A
Homily for Good Friday All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC
April 18, 2014 Thomas E. Wilson Rector
Who
is responsible for Jesus’ death? Was it God who needed a debt to
be paid for all of our sins? That answer makes a twisted kind of
legal sense but is repulsive because it reflects a kind of God who is
backed into a logical corner and is locked into a simplistic answer.
Is
it the envy of the religious establishment that wants to rid itself
of this outsider? Jesus was an outsider and a disrupter of the way
things always had been. Most establishments can put up with a little
bit of variation, but religious institutions are notoriously in need
of an outward stability so they can proclaim so called timeless
truths that are nothing more than fossilized habit. I can see where
they would want him out of the way - life would be so much easier.
Was
it the fear of the occupying forces that the situation might get out
of hand and some blood needed to flow to stop the unrest? Ruling
forces are always ruled by fear; fear of rebellion, fear of exposure,
fear of the next cycle of decision making. Until fairly recently,
most countries used public executions for the dual purposes of
entertainment for the masses and putting the fear of the state into
people’s hearts. The theory went that executions reduced murder
rates and especially lowered the murder rate of the state’s law
enforcement personnel. However, that theory falls apart as studies
have consistently shown that, in the US, the states with the highest
rates of death penalty convictions also have higher murder rates and
especially higher rates of murder of law enforcement personnel than
those states with no death penalty. But logic has never deterred
people from their strong beliefs based on fear.
Was
it the people in the crowd who always enjoy violence toward others as
entertainment? We have had a love affair with violence long before we
invented video games where we can practice killing people as we kill
time or produced television shows or movies that demonstrate the oh-so-many
entertaining ways that we can bloodily dismember people with our
weapons. And how we adore our weapons! Every year brings a new crop
of murders where someone walks into a public place and slaughters
innocent people. Every year we shout “No more!”. Except that
shout turns into a whimper if it is suggested that the end to our
love affair with violence and weapons begins with us,
and we end up closing our eyes, crossing our fingers, and hoping that
the annual slaughter does not return.
So,
the envy of religious rivals, the fear of the ruling authorities, and
the blood-lust of us humans were all partly responsible - that is, if
we see Jesus as a victim. But John’s Gospel, which we read for
today, doesn’t
see
Jesus as a victim but as the one who chooses the time and place of
his death. Jesus is in charge, and he acts as a mirror that reflects
(a) the religious authorities who have replaced the God of love with
the God of hate to project their own hates, (b) the political
authorities who try to create fear, projecting fear as a way to cover
up their own deeper fear and (c) ourselves and our complicity with
violence toward fellow images of God.
Jesus
is not a victim; he is the gift giver. He gives himself. In John’s
Gospel, the authorities come to take Jesus by force, but they fall on
the ground. Jesus gives himself over to them. He is brought before
the religious authorities, and he gives himself to them as the truth
that they refuse to accept. Jesus is brought before Pilate and shows
Pilate how weak and fear-ridden Pilate, the one who is supposed to be
in charge, really is.
Jesus
is brought before the crowd and offers himself as an alternative to
the bandit Barabbas, and they choose Barabbas, the one who embraces
violence, as the one who is closer to their hearts.
Jesus
gives up his mother to the beloved disciple to help heal the pain
that the disciple and mother both feel.
Jesus
gives up his spirit; it is not taken from him, but it is a gift from
him to God and to us.
In
the end Jesus will give up his death as he allows himself to be
risen, and his new life becomes a gift he keeps on giving.
We
call it Good Friday, because Jesus gave himself as a gift for us to
see ourselves and to enter new life.
No comments:
Post a Comment