps a lot of us in with Caiaphas and Pilate and Hitler and Putin and Kim Jung Un.  But in terms of sin, we are no better.  And our sins are not vague spiritual abstractions.  Our sins are real, tangible ways we add to the dying brokenness that’s swallowing God’s good creation.  If you or I sat in Pilate’s seat, I can’t say that we would crucify Jesus as he did.  But I know we are just as sinful, and if we didn’t do it the way he did, then we’d injure and reject our beloved Lord in some other way. 

Our callous disregard of death is the clearest sign that sin has made a disastrous mess of Eden.  God created the world and we’re doing all we can to destroy it.  I don’t know if we willfully mean to, but I know I sin.  We all do it.  So it’s all a stinking, oozing mess and we’re in it up to our waists and the slop is rising. 

How do we know the one who existed before the creation of the world came as a human, a real person, 100% human man?  Jesus’ willingness to come and embrace death.  He saw the mess we are in and he stepped right into it.  Jesus had prescient, prophetic vision.  He knew death was coming before he ever came to Jerusalem.  But he came.  Jesus had supreme communication with God.  If he had called on a legion of heavenly warriors, angels, they would have come and the crucifixion would have never happened.  He never made that call.  When he knew the crucifixion was inevitable and God wasn’t going to change the plan, he literally took it like a man. 

I don’t mean that in the macho way was use that phrase.  I mean, like any human would, he wept.  He cried out to God in agony.  He bled when the whip ripped up chunks of his flesh.  He joined us in our humanity.  He took the worst we have to offer.  He suffered mightily leading up to the cross and then hanging on it.  He feared death as much as you or I would. 

Jesus did it because he knew that God would accept his death as an acceptable conclusion.  The death of Jesus was the endpoint for all sins committed by all people.  Jesus knew God would receive his death in this way.  He knew he was dying for the sins of the world.  His death showed his humanity; it also showed his love. 

How far did Jesus’ love go?  The cross is the answer.  On Good Friday, weep.  Death should drive us to frustrated, scared, defeated tears.  Death is the antithesis of God’s design for us.  Jesus’ death is the great sorrow of history, the nadir of all time, the lowest of low points.  Weep.

And, receive.  I’ve spoken of sin, because that’s the story.  My sin leads to Jesus’ death and creation’s degradation.  However, before the story, behind the story, over the story, and in the story, God is working to carry us beyond sin and into His good graces.  Receive the gift of righteousness.  Grieve your sins but then receive forgiveness and rejoice.  Even on this day, quietly rejoice because in Christ, you are a new creation.  We rehearse and re-tell the Good Friday story knowing Jesus’ gambit paid off.  In his act of love and sacrifice, sin is defeated and you and I are rescued.  John reports that Jesus said at the end, “It is finished.” 

This mess we’ve made, it’s done.  Finished. The grief that exhausts us, the guilt that tortures us, it is done.  God’s love is accomplished in Jesus’ death.  We walk in the story knowing who we are now, now that Jesus has done all he set out to do.  We are the sons and daughters of God, his beloved possessions. As you lived your life and walk through the Lent-Easter season, know this about yourself.  You are God’s beloved child.

AMEN

Filled and Hungry (Luke 4:1-13)

First Sunday of Lent, February 14, 2016

            Jesus fed 5000 people with just a few pieces of bread. Miraculously, he multiplies the food.  With one boy’s lunch, he feed the equivalent of a small town’s population.  How can he do this? 

Well, he can do it because he’s God in human flesh.

            With his disciples, he was out on a boat on the Sea of Galilee, water in all directions.  The winds beat against the men as the try to control their vessel in the face of angry waves.  As the boat is tossed to and fro, the men panic.  Jesus sleeps through it all until they wake him.  Then he commands the storm to be silent, and it obeys.  A raging storm at sea; how can he control it? 

He is God in human flesh.

            He had a good friend, Lazarus, and Lazarus died.  He was buried.  He was in the tomb for 4 days.  Jesus comes and calls him back to life.  It works!  Lazarus walks out of the grave. 

