Robert Berra
Good Friday Sermon
Holy Week 2014
Hebrews 10:16-25 or
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22
Pilate therefore
said to him, "Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have
power to release you, and power to crucify you?" Jesus answered him,
"You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.”
(Jn 19:10-11)
A priest I greatly respect once shared with me a
conversation he had as a child. His
grandmother had given him a cross necklace when he was confirmed. He was
in the sixth grade and he wore it to school one day. On that day, one of his friends asked him
that if Jesus had been killed by a gun, would he have worn a gun around
his neck. My friend thought that the
question was ridiculous at the time; but for years, my friend has reconsidered
the matter, and he thinks he was asked an important question.[1] I agree with him.
The cross is laden with meaning. Upon it Christ’s death wrought the work of
salvation, and for that, Christians through the centuries rightly pointed to
the cross as the proof of God and Christ’s deep love for us. The message we hear and experience pushes us
to gratitude of Christ for his voluntary death on the cross.
But the
cross is also scandal. Then and today,
the fact that Christians claim a God
suffered death and allowed himself to be killed when we also claim he obviously
could have avoided it…it’s utter foolishness.
No one would choose that! Paul
faced these questions too, and reminded the Corinthians that “we proclaim
Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”[2] Paul is saying then, and now, that nothing
about this situation is reasonable to the world! It’s a scandal that a God would allow himself
to die at the hands of mortals. It is
foolishness to believe that a man’s death on a cross, as a dissident in the
Roman Empire, means anything other than utter humiliation.
I think this notion of scandal is partly why my friend
was asked the question about whether he would wear a gun if Jesus had been
shot. But I think there is something
else here. Something that might become
fuzzy or lost as we remember Jesus’ death with gratitude—to the point of being
grateful for the cross itself—and as
we come to terms with the scandal of God dying for us mortals, which makes no
sense to how the world understand the natural use of power.
I think that something
else is horror. We wear around our
necks the representation of a device of torture. We place crosses large enough to serve their
original purpose in our sanctuaries. We
decorate them. I think sometimes, when
people see the cross, they remember what the cross actually was, and are
repelled by it. And I wonder if
sometimes Christians forget how startling the representation of a torture
device can be.
So how might we reclaim the horror of the cross? I think the six-grader’s question was a good
start, because it would force us into remembering why crosses existed in Jesus’
time. Would we wear a gun pendant if our
Lord had been shot? If Christ had been
hanged, would it be a matter of devotion to wear a noose around our necks? If Jesus had died in a waterboarding session
as the Romans tortured him for information about a possible Jewish
insurrection, would we consider making inclined tables and water-cans an
integral part of our sanctuaries and letterheads?
If not? Why
not? Are the other torture and execution
methods too horrible? Of the torture and execution methods I mentioned,
crucifixion is still the messiest.
Imagine yourself at a crucifixion.
Imagine yourself at this
crucifixion. Imagine being as close as the Roman centurion
was to the three crosses on the day on Golgotha. Can you see it? The blood pouring down the wood of the cross in
rivulets from pierced ankles and wrists, soaking and staining it red in the
noon sun? Can you smell it? The coppery scent of blood mixed with the
stench of men who have soiled themselves from the pain? Can you hear it? The weakening gasping of men slowly
asphyxiating, since the cross kills by slowly suffocating a person with the
person’s own weight? The snap of the
bones in their legs as soldiers take a hammer to them? All so the crowd can go home faster?
I think the cross horrifies because it reminds people of
what it was used for, and when Christians hold the cross up as victory, it is
sometimes unclear if we are too nonchalant about its original purpose. Years of graduate work studying torture
methods mean I cannot walk into a sanctuary without considering the cross for
what it is. The cross is repellent to
me. Yet my salvation was wrought upon
it, and so it reminds me of all that Christ underwent. The cross inspires within me silence, and yet
I cannot help but speak. The
crucifixion’s work in our salvation is a mystery, but we proclaim the mystery
as a wisdom unlike anything else in the world.
The cross is horrible, but I cannot dispense with it because I need to
be reminded of what Christ did for us, and what humankind is capable of.
The horror of the cross reminds us of the full price paid
by God for our salvation, but the horror of the cross is also necessary because
the cross stands as God’s judgment upon the way we do business in the world—of
how we handle power.
As Jesus falls silent before Pilate’s questions about his
identity, Pilate asks “Do you not know
that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” That is a terrible power—the power given him
by the state—even as Jesus reminds Pilate that he has this power only through
God. But Jesus knows something
else. The threat to use this power is a
sign of fear. It is a grasp for control
of the situation. It is the way earthly
power works. Earthly power is borne out
of the desire to control our own fear.
Torture and Crucifixion—and so many other uses of force both great and
small— are examples of this worldly power.
The desire to control others. To
control circumstances. To bend the will of a person to our own use. Its use is
borne out of fear. This power is used
when the lie of control we continually tell ourselves fails.
The span of history reminds us that even with the work of
salvation done-and-yet-ongoing, human nature is still warped in a way that no
one, not even the Church, can fix without God. Unfortunately, the drums
of war and the banging of gavels are sometimes loud enough to drown the still,
small voice calling us to forgo the calculations that keep us
estranged from everyone around us and grasping for control.
This is the horror of the cross and the necessity of
remembering its purpose. God chose to
conquer the cross as the judgment on our capacity for cruelty. The crosses we wear, and that we use to
decorate our churches and homes ought to confront us with that judgment of God
against us. And that makes us witnesses
not only to Christ’s salvation, but to the crucifixions and deaths we witness
daily as the world tries to justify them.
These justifications and rationalizations are the lies of
control and necessity that Jesus exposes by not bending to Pilate’s
threat. Pilate, provincial governor,
easily scared by the crowd, dismissed by this odd man in front of him who calls
out how inconsequential he is.
Pilate, on behalf of the world, then did what it does
when its exercise of power it questioned.
Pilate exercised that power.
Pilate eliminated the threat.
There is hope. But that is for tomorrow and the Resurrection. Just for today, the world has won. At least, the world thinks it has won. The King of the Jews is humiliated, crucified. Our Savior is dead.
There is hope. But that is for tomorrow and the Resurrection. Just for today, the world has won. At least, the world thinks it has won. The King of the Jews is humiliated, crucified. Our Savior is dead.
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