A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter (26/04/20): This Jesus Whom We Crucified

In the season of Easter one of the set readings on each Sunday is taken from the Acts of the Apostles. Each of these readings recalls the Apostles' preaching of the resurrection. The reading set for the Third Sunday of Easter is the end of Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost. This sermon reflects on that reading. Last Monday/Tuesday was also Yom HaShoah the Jewish day of commemoration of the holocaust, this sermon could also be seen as a response to that occasion.

This Jesus Whom We Crucified

Acts 2:14a, 36-41

On the day of Pentecost Peter reaches the climax of his sermon:
Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him [Jesus] both Lord and Messiah

Empowered by the Holy Spirit he preaches what appears to be the first recorded Christian sermon. The conclusion of his sermon is the conclusion that Christian faith is built upon. His “point” is that the resurrection vindicates Jesus. That Jesus has been raised from the dead validates the claim that Christians make about him. That he is, as Peter puts it, “both Lord and Messiah.” That is, he is the one who is to be obeyed. What Jesus has said and done is authoritative. Those committed to a relationship with God must look to Jesus to understand what shape that commitment must take. And Jesus is the one anointed by God to establish God’s rule in the world. Jesus is the one who leads people out of bondage to the powers of this world, and into the freedom of God’s kingdom. Peter declares that in spite of his death Jesus is shown to be the one that God has chosen to accomplish all that God has promised. In another sermon he preaches just a little later Peter puts this idea into the words of a Psalm:

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone (Psalm 118:22)

This is essentially the substance of Christian proclamation ever since. Peter’s sermon is the foundation on which every Christian sermon since builds.

But Peter carries on. He doesn’t stop there. He finishes his sermon with a lethal accusation:

This Jesus whom you crucified

These are perhaps the most dangerous words in the whole of scripture. And they have led to a bitter inheritance. And Peter did this not just this once. Peter coloured his quotation from Psalms with the same idea:

The stone that was rejected by you the builders, it has become the cornerstone [Acts 4:11]

Peter lays the blame for Jesus’ death at the feet of those he was preaching to. On this first occasion to "Jews from every nation under heaven." On the later occasion it was made against the "rulers of the people and the elders." This is the starting point of a bitter, catastrophic history. This is the beginning of almost 2000 years of Christian antisemitism. To be sure this is not what Peter intended. On the Day of Pentecost and later before the council he had a very specific intention in mind. He wanted to convince his hearers of their complicity in Jesus’ death. And to use the weight of that guilt to change their minds. And as a technique it proved highly successful on the first occasion, and only slightly less so on the second with a much more difficult congregation. It is a technique which preachers have been using ever since. But without intending it Peter put an idea in people’s minds: The Jews are to blame for the crucifixion. It is an idea that has proved very difficult to shake. Tragically almost as soon as Christians ceased to be a persecuted minority, and instead had the power themselves to persecute, they began to punish the Jews on the basis of this accusation.

From Monday evening to Tuesday evening of last week (20-21 April) was Yom HaShoah, the day of remembrance of what non-Jews call the Holocaust, in Israel and for many Jews around the world. The end point of Peter’s accusation is the industrialised slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. To be sure the Christian persecution of Jews never reached such genocidal intensity. Christians were for the most part willing to wait for God to bring about a final resolution to the question of Jewish guilt. The Nazis brought a particularly ferocious intensity and a dreadful racial animus to their hatred of the Jews. Christianity is not directly responsible for the Holocaust. But it can’t avoid blame either. It was Christian preaching that marked Jews out in the first place. It was Christian preaching that made Jews guilty of a terrible crime. And indeed almost all the perpetrators of the Holocaust were baptised “Christians” who remained in good standing with their churches to the end.

This historical and theological inheritance is a terrible burden. One theologian, Rosemary Reuther has written: “Is it possible to say Jesus is Lord without saying the Jews be damned?” For her the painful answer to that question is “no.” And as a result she has stopped calling herself a Christian. We don’t need to agree entirely with her answer, nor with her response to it, but there is something in what she says. Whilst most contemporary Christians would reject antisemitism, that poisonous seed was planted along with our most precious article of faith. That seed is still there and it can still grow, and like a cancer it becomes more dangerous the longer you ignore it.