Jesus is God in human flesh.

            He gives blind people their site!  God in human flesh.

            So, we are not really expecting it when we see him tempted in Luke 4.  It’s not like you or me.  We are tempted by greed or anger or by hurt or by a thirst for revenge or by lust or by any of a 100 other things that lead us to destructive behavior.  Not Jesus. 

            In Luke, Jesus is born as all babies are.  In Luke, he is a teenager who worries his mother to death.  He is baptized and something happens to him when the Holy Spirit descends on him (3:22).  He experiences a change with the coming of the Spirit.  The Jesus we meet in Luke is very human. 

            Filled with the Holy Spirit, he is also led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, without provision.  What fool would go on a 40-day camping trip without any supplies?  Jesus.  But he didn’t go of his own volition.  Forty days without eating is more than fasting.  That’s starvation.  Imagine how badly your body would feel.  Jesus’ body felt that weak.  He had hunger pains.  He experienced that as a human experiences things.

            All the while, the devil openly tempted him.  I don’t think the devil appeared as a hideous beast.  That would be scary, not tempting.  No, I think the devil was inviting – encouraging Jesus in ways that sounded sensible. 

The devil offers food; Jesus was starving.  The devil offers authority; Jesus’ mission was to announce the kingdom of God.  Maybe it would be easier to announce “mission accomplished,” from the position of ruler of the world.  The devil challenges Jesus’ faith.  If you are the son of God, his angels will protect.  Do you hear the echo of Eden?  You won’t die if eat the fruit of this tree.  I know God said you would, but you won’t.  You’ll become like God.

Eve ate the forbidden fruit.  And she did not die, not in that moment any way.  Just as the serpent promised, she had vision she did not previously possess.  However, the first thing she saw was that she had disobeyed the God who created her and loved her.  Naked means more than unclothed.  She sinned and then she could see what she had done.

Satan’s temptations are half-truths and appear attractive.  Why should Jesus starve out here?  It makes no sense.  Why not accept the devil’s offer to rule all the kingdoms of the world?  Think of the good you could do.  Why not show all of Jerusalem who you are as angels carry you safely from the pinnacle of the temple to the ground?  Then everyone will know who you are.  Why not?

Obviously, we the readers can say “why not.”  We sit in the comfort of our heated building on our cushioned chairs as we read this.  We worship in a nice place and as we do, we make plans for lunch in nice restaurants.  There is a certain ease and from this luxury we form our opinions and draw our conclusions.  I say without judgment on us.  This is merely an observation.  From where we are it is easy to gaze into a story and with hindsight declare how clear and simple the ethical and moral choices are. 

What if we read it in a place that’s not so nice? 

Starting right now, don’t eat again until Easter Sunday.  Not a bite.  Don’t go indoors.  From now until March 27, fast and pray.  Jesus was tempted.  The urge to turn those stones to bread was real and strong.  He had emptied himself of his divinity.  How did this human being resist?  It is surprising, when we think about it, to imagine that Jesus truly was as human as your or I are. 

Another surprising thing is the paradox displayed in Jesus in this story.  By paradox, I do not mean “fully God and fully human at the same time.”  But, I do mean two things were going on in Jesus.  Two very different dynamics were at work in him.  I think a similar paradox exists for us when we want to follow Jesus, but we do this in a world that is lost and is in the late stages of corruption because of sin.  Sin has built up over the generations and the world is on the verge collapse.  In this place, that is not so nice, we are witnesses and we are disciples.

The paradox.

Jesus ate nothing for 40 days and true to his habit of understatement, Luke grandiloquent method of portraying this is to write he was hungry.  No kidding. 

Jesus was starving.  At the same time, he was full.  Luke begins this passage about temptation in the desert by telling us Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit.  He begins the next passage where Jesus is back in Jerusalem, again declaring Jesus to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Jesus was filled and hungry at the same time.

