Tag Archives: sin

Who Deserves to Die?

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Have you seen one of these posters?

We’ve moved to a small town, so I haven’t.

This new campaign, with posters popping up in major cities across the country is two things that really get me excited. First, it is a guerrilla marketing campaign that arrests each person that sees a single poster. You stop, you think, and you feel. Like the recent anti-smoking ads with the effects of lung cancer. Or those old Truth ads about what’s in cigarettes. Or even that “your brain on drugs” omelet ad. You are stopped, you are thinking, and you are repulsed.

I also like that it is buzzy and noteworthy. They have us interested in finding out what it is all about tomorrow. I love that.

There is a secret, third reason I like them. They are our message.

I know that they are likely to be a health awareness thing about lung cancer. We are bound to be disappointed by what is revealed, because once we know what they are for, they will cease to motivate us.

Except that the message is much bigger than any one campaign. At least any one campaign that isn’t the Jesus campaign. Or, more precisely, the Kingdom of GOD campaign.

That message, of picking random people and saying that person deserves to die is our greatest sin. The church has taken these posters and made them true. They are our literalism. We have, and continue to vilify the other, the stranger, the friend, the lover, the sister, and the child. We have, throughout history and to this day, told innocent people that they deserve to die because of who they are. Because of what they believe. Because of who they love. Because of what they eat. Or with whom they eat.

We have called on the deaths of so many people. There is no amount of penance Christians can do to make up for its sins. We have been, and continue to be, evil.

And it may seem weak or ridiculous, and it certainly isn’t sufficient, but I am sorry. I am sorry that my people have sinned. That I have sinned. That Christians have been so unworthy of your sympathy or respect.

The campaign, though, is also about shining a light on the ridiculousness of wishing the death of others. It isn’t just a cross for us to bear, but a true opportunity to repent. An invitation to see what many Christians have always believed: that no one deserves to die. That there is no integrity to seek someone’s death, to hope for it. That our reconciling, as the parable of the Good Samaritan teaches, is not about getting back together with friends, but with enemies. That even our most detested, reviled enemies that warrant our hatred, must be given the opposite. That everyone must be given mercy and love. No buts. No exceptions. We can’t other someone and say the line stops with him. “I draw the line at him. What he has done. He is unlovable.” EEERN! Wrong Answer. No exceptions. Not even hipsters. Or cat lovers.

And maybe then we can realize how much of Scripture, and specifically the Torah, we misunderstand. That we aren’t to condemn or kill in the name of GOD.

Ever.

Friday

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The following is the first of a three-part series of reflections I had intended to do during the end of Holy Week.  As you can imagine, the time ran out.  I’m delivering an abbreviated version over the next few days.

Preaching on Good Friday is tough.  The subject, the material, everything is going against you.  I lamented to a friend that the struggle I was feeling going into it was the tension between wanting to be honest to the day and its solemnity without sending people out wanting to slit their wrists.  I was taught to look for the grace in every preaching opportunity, but it seemed like Good Friday needed to be the exception.

As I was preparing for this year’s service, and reading the gospel, which is the 18-19 chapters of John, I came across this interesting passage.  Jesus is being questioned by Pilate and here is a short exchange in verses 19:10-11:

Pilate therefore said to him, ‘Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?’ Jesus answered him, ‘You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.’

Perhaps it was reflective mood I was in, but as I read these words, my mind did a double-take.  “Did Jesus say what I think he said?” I thought.   Let’s take a look at it.

Pilate has Jesus over a barrel, and if we take John’s understanding of events as honest, Pilate is trying mightily to get out of doing what he’s in the middle of.  And he pleads with Jesus here: be reasonable he seems to be saying.  Work with me here! Can’t you see that I’ve got the power to choose whether or not you survive the day? He appeals to Jesus’s intelligence and sense of self-preservation.  Just end this charade.

Puzzling is not that Jesus picks the response that he does, but what that response could imply.

Jesus’s response is two-fold:

  1. Any power you possess over me was given to you by God.
  2. Who brought me here “is guilty of a greater sin.”

Just reading this through, we can see these things as direct and making sense.  God grants earthly power and the Jewish leadership are the ones most responsible for this.  We can easily see the roots of anti-Semitism in this exchange.  But this reading requires us to make some leaps that the text doesn’t give us.

Notice in the first part that Jesus doesn’t refer to Pilate having any actually earthly power except that he acknowledges his possessing power “over” Jesus.  He doesn’t seem to be honestly granting Pilate’s premise, but takes the opportunity to describe the possessor of true power.  Also, in the NRSV phrasing, the supposition is that Pilate would have no power at all if it weren’t for God.

But the really interesting stuff is in the second part.  Keeping in mind that the first part is dealing with power coming from God.  Jesus then seems to be condemning “the one who handed me over to you”.  But who?  Caiaphas?  The Chief Priest?  Or do we go back to Judas?  What interests me is that Jesus refers to the singular, when the evangelist keeps pinning the blame on “The Jews”.  The reading one gets, both up to this point, and throughout the Passion narrative, is that it is the Temple authorities that are most responsible.  It also seems to be a strange moment to take a pot-shot at Judas.  I can’t help but read this statement with the first part in mind–God gives the power to Pilate to condemn Jesus, so isn’t it God that also gave power to the soldiers, Jewish police, the crowds, the authorities to deliver Jesus to them?  Isn’t God, therefore “guilty of a greater sin”?

Perhaps I’m letting my deconstructionist heart get the best of me today, but this passage seems to speak to that enduring question: how could the Father let this befall the Son?

For me, the truly revealing thing about Good Friday is our willingness to blame God for putting Jesus, and us, in this situation.  Jesus, humbling Himself in human form, dwelling among us, and walking straight into his own execution is pretty heavy burden to put on all of us.  Friday comes around, and I feel guilt.  Two thousand years of guilt.  We even have a liturgical tradition of assuming that guilt in shouting “crucify him” in the gospel reading.  We take on that guilt.  And we often blame each other or we scapegoat “The Jews” because its convenient and some of our ancestors did, so its ‘traditional’.  But isn’t some of the blame God’s?  And don’t you think that Jesus got that?  And don’t you think that God gets it now?  Isn’t God taking some of that heat a good thing?  Isn’t God working in the midst of this nasty scenario just as important as the victory through which the light of Christ is revealed just as awesome?  And if we’re willing to be honest to it, isn’t it a teensy weensy bit more awesome than that?

It seems like we make a theological leap when we express liturgically that Jesus became human “yet, without sin”.  Perhaps the greater leap is that we believe that God can’t sin.