But the question is who are the “you” in Peter’s accusation? And perhaps more critically, how do those words apply now? On the day of Pentecost, in some immediate sense, part of the crowd in front of Peter were to blame for the crucifixion. At least some of those standing in front of him then would also have been in the crowd that stood in front of Pilate seven weeks earlier which had called for Jesus’ crucifixion. And in a slightly broader sense the crowd in front of Peter were representative of the whole community resident in Jerusalem and of Jews throughout the world at that moment. It was that community to which Jesus had been sent, and that community which had in the end rejected Jesus. Something about what they had become as people, something in their history, and in their accommodation to the world led them to reject the very one who was sent to liberate them. But it would be unjust to generalise that guilt to every Jew who ever lived. For one thing others were more culpable at the time. The council, to whom Peter preached and made the same accusation later, were clearly more guilty since it was they who conspired to kill Jesus, the death of Jesus was their intention from the start. It would seem even more unjust to blame a whole people for the self-interested actions of the elite amongst that people. There was also the Roman procurator, Pilate. In the end the decision was his. It was his choices, his refusal to act justly and his abdication of responsibility that placed an innocent man on the cross. And even as he spoke Peter must have been painfully aware of his own role in Jesus’ death. Peter speaks as one implicated, both as a member of the community that his accusation is directed towards, but also more explicitly as someone whose own actions, his failure to stand with Jesus, played a part in Jesus’ death. Peter could just have easily said: this Jesus whom we crucified. The risk of Peter’s words as he actually spoke them, is that they become another opportunity to shift guilt away from ourselves and onto those that we can scapegoat. This has been the pattern of human behaviour from its very first moments.

The critically important part of preaching is: how do the events described in scripture, particularly the life, ministry,death and resurrection apply to us now? Put another way, it is the question: where do we find ourselves in the story? On this occasion where are we standing?  Are we standing behind Peter, making his dangerous accusation with him? Or are we standing in front of him having the weight of that accusation convict us of our part in Jesus’ death? Our tendency is to stand behind Peter. After all, almost every one of us has already responded to Peter’s message in the way he suggests. Preaching in church is almost exclusively preaching to the already baptised.

It is difficult for us to imagine that Peter’s accusation could apply to us, or indeed that it could apply to everyone. But the truth is that it is unfair to generalise Peter’s accusation to all Jews, without recognising that the same accusation applies to everyone. All humans stand in front of Peter, even those of who through baptism have taken a position behind him as well. The whole human race shares the guilt of Jesus’ death. We are all part of the conditions that lead to the cross. We are all tangled up in a world where people try to live as if there is no God. Or they try to live as if the only god they know is their own desires. We are part of a race who organise themselves in a way that means some have more than they know what to do with whereas others have not nearly enough to survive. We live as people who are committed to coercion and violence as a solution to problems. We are too ready to accept that the ends justify the means. It is these things which put Jesus on the cross. They are all things that we all have some share in the guilt of.

Peter can turns his words toward us and say:

This Jesus whom you crucified.

Those words are wounding words, they are difficult to listen to.

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart

But to hear only the accusation is to miss the real message which Peter is announcing. The real meaning of the cross and resurrection does not lie with who is to blame, whether that is one small part of the human race, or everyone who ever lived. Peter does point out to his listeners that they bear responsibility in the death of Jesus. That sounds like bad news. Peter does say: “Yes, you are the ones who killed Jesus, you are the ones who betrayed, rejected and crucified the one sent to you as Lord and Messiah.” But for Peter the resurrection puts Jesus’ death into a different context:

"This Jesus God raised up"

“You killed Jesus, but look what God does with that! He raised Jesus from the dead.” God’s answer to human guilt - all of human guilt - is not punishment. God as it turns out punishes no one. All the punishment that was ever called for is exhausted on the cross. That punishment was always a human response to evil, not the divine response. The worst that humans can do - trying to force God out of the world - is not answered with God forcing humans out of the world. This is the astonishing good news of the resurrection. Through Jesus’ death, and his resurrection God opens up a way for all people to be restored to him.

