Good
Friday Sermon
Holy
Week 2017
“Give us Barabbas.”
Walking toward
Golgotha, you would see it before anything else.
Wooden cross beams bearing the bodies of men
condemned to a torturous death. Closer
still, you would see the blood running down the wood of the cross in rivulets
from pierced ankles and wrists, soaking and staining it red in the bright noon
sun.
The smell would hit you next. The pervading aroma of death. The coppery scent of blood mixed with the
stench of men who have soiled themselves from the pain. The wine soldiers drink as they wait for
their prisoners to die.
Can you hear
it? The weakening gasping of men slowly
asphyxiating, slowly suffocating under their own weight? The sharp snap of the bones in their legs as
soldiers take a large hammer to them?
All so the crowd can get home sooner?
The sucking sound of a spear plunged into flesh, then slowly being drawn
out of Jesus’ side?
Not a week ago,
the people of Jerusalem joined a procession of Palms and cloaks to welcome this
man Jesus into the city.
This man covered
in blood with skin ripped and flayed from his body…the marks of a scourging
with a whip braided with metal shards.
Hours earlier, he
stood before the assembled crowd with a reed for a scepter and a crown of
thorns—a mockery of the claim to royalty.
“…he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and held of no account…”
The crowd,
spurred on by their religious leaders, were given the choice between Jesus or
Barabbas.
They said “Give
us Barabbas.”
Barabbas. A murderer. A failed insurrectionist. We translate John calling him a bandit, but
the word is often used to describe those who rebel against the Roman
Empire. He was apparently involved in a
riot in Jerusalem—these riots were the reason Pilate moved from his typical
headquarters in Caesarea on the North coast of Israel to Jerusalem in the first
place. Especially at religious festivals
when passions and tempers run high.
Jesus or
Barabbas. That was the choice.
A choice
orchestrated by the political and religious leaders of an occupied territory
under a tyrannical military empire. They
feared Jesus—what his unorthodox faith but signs of power would mean for them.
Caught between keeping their people alive, keeping their faith as they saw it,
and doing so in an unstable relationship to an occupying superpower—they feared
the Romans, who applied excessive force with subjected peoples got too uppity.
And so as
Caiaphas the High Priest said, “It is better to have one man die than have the
nation destroyed.”[1]
“Destroy the
threat to our power. Give us Barabbas.”
But this was not
the choice of moral monsters.
At least, if we
were to think of them as such, we may as well give ourselves and the rest of
humanity that title, too.
Because we also know
all too well the same calculations that lead to saying “Give us Barabbas.”
We are ambivalent
about power, about violence. We, like those religious leaders, know the cold
logic of calculating what it takes to keep safe, to keep comfortable, to keep
control.
We are not
immune. We know the mixed emotions that
keep us choosing necessary evils.
We want peace; we
choose leaders based on their willingness to war on our behalf.
We want unity; we
choose winners and losers.
We want civility;
we blame the downtrodden for the violence they receive.
We want to be
moral; we stand in awe of the marvel of our weaponry as we calculate how many
of our own may be spared death by our ability to incinerate millions in a flash
of atomic fire.
We may want
Jesus, but we’ll take Barabbas.
And we’ll the
gamut between lamenting or celebrating our decision.
After all, we
live in a dangerous world. We ought not
be naïve.
We know we have
to get our hands dirty sometime; we appreciate those who spare us from
proximity to that life and work—as though we, like Pilate, can wash our hands
of it all.
Then Jesus
comes—preaching a kingdom built on peace and love.
What sort of Messiah
is this?
Doesn’t he know
what it takes to beat the Romans? Our
other enemies?
Doesn’t he know
what it means to be free?
At least Barabbas
knew what was necessary.
At least Barabbas
knew the way the world works, even if he failed.
Give us Barabbas.
And so when God
comes to earth preaching peace, love, and good news to the poor— what does
humanity do?
He whom none may touch is seized.He who looses Adam from the curse is bound.He who tries the hearts and inner thoughts of humankind is unjustly brought to trial;He who closed the abyss is shut in prison.He before whom the powers of heaven stand tremblingstands before Pilate.The Creator is struck by the hand of his creation.He who comes to judge the living and the dead is condemned to the Cross;The destroyer of Hell is enclosed in a tomb.[2]
While one may
wonder why God in Christ chose death on the cross as the way to work our
salvation; the better question is whether we really think it could have
happened any other way. In our manifold
sins and wickedness; the cold logic of the Enemy—the ruler of this world who is
now thrown down—that cold calculation is still what we choose, again and again.
Perhaps instead
of wondering “why the cross,” there should not have been any doubt that when
even our creator showed up on Earth, we would be threatened enough to kill
him.
We scare so easily.
And humanity is so predictable--and unimaginative
of the possibilities of God’s reign.
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 world
we create when we say we want Jesus,
but “give us Barabbas.”
What we get instead
is God in Christ, who came in weakness and humility to show the power of love
and life; who shows that there is power beyond and stronger than the forces of
death the powerful rely upon in this world. who 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—A judgment on our
propensity to choose Barabbas.
And that makes us
witnesses not only to Christ’s work of salvation, but calls to our attention to
the crucifixions and deaths we witness daily as the world tries to justify
them.
Every day. Even this very week.
The world says
“give us Barabbas.”
Yet every
year. On this very night,
we are reminded
to say “no, give us Jesus.”
Every year, on
this night,
we hope as Isaiah
did, that:
Just as there were many who were astonished at God’s suffering servant
--so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of mortals--
that he shall startle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him;
for that which had not been told them they shall see,
and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.
God came to die
at the hands of his Creation.
His own beloved.
Let that inspire silence.
Let Jesus’s work be seen for what it was.
Let the way of a
quiet power over death and the stillness of a tomb shame the powers of the
world tonight.
Tomorrow, in the
stillness of a tomb the soft gasp of a body resurrected will inspire a chorus
of angelic voices that will shout down the powerful and the forces of death.
A savior who
proclaims peace and forgiveness and life after death—A death he swallows in
victory, and shows that the absolute worst that humanity can do is nothing, nothing, to
what Christ has done and will do. This
is worthy of awe and gratitude. May it
be precious in our sight.
May once again
the world—and us—be inspired to say, “give us Jesus.”