Why could he calm storms at sea, restore the sight of the blind, and miraculously feed multitudes with a few loaves and fish?  You know what I said a moment ago.  He could do it because he was God in human flesh.  But what if that’s not the answer?  What if incarnation means he really did step out of his divinity?  What if the miracles happened because he was Spirit-filled? 

He didn’t just flip a switch and turn on his godself whenever that was needed.  Jesus is God, but he related to God from the standpoint of being human.  He depended on the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  He moved at the prompting of the Holy Spirit.  He submitted to the authority of the Holy Spirit. 

It’s a paradox, Jesus (God) relating to God as a human relates to God.  And it leads to another paradox.  Jesus is starving and filled at the same time.  We get caught off guard by Jesus’ humanity.  This idea of starving and fulfillment together in the same person – and the two conditions, starvation and satisfaction relating directly to the other – also surprises us. 

Maybe the most surprising thing is that we can be filled as Jesus was.

The writer of this Gospel, Luke, is also the author of the book of Acts.  There we read about baptism in the Holy Spirit.   In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit takes hold of a few 1000 of Jesus’ followers who are in Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost.  Spirit-filled, they preach the Gospel, and that day 1000’s turn to faith in Jesus Christ. 

In both the Gospel and in Acts, Luke tells the story of Jesus and the early church, but he did not simply write this to show what happened.  He tells us that he shares this so that we, the readers, will know the truth (Luke 1:3).  And he ends his writing at the end Acts with Paul under house arrest in Rome.  Luke’s verse says, Paul live in Rome for two years “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (28:31).

It’s an odd ending; not really an ending at all.  He doesn’t tell of Paul’s death.  He simply tells of Paul preaching.  Why could Paul, while arrested, preach without hindrance?  It is not because he was God in the flesh.  He wasn’t.  He could do it because he was filled with the Spirit.

We, like Paul and like Jesus, can be filled with the Spirit.  Does it mean we will feed 5000 with one child’s bag lunch or bring raging ocean storm to a quiet calm or raise the dead?  When we are Spirit-filled like Jesus, do we do those things?  I don’t know.  I won’t say, No, we do not.  I will say we can stand as Jesus stood: dependent on the Spirit, prompted by the Spirit, and submitted to the Spirit. 

At times this means, like Jesus, we will be hungry, starving even, while we are filled.  Each year during Lent, Christians focus on spiritual disciplines and that can include fasting or giving something up in order to focus on the Lord.  But the hunger is more than the desire for food that comes with a fast, even one as extreme as Jesus endured.  The hunger is for God’s Kingdom; they Kingdom come, they will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.  We want it so badly, we pray for it over and over. 

This is what Jesus meant in the Sermon in the Mount when he said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:5).  The devil knew Jesus hungered for this and tried to persuade him with this.  The devil offered food – turn the stones to bread; and power – I will give you the glory of all the kingdoms of the earth; and spectacle – throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple so all Jerusalem will see the angels catch you.

Jesus wanted to multiply food to the hungry.  Power and would enable him to show the world the ways of God.  But, he knew to do these things on the devil’s timetable would amount exalting the devil as God.  He was able to resist because of the power of the Spirit in Him.

Let that settle on the mind.  The power in Christ during his ministry in his time on earth is available to us.  I won’t say it can be ours because they power is the presence of God and God is never ours to hold.  But, when we fully confess our sins and turn from them and when we open our hearts to God and when we hunger for his Kingdom and long for His presence, then we are ready to be filled the Spirit. 

No the Holy Spirit is not ours.  We belong to the Spirit.  We are prompted by the Spirit.  And in those seasons when we aren’t sure what to do the Spirit seems quiet and feels absent, then we go to prayer and other disciplines if needed.  We present ourselves fully before the Lord.

This is where we end on this first Sunday of Lent.  As we move into a time of singing, each of us invited to come without hesitation and holding nothing back.  Come before the Lord.  Come open, asking to be filled.  I end with prayer.

Holy Spirit of God, in this moment, we lay ourselves before you.  Remove all doubts, distractions, and obstacles.  Come to us, forgive us, fill us, and lead us.  This we pray in Jesus’ name.

AMEN