Without this Good News the guilt for Christ’s death and for all the evil in the world is crushing. Guilt without Good News is likely to lead to scapegoating, persecution, and more of the evil which God seeks to release us from. With the Good News, recognising that we are complicit in the evil that afflicts the world becomes an opportunity for transformation. Peter’s wounding and gracious words lead the crowd who heard him to ask:

“Brothers what should we do?”

It is the question perhaps which every sermon should leave the listeners asking. How do we deal with the guilt we are burdened with? How do we respond to God’s gracious answer to our guilt?

Seeking the answers to those questions, after every sermon, is the whole of discipleship. Peter’s puts it:

Repent and be baptised

Turn around and live your lives in the light of this understanding, of your guilt and God’s grace. Become part of that community of faith that is building towards the realisation of God’s kingdom in the world. And above all, allow yourselves to be saved from this twisted generation

Amen.

This Jesus Whom We Crucified by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter (19/04/20): Believing Thomas

Believing Thomas

John 20:19-31

The first Easter day ends with the disciples gathered together. They are back in their usual meeting place. They are with one another in the house where just three nights ago they had shared a final meal with Jesus. So much has happened since then. Fear had scattered them and has kept them apart. But now good news has brought them together. The tomb is empty. Since early this morning the word has been spreading amongst them. Before dawn Mary Magdalene had been to the tomb and found it open and without Jesus inside. She had become convinced that Jesus has been raised from the dead. She told Peter and John. And the word has spread from there. By this time on Sunday Mary and perhaps some of the others have had their first experience of the risen Jesus himself. This good news overcomes the fear that has separated the disciples and kept them in solitary hiding for the last couple of days.

The good news at this point has overcome their fear, but not eliminated it altogether.

When it was evening on the first day of the week and the doors of the house were locked for fear of the Jews. . .

What is good news to the disciples, is also dangerous news. It is fearful news. Those who wanted Jesus dead presumably wanted him to stay dead. If the Priests and the leaders of the nation were prepared to kill Jesus, they would go to similar lengths to eliminate anyone that suggests that Jesus isn’t exactly where they had put him, dead and sealed behind a rock!

Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

The locked door is an important detail. Nothing in scripture happens, or is remembered, by accident. Jesus appears among his disciples. There is no doubting between them that his presence is real. He is as solid and present as any of them. This is a physical reality. Jesus is “there” in the same way that any other human being could be “there”. This is Jesus, not a ghost, not a projection of their shared grief, not a pious hope or simply their imaginations. The resurrection is real, and the evidence of it is standing before them. But now Jesus is unbound from the limitations that constrain other human beings. That is why the locked door is significant. Jesus is freed from the limitations that physicality imposes on human beings. He has overcome the greatest human limitation of all, death, so no other limitation now obstructs him. He will not be held outside by a locked door. Jesus is free to be present, to any one, in any place, at any time. Jesus can and will be present just as he has been to the disciples in their locked room.

But Thomas (who was called the Twin) was not with them when Jesus came.

We could sometimes wonder where Thomas was. When the disciples gathered, Thomas should have been there, but he wasn’t. Maybe he was more fearful than the rest. Maybe he was more grief stricken than the rest. Maybe he was simply better at hiding than all the others, so that the news of the empty tomb never reached him. Or perhaps it did, and it sounded too much like a fantasy or an old wives tale to make him emerge from the security of wherever it was he was concealed. Eventually though even Thomas came out of hiding. Eventually the good news reached him.

So the disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.”

Thomas seems to possess a natural scepticism. He is less inclined than some to be swept along by the excitement of others. He perhaps possessed the wisdom and self knowledge to know what he did not know, and the courage sometimes to admit it out loud. All this has earned him a slightly undeserved replacement to his nickname, when once he was known to the disciples as “the Twin”, he has been remembered by everyone ever since as “the Doubter”. Thomas responds to the good news:

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails, and my hand in his side. I will not believe.”

