In the Passion, we become the witnesses, not only to the brutality put upon Jesus, but to the violence we impose upon one another.
the Crucifixion destroys the justification for violence
Good Friday | John 18:1-19:42
It’s often said the Passion preaches itself. Its power is self-evident. But it doesn’t quite preach like the fire and brimstone is beneath you and the vultures are picking at your neck.
It preaches more like a sequence of photographs — of refugees washed up on shore. Or it preaches like the New York Times without the sports and entertainment sections — a never-ending collection of conflicts.
The Passion preaches like a college friend dying of cancer and another in war. Always with the chilling reminder that our daughters and sons may join them. Another school shooting? Or another one prepping for war?
The Passion doesn’t preach like Billy Graham. It preaches like the headlines from a country living under brutal tyranny. So to say it preaches itself oversells our ability to hear good preaching.
To hear that the Passion is actually about us.
Through the Fog of War
Between the tiny details and the massive themes, John’s telling of the Passion overwhelms us. Much of its power comes in the brute force of the narrative, the gravity of the actions, and the striking moments of humanity.
For instance, imagine hearing this without the seamless tunic, the choice not to tear it up, but roll dice for it. Details of brutality and humanity like this one convict us as witnesses to hate and abuse. Because these could be men we know.
But in the fog of abuse, betrayal, and war, the evil acted upon Jesus, we may somehow miss his active presence in the center. Jesus sits, falls, stands, falls, walks, falls, and is hoisted up in to the center of this story. Not as an icon of devotion, but a beacon of love cutting a dense fog.
And with him, like a foil, stands a weak antagonist: Pilate.
The Threat of Jesus
When Jesus stands before Plate, they can’t understand each other. Pilate, obsessed with power, the tangible, and the workings of this world, is disturbingly ignorant. He doesn’t have ears to hear, so Jesus’s words make no sense to him.
To a person governed only by power, faith, truth, and life are nothing but words. “What is truth?” he asks like a malevolent postmodernist.
We are so driven by Jesus’s innocence, but for Pilate and the Temple leadership, it’s the threat he poses that matters. They see his brand of peace as the biggest threat.
Jesus calls for peace through love and justice. A sense both traditional and troubling to the powerful. Because it unsettles the peace through strength of Rome and the peace through capitulation to the powerful by the Temple leaders.
Their peace isn’t true peace, Shalom, the presence of peace and justice. But this false peace is threatening to collapse with the proverbial barbarians at the gates. Except the barbarians are actually in charge of the city. And they’re afraid of the poor fisher people from the north.
Pilate and Power
Pilate comes back in, confused and conflicted. This can’t be happening! He asks Jesus
“‘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.’”
Everything about the Jesus story is power. He gives God the power. And all of these people who think they’re powerful, who throw their weight around and issue threats, lord it all over the powerless with fear and hatred of even sharing their power with God, let alone another person.
And here stands Jesus, dismissing Pilate’s power. Dismissing it’s very existence. Dismissing the emperor’s authority. Jesus is fully ignoring the danger he is in. Like he’s saying you can’t really hurt me.
The Sin is Ours
But let’s be more careful here, in the safety of Pilate’s chamber. The already convicted Jesus is given a last chance before the sentencing. One last chance to get freedom, like a prosecutor with a plea deal.
And Jesus tells Pilate that he is utterly powerless. But he doesn’t stop there. Jesus convicts “the one who handed me over to you”.
We look past this moment, thinking Jesus must be referring to Judas. But to do so would cause us to turn on him, shouting “Crucify him!” with Judas before a kangaroo court.
Or perhaps we ignore the singular word “one” and think Jesus is referring the Temple authorities who arrested Jesus and pushed Pilate to crucify Jesus. But such a suggestion leads us to the same result.
But…
If the one with power isn’t Pilate, but God, then the one who handed over Jesus isn’t “the Jews” or Judas. It’s God.
And while some popular atonement theories would have us reason that God killed Jesus out of some sort of blood obligation, there is one further layer to the story we must go to before we’re done.
For God to have given Jesus over to be killed would be God’s guilt of a greater sin.
Redeeming Our Sin
To put Jesus on the cross and orchestrate his execution for any reason would be monstrous.
This is where we return to the beginning. The power of the passion to preach is that it shows how monstrous and senseless our sense of justice is. Ruled by fear and rejection; abuse and hate; torture and certainty. We hoist the source of our pain upon crosses without realizing that they instantly become the victims and we the monsters.
Popular explanations for what Jesus’s death means to our faith (we call these atonement theories) try to explain the mind of God. But they all fail because they aren’t from God.
But what we have is the witness to the brutality of the Passion and in our world. And we find ourselves always casting each other into good guys and bad guys, victims and perpetrators. Even when they switch places.
And we see Jesus wrongfully convicted by the fearful and the scandalized; afraid of a poor man from the backwoods of Nazareth. Put up on a cross and killed for their fear.
The one who came to bring us together and end the cycle of violence. Another chance by God to save us from ourselves. From our fear.
Saving Us
What the Passion preaches is not a metaphysic about God or some elaborate explanation about God’s intentions — at least not directly.
Instead it puts up a mirror to see the monstrous fear and the tyranny of our hate. And it preaches to help us see this in every other part of our lives. To see the everyday headlines and state-sponsored crucifixions in our own city.
Jesus died because humans were afraid of losing their power. Power that isn’t even ours to have or give or use. And he keeps dying every day as humans continue to fear the loss of power.
That’s our greater sin. We hand Jesus over to be crucified every day.
And Jesus spends every day trying to get us to do what God has wanted all along: not a blood sacrifice, but an end to the cycle of violence. Not more blood, but an end to the shedding of blood.
Maybe now we will listen.