The Day Death Won

Texts:

Isaiah 52:13—53:12

Psalm 22

Hebrews 10:16-25 or Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9

John 18:1—19:42

Tonight we are doing a service of shadows (I will try to post pictures later this evening).  

From the shadows, the words come.  Entering the day of shadows, we hunger for the light.  It is time to allow the hunger to be, for once, unfulfilled.

What?  You, of all people, are going to judge me?  You are going to make me the bad guy?  Go ahead.  But first consider: how many of you have ever wanted Jesus to come and rescue you from your own messes, from your own pride, have ever prayed asking that God would agree with your actions and your decisions?  I know, I know… I’m an easy guy to blame.  Selling my savior for a bag of silver, or however the story goes.  Jesus had spent all this time healing people, proclaiming that people had been saved from their sins, but did nothing to stop the Romans and their oppressive regime.  He told us to turn the other cheek.  He told us to render unto Caesar what was Caesar and unto God what was God’s.  He told us stories we couldn’t understand.  He explained the stories and made them even more confusing than they were before.  He told us to love in the face of hatred.  He told the wealthy to share with the poor.  It was supposed to be our time.  We were supposed to overthrow the Romans.  I figured if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  They didn’t tell me that they were going to do what they did.  It was like a joke.  They started chuckling, drinking their wine, throwing the bottles into the fire; I laughed with them, who wouldn’t?  But it wasn’t supposed to be like this.  I didn’t think it would end up like this.  I didn’t think… I just… “Do quickly what you are going to do, Judas…” I… no, Jesus.  I didn’t mean to… I…

Huh, me?  Yeah, I know, I know.  I know what you’re going to say.  How could you?  Doubtless you will quote all of the things I said back at me, “Lord to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life.”  “I will lay down my life for you…”  But what would you have done?  Sure, sure… it’s easy to say, now, 2,000 years later, that of course you would have stood with Jesus.  Of course you would have been strong.  But tell me this, how many times have you lied to save your own skin, to stay out of trouble?  How many times have you said something that wasn’t true to avoid the scorn of strangers?  How many of you have lied and later found out the consequences of the lie were worse than the truth?  It was so cold that night.  It was so dark.  Everything was so confusing.  Jesus didn’t even fight.  The soldiers came, and Jesus stood between us and them, telling them to leave us alone, telling them he was the only one they should take.  And they took him.  That was the last time I saw him before… the last time before… Cockadoodledoo.  I started to run, away, out, anywhere away from myself.  But the thing is, I couldn’t escape myself.

Oh, Jesus… I remember him.  He was the most peculiar case.  Interrogation, you could say, is my strong suit.  If a confession needs to be made, I will get it.  People said he was claiming to be a king.  He wasn’t the first.  These people would come out, claiming to be a king, claiming to be the one to overthrow the Roman government, as if they could.  But really, this guy seemed pretty harmless.  He was dirty and smelly and hung out with the poor and, really, I’m a reasonable guy.  I get it - the poor need something to keep going on.  Why they couldn’t just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, I have no idea.  Anyway, he seemed harmless enough.  He was clearly no threat to the government, clearly no threat to society; he was just an annoyance.  But I keep thinking about the last question I asked him, “What is truth?”  And I can’t get it out of my head.  What is truth?  What is it, Pilate?  My wife told me to stop worrying about it, that I was just doing my job, that he was just another crazy guy from the countryside… but I can’t shake his piercing eyes.  I won’t forget his quiet response to his punishment and Barabbas raising his fists as though he’d won some award, the people cheering as though they were in the coliseum.  What is truth?  Can anyone tell me? 

I remember it as though it were yesterday.  I remember the first flutters of life within me, the first time he did a summersault, the first time I felt him kick, the first time Joseph felt him kick… my friends still talk about the wedding feast.  I didn’t have the heart to tell them that it was my son; I just pretended like they found this reserve of wine that hadn’t been there before.  It wasn’t easy, raising this child.  It wasn’t easy watching my husband watch my son, claiming him as his own, though a mother can see things that nobody else sees.  I could see the pain in Joseph’s face at knowing his son was wiser beyond his years, of looking at his eldest son, who would not carry on his family’s carpentry tradition which they had worked so hard to establish, at his son who always had this sense of purpose, the dreams that were bigger than we could understand… Sometimes, with kids, you forget that they’re not yours, you know?  I mean, they are yours - they have your eyes, noses, faces… they say things that sound so much like the things you’ve said, they have that look that disarms you just as you’re about to lose your cool… but as tightly as we hold them, they grow up and take on lives of their own.  I watched my son, unable to do anything else, remembering all of these things, wondering what had gone wrong, that an innocent man would hang on a cross… it is finished.  On that day, death had won.