The physicality of being human, in death, has its gruesome side. Thomas wants his lack of knowledge to be replaced with knowing. For something this important Thomas senses that hearing and even seeing are not enough to convince. To know that this really is Jesus he would need more than being in the same room as him. To be sure that the one who died on the cross and the one who is now present are one and the same, Thomas feels he would need to trace the marks of that suffering with his fingers. He definitely needs more than the words of another, or a dozen others, to believe. Thomas’ search for a sure and solid ground for his faith has earned him, unfairly, the position of being ever remembered for his doubt.

Yet how different is he from Peter and John? When it was still early on Sunday morning Mary Magdalene had come to them. She had breathlessly told them that the tomb is empty. And she inferred from this that Jesus is risen. The question is how did Peter and John respond? Did they simply take Mary at her word? Was her testimony sufficient to remove their scepticism?

Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went to the tomb.

Did they go to the tomb because they doubted Mary? Or did they go because they believed her? And if they believed her, why did they need to see for themselves? Faith may start in hearing, but it is built on personal, direct experience. Peter and John heard what Mary said. Perhaps we could say that her testimony planted a seed of faith. But Peter and John did not believe until they had allowed that seed to grow by looking for direct experience of the resurrection for themselves. Which they got, when they found that the tomb is empty, exactly as Mary had stated. That is a direct experience which seems to open up the possibility of everything that follows. It begins the chain of events that gathers the disciples and allows Jesus to be present in their midst. It seems somewhat harsh to be critical of someone for needing the kind of direct experience which the other disciples were already building their faith upon.

A pattern of Christian life is established immediately. A Sunday by Sunday gathering of the believers has marked out Christian social practice from the very beginning. The next Sunday the disciple are together again:

A week later the disciples were again in the house and Thomas was with them.

Despite his scepticism Thomas does join the other disciples at their meeting place. If it was “doubt”, doubt should be the very last thing that should stop anyone from gathering with believers. Thomas is present this time. Thomas is at least willing to be persuaded. He has faith enough to think that there is at least a possibility that his scepticism may be confounded. One of the things that modern individualism has undermined is the value of social gathering. Less and less do we make time to be in the presence of others. Believers gathered together with one another is a means of grace. Which is one of the reasons the present moment is so difficult for us.  Though conversely, being prevented from being together might just serve as a reminder of what Thomas discovered. In that gathering Jesus can and will be present, and faith can and will emerge

Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

Once more Jesus is there, in his real, not imagined, physical presence. He is there still unconstrained by the grave, or by locked doors, or even by the doubts of those who knew him.

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt, but believe.”

Jesus knows what it might take for us to put our faith in him. As it happens Thomas needed less than he himself had imagined. The gruesome scene of Thomas poking at Jesus’ wounds does not come to pass. It doesn’t happen, even though Jesus makes that experience was available to Thomas, if that was what it was going to take. But as it happens, seeing Jesus is enough for Thomas. And he goes beyond the confession that the other had yet been able to make. For Thomas perhaps his initial scepticism meant that his coming to faith was all the more dramatic. When the bow is drawn back further, the arrow travels further. Thomas answers Jesus’ invitation to touch him:

“My Lord, my God!”

Thomas is the first to make the characteristic confession of Christian faith. He declares what was to become Christianity’s first creed: Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the one who has the authority to direct the believers’ lives and bring about the kingdom of God in this world. But also the declaration that Jesus is more than just a prophet, or a great philosopher or a marvelous spiritual leader. Thomas declares what marks out Christianity from all other faiths. Thomas announces the faith that holds Jesus to be God. The belief, that may be hard to define precisely, that to experience the presence of Jesus is to experience the presence of God.

It is deeply unfair to remember Thomas for his doubt, rather than for his faith. Because Thomas is the first to announce a fully articulated Christian faith in Jesus: My Lord, my God.

