(Luke 22.66-23.49) (Good Friday)
19 March, 2019 – © Neil Millar
As they were leaving church last Sunday, someone told me that Good Friday services were disrupted for them as soon as the preacher got up to speak. That’s a challenging comment to as a preacher when you’re preparing for Holy Week but, you know, I understood what this person was saying. This story is so powerful, why not let it stand? Does preaching add anything, or just get in the way? Besides, in the face of this scene – the Son of God hanging on a cross – what is there to say? Well, with trepidation, I will venture a few words this morning, I hope they won’t distract for you; I hope they’ll help all of us to hear and respond more fully to what we’re remembering today.
Most of us have heard these readings many times before. At one level, we know the story well, it’s familiar. But it’s also profoundly evocative, and even when we’ve heard it recounted numerous times it can still affect us. One of the things that’s caught my attention this time is Luke’s emphasis on Christ’s innocence. Did you notice that? Our readings began with the chief priests and scribes accusing Jesus of a bunch of things they think will arouse the ire of secular authorities – perverting the nation, forbidding tax payment, and claiming to be a king, but when they examine him, none of the secular authorities or courts condemn him. In fact, after his first examination, Pilate explicitly states that the allegations are spurious, that he finds ‘no basis of an accusation against [Jesus]’ (23.4). Pilate sends him off to Herod and the outcome is the similar. Herod relishes the chance to see and sport with Jesus, he questions him at length, treats him with contempt, mocks and humiliates him, but nowhere pronounces judgment. When he tires of his gratuitous game, he packs him back to Pilate, who says again:
I have examined him in your presence and have not found this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither has Herod, (he adds) for he sent him back to us. Indeed, he has done nothing to deserve death. (23.14-5)
This insistence incenses his accusers and they up the ante by calling for the release of Barabbas (a notorious insurrectionist!) But Pilate, we read, ‘wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again’ (20).
A third time he said to them, ‘Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death’.
Isn’t it ironical, three times Peter denies his Lord, and three times Pilate (of all people) insists he is innocent? But, knowing the truth, doesn’t mean we always act on the truth (as in the current situation with climate change). In this story, (as in the climate story) other forces are at work, forces of resistance, and bowing to these Pilate hands Christ over to be crucified.
Even so, the pronouncements of Christ’s innocence don’t stop. Later in the story we have that dialogue between the two thieves hanging on crosses alongside Jesus (Luke alone describes this scene). One of these criminals gets sucked along with the mob and adds his voice to the barrage of derision and mockery; the other one takes a stand, indeed, rebukes him: ‘We indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds,’, he said, ‘but this man has done nothing wrong.’ There it is again, another affirmation – nothing wrong… not guilty! It’s striking in Luke’s version, and still we’re not done! In the final scene, we get it once more, this time from a Roman centurion standing guard: ‘Certainly this man was innocent’ (47), he declares as he watches commend his spirit to God and breath his last.
That’s five times in the course of one chapter, five overt pronouncements of innocence!! In our legal system, a person is considered innocent until proven guilty, but here, Jesus is condemned and crucified, even though it’s repeatedly been stated that he is not guilty. Friends, this crucifixion is a gross miscarriage of justice, and Luke it seems is very keen to make this point. It begs the question of how it could happen? Of how could it be allowed to happen?
Which brings me to something else I find striking in this account, to part played by the crowd. In various ways, Luke also seems to be suggesting that, it wasn’t just the religious leaders and secular authorities who were responsible for what happened to Jesus, that ‘the people’ were also implicated. Back in the previous chapter, (the previous night in this story) it was stated that ‘the chief priests and scribes were looking for a way to put Jesus to death’, but that they were unable to act on this ‘because they were afraid of the people’ (22.2). This is reinforced by the comment a few verses later, that Judas (by now willingly bribed) ‘began to look for an opportunity to betray him to them when no crowd was present’ (22.9). At that point, the crowd were with Jesus and that served to protect him. But that, we see, does not last. As the drama continues and the pressure from religious authorities continues to increase, the crowd gets swept along. When Judas comes to Jesus in the garden, they’re well on the way to becoming a lynch mob (22.47). Later, when Herod sends Jesus back to Pilate, Pilate ‘called together the chief priests, the leaders and the people’, it says, and by this time they’re all baying for Jesus’ blood! Indeed, it’s the size of this protest and his fear of a riot that seems to convince Pilate to hand Jesus over. Thus, those who once afforded him protection end up aiding and abetting his death. Their horrified realisation of this is conveyed in Luke’s note that at Jesus’ death, ‘the crowds (who had gathered there for this spectacle), returned home beating their breasts’ (23.48). Just as Peter went out weeping bitterly when the cock crowed and he saw Jesus, so too those in the crowd, seeing him die, suddenly realise what they’ve done – what they’ve become.
How does it come to this? What are we to make of it?
In the end, as Luke conveys the story, it seems that everyone ends up on trial, and not just Jesus – Judas, the disciples, Pilate, Herod, the soldiers, even the crowd are ‘sifted like wheat’ (cf. 22.31). In fact, in Luke’s version, it’s as if the whole of humanity is on trial. ‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord?’, we’ve been singing. Well, what do you think? In one sense, of course, we weren’t there – these events happened nearly two thousand years ago. But in another sense, the answer is ‘yes’, we were there, because in one or more of these characters, we see our own behaviour played out. I mean, who of us at times hasn’t cracked and compromised in situations where we feared reprisal? Who of us hasn’t been swept up in a chorus of self-righteous condemnation for a convenient scapegoat, or remained quiet and anonymous in a crowd when someone needed our testimony and support – when God needed our testimony and support? In that sense, we were there, are there, and that is a confronting realisation to make.
The crucifixion of Christ is an event that brings us face to face with some very unpleasant realities, including about ourselves. If that were all it did, we’d surely not refer to it as Good Friday – for it’d be all about our guilt, our failure, our darkness. But you see, that’s not all it does, for this crucifixion also brings us face to face with the reality of God, and the enacted truth that there is nothing that God will not face for love of the world, nothing that God will not endure in order to make a way for rebellious, compromising, self-seeking human beings to be healed, restored, and forgiven; brought back into relationship — with themselves, with one another, and with God. That’s why it’s referred to as Good Friday, because this cross is a place of new creation, of new possibility.
Were we there when they crucified the Lord? Yes, we were, to our shame, along with all the others – betraying, denying, judging, mocking, baying for blood! We were there… But so was he, the Lord of all – submitting… suffering… silent… forgiving… and that makes all the difference in the world.
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