Good Friday; March 29,
2013
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Ps.
22
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John
18:1-19:37
Year after year of reading this story of Jesus’ passion and
death can numb us to the horrific brutality it describes. After all, we know
the end of the story. Aren’t the lilies stored somewhere, lilies-in-waiting to
be gloriously displayed come Saturday night? Is not the bread already baked for
the festival eucharist, the brass polished and the linen ironed? We know the
end of the story so well it is a challenge to be here, now, listening to the
story of a violent death.
Since this is probably the only story about first-century
Palestine that most of us will ever read, we may think that this was a unique
event, or that this crucifixion was singled out by the ordinary person of the
day. We might even think that people paid attention to what was going on on
that hill that afternoon.
Yet in first-century Palestine – during Jesus’ lifetime and
the lifetimes of those who wrote the gospels – brutality was commonplace. The
Romans as an occupying force had no qualms about using every form of state
violence to quell those who tried to rise up against them. Urban terrorists ran
through streets in which blood ran – their blood, the blood of their victims,
blood shed by Roman weapons. Crucifixion was a common form of death for these
insurrectionists, as well as for the innocent and the unarmed who tried to
resist the violence with non-violent means. Thousands would be crucified when
the Romans would quash rebellions. There was little unusual about what happened
to Jesus in those violent days – except that some were allowed to take his body
down from the cross and bury it.
The violence of human society is never far from the surface.
Sometimes, late at night, I’ll still be awake and listen to the BBC World
Service, hoping for some thoughtful story, or even for something dull to put me
to sleep. More often than not, though, I hear horrendous stories, more vivid
that we see on TV news, of brutality from some far away country, some account
of an innocent person abused, a massacre, a pillage, a plunder. To remember those
21st century stories on this day, this Friday of death we call “good,” is to
remember that Jesus knew that reality as well, as it swirled around him and
carried him to his death.
Jesus faces that violence vulnerable and defenseless – all
too human, we could say. Yet he resists the whole way, especially as John tells
the story. He refuses to let the authorities, Roman or Jewish, who have the power
of death over him, to have the power of life. He refuses to play by their
rules, to show anger or retribution or force. He defines his own truth against
their story of brutal defeat.
As night falls, Jesus is laid in a tomb – John describes a
burial as extravagant as a king’s. Is this the beginning of a new kingdom?
Jesus died as he lived, preaching that the kingdom of God will be entered not
by force or wisdom or magic tricks, but by vulnerability and love. Those who
enter it will do so as Jesus did: as their all-too-human selves, stripped raw
and naked, childlike and vulnerable, confident that the worst death the world
can deal holds no power over their lives.
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