From Mary Magdalene to Peter and John, from Peter and John to the other disciples, from the disciples to Thomas, and from Thomas through a long chain of other hearts and hands to us, so the good news runs. The question for all of them, and the question for us is; how do you respond to the good news? Do we go to the tomb hoping to find it empty? Do we gather with the believers hoping to have our scepticism confounded? Do we require some other sign of Jesus presence? Jesus, in that room on the second Sunday gathering of believers, looks toward us and declares a blessing:

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

To encounter Jesus, and see him in the way that Thomas and Mary Magdalene and the other disciples did, is an enormous privilege. It is a privilege that has been afforded to a few dozen, hundreds at the most, of the billions of Christians who have ever lived. It is certainly something we might long for. But it is not something that our faith needs to depend upon. Because Jesus’ blessing rests on us. Seeing, they say, is believing. It certainly was for Thomas, even though he had suggested touching would be necessary. For the vast majority of us though hearing is sufficient, coupled with the experience of the living Christ we find among his people and those he calls us to serve. Jesus’ blessing rests on us: Blessed are you who have not seen, and yet believe.

Amen.

Believing Thomas by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Sermon for Easter Day (12/04/20): He is not here, He is risen

Christ is risen: He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

He Is Not Here, He is Risen

Matthew 28:1-10

Before the sun is even properly up, Easter morning begins. It begins in journey from a still sleeping city, resting after the excitement and terror of the past week. It begins in a journey to a quiet place where all human life seems to end:

After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

Early on Sunday morning, on the third day of the terrible crisis that they are living through, the two Marys go to the tomb. It is faith that takes them there. We often ascribe their journey to other motives, but it is faith that draws them. Perhaps as yet it is an unformed faith. But it is faith nonetheless. They have taken Jesus at his word. They have believed what he told them. He said that he would be betrayed, and he was. Judas sold him for 30 pieces of silver He said that he would be given over into the hands of sinners, and he was. There in the dark, in the garden, on Thursday night they had come with soldiers and taken hold of him. He had said that he would suffer and die, and he did. They nailed him to a cross and lifted him up for all to see. He said that on the third day he would rise again. The women have watched it all. They have stayed, beyond the bitter end. Now they are here. Jesus has never let them down. They have stayed true to him, even as others have fallen aside. They trust Jesus to be true to his word, one more time. Faith draws them to look at the tomb, hoping that they are not the ones who were mistaken. And their faith is rewarded Their faith in Jesus, as it should, and as it always does, their faith brings them to the right place at the right time to experience the resurrection.

There are many things that can be the opposite of faith. Outright certainty can be one of them. The certainty that the world is the way it is, and cannot change. That death is death and cannot be reversed. That there is nothing to be done. That there really is no alternative.That God can and will do no new thing.

There is also unbelief. The unbelief that declares that Jesus is not the Messiah, and his words cannot be fulfilled. That Jesus was not who he said, and who he appeared to be. That his words were false. That he was lying, perhaps not to his followers, but at the very least to himself. That his promises of new life and a new world are all just fantasy. 

But fear is also the opposite of faith. It was perhaps fear for himself that prompted Judas’ betrayal. It was fear that scattered the disciples on Thursday night. It was fear that kept them away from the foot of the cross. It is fear now that keeps them shut in their room and away from is waiting for the women at the tomb. Fear ultimately is always the fear of death, directly or indirectly. It is that fear that hangs over all of human existence. It is that fear which drives so much of how we see human beings act.

In many ways that fear is natural enough. Death seems to bring an end to who we are. It robs us of our loved ones. It is the greatest, most fearful unknown, the dark abyss we cannot look into. But it is that fear that leads people to try to build lives of security in the face of death. It is the source of the futile attempt to drown out the yawning silence of death with noise and busyness and things, anything to anaesthetise that fear. It is that fear that is used by some to dominate and exploit others. It is that fear that enables the many to be held captive by the few; and both sides of that relationship are equally terrified of dying. It is fear of death that keeps the disciples at home, and away from the place that will remind them of death, the tomb.

The resurrection destroys certainty. If being dead isn’t certain, then absolutely nothing is certain! The resurrection dispels unbelief. Jesus is vindicated, he is exactly who he said, and who he appeared to be! And most of all the resurrection takes away the fear of death. Death does not have the last word over Jesus. Death, in Jesus, need not have the last word over us. Whatever lies in that abyss that we cannot see, it need not be feared, because Jesus can bring us through it.

The two Marys have their faith rewarded. After the earthquake which opens the tomb, an angel descends and announces to them:

“Do not be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised. Come see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ there you will see him.”

The angel’s extraordinary speech contains the whole gospel. The angel proclaims to the women the gospel in its purest and simplest form. Jesus was crucified; now he has been raised. That is the good news which dispels fear. And proclamation leads to exhortation. The gospel always contains within itself the need to pass it on. After fear is gone, one thing is left to be done. The women must carry that good news to those who need to hear it. They must give it to the disciples so that their fear can be dispelled as well. To receive the gospel, to know that Jesus is not dead but alive, to be released from the crushing  fear that hangs over all human existence, always implies the necessity of carrying the message to others who still need to hear it.

Yet just as the gospel dispels the fear of death it puts two different fears in its place. The earthquake which brings the two Marys to life, leaves the guards as if they were dead. The dazzling appearance of the angel terrifies the servants of the forces of death. Their fear of death is still in place. But now it has been joined by another fear. That Jesus overcomes death strikes fear into those who rely on that fear, and into those who are enmeshed in its system. If death is not final, if death is not to be feared, then death’s power has vanished. And those who would use death to control and exploit have nothing left. All that is left to them is the condemnation of the one who they killed but who would not stay dead; Jesus. The good news, even this the best news of all, is always accompanied by judgement. Those who are certain that God can do no new thing, that there is no alternative, those who do not take Jesus at his word and do not believe what he says and those who are motivated by fear to live lives of destruction all stand condemned by the resurrection.

But the two Marys are gripped by another sort of fear.

So they left the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples.

There is not better expression of the appropriate response to an encounter with the power of God: Fear and great joy. The women experience a different kind of fear. They are awed, astounded, amazed by what they hear and see, and now know. The words fall short of the experience. The world proves to be fundamentally different from the place of cold despair we are so often told exists. This fear is a kind of dizzying vertigo. An exhilarating fear that spills over into joy. Nothing else is left to be afraid of. The Marys, and everyone who shares their faith, and goes with them to find that the tomb is empty, are set free. That is a fearful joyful experience. It is the freedom that empowers them to obey. The Marys turn away from the tomb, they leave the place of death for the last time and head back into life with good news. As they do so:

Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings.”

Jesus’ presence confirms the angel’s announcement, and when he speaks he confirms the angel’s instructions:

“Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, there they will see me.”

The gospel in its purest and simplest form, Christ is alive. And if you go where he sends you, he will meet you there. The resurrection is not an idea. It is not a theory nor an explanation nor even a philosophy. It is not simply a moment in history. The resurrection is an ongoing reality. It is solid enough to take hold of for ourselves. On Easter morning we discover and proclaim that Christ is risen. It is good news which dispels our fear and sets free. It is a reality that fills us with fear and joy.

Amen.

Again many thanks to Sylvia Fairbrass from Normanby who provided the photograph of her Easter flower arrangement which is at the start of this post. She explains it like this:

"This is my attempt to tell the story of Easter using materials from the old railway path and my garden as I am self-isolating.The arrangement is made up the following:

Yew - Trinity, Euonymus - Evergreen, Gold Heart & Variegated Ivy.

Flowers: - Followers, Family & Romans.

Blue, Rosemary, Hyacinth.

Orange, Crown Fritillaria - Crown of thorns,

Purple, Everlasting Wallflowers. 

Red, Tulip & Wallflowers, Pink & Blue, Yellow Kale. 

White Hyacinths & Narcissus, Hellebore - Angels

Purple candle, Palm Crosses, 30 pence in Silver coins."

He Is Not Here, He is Risen by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Sermon for Good Friday (10/04/20): Why Can't Jesus Come Down from the Cross?

Why Can’t Jesus Come Down From The Cross

Matthew 27:33-54

Jesus’ death is a puzzle to us. Even though we know Jesus dies. Even though we have been told, and try to tell ourselves, it was always part of the plan. Even though we know that in three day Jesus will rise again, that it turns out alright in the end. Jesus’ death bothers us. It raises questions, which when we ask them we find hard, if not impossible to answer. We end up feeling like the resurrection is a correction of what went wrong on Good Friday. Deep down, for all our belief in the power of what God accomplishes through Jesus’ death, deep down we harbour a nagging suspicion that really Jesus shouldn’t have to die. We would probably deny it, but we probably share with most of Jesus’ contemporaries the view that the Messiah really ought to win. That if Jesus is the Messiah it should have been possible for him to come out victorious and not end up on the cross. We suspect there must have been some other way for God to accomplish God’s will without a cruel death. 

This certainly was the expectation of Jesus’ contemporaries, both his followers and his opponents. If Jesus is the Messiah; If he is the Son of God; If he is King of the Jews; For those titles to mean anything, in a conventional sense, Jesus has to win.  He has to thwart the chief priests. And ultimately he has to overthrow the Romans. He definitely can’t die. Winning means not dying. He has to get to the end of the contest, the one between God and the powers ranged against God which we might call Empire, he has to get to the end of that contest and still be alive. By that measure, the cross and Jesus’ on it is a defeat. And if this is God’s plan then it is a puzzle, a mystery.

It is clear from the words that were hurled at Jesus hanging on the cross, that this was the view of those who saw him there. They viewed Jesus crucified with a mixture of disappointment and contempt.Those who had heard him teach in the Temple said:

“You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself. If you are the Son of God come down from the cross.”

They clearly assume that the Son of God should not and cannot die. And he certainly should not be dying in this humiliating manner and at the hands of those they were expecting him to liberate them from. Their assumption is that one who has the power to destroy and rebuild the temple, must also have the power to avoid crucifixion. And therefore they reason, since Jesus is dying, he cannot possess that power. Much to their disappointment and hence irritation it is clear to them Jesus is not who he claimed to be. Hanging on a cross he cannot be the Messiah. One of the last temptations which Jesus faces and resists, is the same as the first. Like turning stones into bread, the temptation is to use his power for his own benefit. To do his own will, particularly to use it to avoid suffering, rather than stay his course and allow God’s will to be done through him.  

For the Chief Priests of course, this is exactly as they had intended. Along with the scribes and the elders they regard him with contempt and mock him:

“He saved others yet he cannot save himself, let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe him.”

For Jesus’ fiercest opponents this is their moment of vindication. They were right. He was wrong. Him hanging on a cross is the conclusive evidence of that. They like everyone else are convinced that the Messiah could not fail in this way. The Son of God cannot die.  Jesus is not who he claimed to be! Yet there is, even among the Priests and the elders and the scribes, a hint of wistful disappointment. Part of them, even Jesus’ bitterest enemies, part of them longs for the Messiah, even if it is Jesus, just so long as he could lead them to victory. Again Jesus is offered a temptation that he had faced and resisted at the beginning. His enemies, unsurprisingly, speak with the voice of Satan. Like leaping from the highest pinnacle of the Temple and surviving the fall, coming down from the cross could be seen as a convincing display of divine power. Yet such a display would still be unconvincing, and not actually accomplish the new beginning God is looking for.

Even as Jesus dies, some in the crowd expect things to turn out differently. With his penultimate breath Jesus cries out in the words of the Psalm:

“My God, My God why have you forsaken me”

Words which were misunderstood by those who heard them. So Matthew leaves us with the untranslated Aramaic which Jesus spoke:

“Eli, Eli lema sabachtani”

He does so to show us where the misunderstanding comes from. Some of the bystanders misunderstood Jesus’ appeal to God and thought he was asking for Elijah to come and rescue him:

“Wait let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.”

Perhaps what they expected to happen was that Elijah would come. Elijah was the greatest prophet of old who was so loved by God that, in contrast to Jesus, he was taken directly into heaven without dying. Perhaps what they expected was Elijah to arrive on God’s chariot of fire, wielding a flaming sword of righteousness, and bring Jesus down from the cross, and with that power establish God’s reign. Again their misunderstanding reveals their real expectations. It perhaps could almost be called a Freudian slip. They reveal what they really hoped for from Jesus and God’s kingdom. They expected that it would be established in a war of conquest. Once again one of the temptations which Jesus had faced and resisted in the wilderness is embodied at the foot of the cross; that God’s kingdom could be established like any other kingdom of the world. But God’s kingdom is nothing like those other kingdoms. And it cannot be established in that way.

Curiously what everyone in fact appears to do is underestimate the power of God. Death is the limit of all human decision and action. It is the final boundary of human power. Strangely everyone seems to place the same limit to God’s power. They assume that death must mean defeat, since it must mean an end to decision and action. Yet no such limit exists for God’s power. God’s power to decide and act through Jesus is not ended by his death. And what is more most of them should have known this. It was what God had been promising all along, that on the last day the righteous would be raised. Only the Sadducees rejected the resurrection and placed death as the formal limit of God’s power. That perhaps explains why the Priests who were mostly Sadducees thought that killing Jesus would work. But it doesn’t explain why everyone else failed to recognise what God might still do.

Yet the question remains. Given God’s unlimited power, why did Jesus die? Why was it that another path to the establishment and victory of God’s kingdom not taken? Why couldn’t God save, except through the terrible suffering inflicted on Jesus on the cross?

The answer in fact is quite simple: Jesus dies so that no one else has to. 

Now this is true in some fundamental theological sense. To say, “Jesus dies so that no one else has to” is one way of putting into words what the cross accomplishes between God and the human race as a whole and forever. But it is also true in a much more immediate and historical sense. Jesus died so that no one else had to.

It is easy to imagine what would have happened if the Priests’ or the bystanders implicit expectations had been fulfilled. Jesus’ descent from the cross, or Elijah’s arrival in a fiery chariot would have resulted in death. The first group to die would have been the detachment of soldiers guarding the cross. Their sworn duty was to ensure that the execution was carried out. They would have to defend the assertion of Imperial power with their lives. For Jesus to live would have required their deaths. But it would not, and could not have stopped there. Both the religious establishment of the Priests and the power of Empire were committed to Jesus’ death. A lethal conflict would have ensued. Violence would have spiralled out from the foot of the cross until it consumed the whole world.

It is in the infinite grace and mercy of God that God chooses a path to salvation, to the establishment of victory of the kingdom of God that involves no one else's death, apart from the death that God chooses to take on himself. In contrast to the human use of power, God uses his power in a way that doesn’t destroy what he is trying to save. With God there is no collateral damage. Jesus dies so that no one else has to.

The path to the establishment and victory of God’s kingdom begins with those who would have been the first victims had any other path been chosen. The path to the kingdom of God begins with the Centurion and the soldiers at the foot of the cross. They were witnesses to Jesus’ death and the terrifying events that accompanied it, the darkened sky and the earthquake. When they had seen it all they testified:

“Surely this man was God Son.”

It is a confession made by those most directly and immediately responsible for Jesus’ death. It is made by the men who drove nails into his hands and his feet and who thrust a spear into his side. But they are also the first to recognise that it is indeed possible for the Messiah, for God’s Son to die. It is a confession which needs to be made by all those who have opposed God. It is a confession which needs to be made by all those who have been held captive by the world’s system of oppression and violence. It is a confession which needs to be made by those trapped by the religion of the Priests and the politics of Empire. It is a liberating confession. It is the confession which leads to the establishment of God’s peaceable kingdom in those who make it, and in the world. Painful as it is to accept, Jesus did not come down from the cross, he dies so that no one else has to.

Amen.

Why Can’t Jesus Come Down From The Cross by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.