John 18.37-19.6

Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, “I find no case against him. But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” They shouted in reply, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a bandit. Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They keep coming up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And striking him on the face. Pilate went out again and said to them, “Look, I am bring him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!” When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him.”

In 1905 the Daily News in London published a piece titled, “What’s Wrong With The World?” And they asked for answers. Hundreds of people wrote in about hundreds of different subjects. GK Chesterton, writer and theologian, simply responded with two words: “I am.”

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If you were with us last night for our Maundy Thursday service you heard me address our captivity to the past. That we are so captive to and by the past is evidenced in our grammar, in our actions, and even in our conversations. 

I tried to make the case for confusing our sense of time because Jesus is not bound to the past and continues to live and reign with God and the Holy Spirit even today. Moreover, we always gather at the table in anticipation of the divine table around which we shall gather one day. 

But now I want us to return to the theme of time, and in particular how haunted we are by it. We are of course haunted by our own histories, the wrong choices we made, and the right ones we’ve avoided – but we are also haunted by the history of our humanity, which, frankly, has been rather inhumane.

The last 100 years have perhaps been the most bloody in our history. Every time we engaged in a new war there was an assumption that the current war would be the end of war and yet we are now, have been, in a state of war for the better part of the last 20 years. 

But we are good at denial. 

We look at something like the Holocaust and we feel as if we are able to wash our hands of it because the Germans were responsible for that horrific tragedy. But the “we” in that sentence is particularly problematic if the “we” is we Christians or even we Americans. Because, as Americans, we were given the opportunity by Germany to receive countless Jews before the Holocaust ever began and we turned them away over and and over again. Moreover, as Christians, it was the Christianity in Germany that led to the anti-semitism that resulted in death chambers and funeral pyres.

Tonight is Good Friday. 

It is not an easy night in the life of the Christian witness.

We are forced to look at the cross, at ourselves, and at our Lord.

And in so doing we cannot deny that we are inheritors of a history that makes us a people who should acknowledge that we are anything but innocent. 

There is a church right smack dab in the middle of downtown Detroit that was built before all the white people fled the city. The enormous pipe organ required a frighteningly ridiculous amount of money to purchase and install. The Tiffany stained glass windows portrayed the pivotal moments of Jesus’ life. And the pulpit towered above everyone who sat in the pews.

But, over the years, the sanctuary has changed.

They haven’t been able to afford an organist in years and no one even knows if the organ still works.

The stained glass windows are now punctuated with bullet holes and iron bars.

And they sold the pulpit to a growing church in the suburbs years ago requiring the pastor to just walk around by the pews on Sunday mornings.

I sat in that church years ago and stared up at their cross hanging 20 feet above the ground. I tried to imagine what the church must have been like during its hay day, because when I was there there were only 12 of us in the pews.

I listened to the sermon, but I didn’t pay attention. The cross commanded my attention. 

It was huge, far larger than the one used to crucify Jesus. It had a deep are dark hue to it and certainly seemed like it had come from a far away land.

While almost everything else in the church was falling apart the cross was immaculate. Perhaps because it was dangling in the air no one had messed with it.

But the longer I looked at it, the more I noticed something strange; the bottom right corner was all gnarled and messed up.

Honestly, it looked like a dog had been chewing on it.

For years.

So after the service, while shaking hands with the faithful remnant, I asked about the cross and in particular what had happened to it.

One of the ushers proudly beamed, “We’ve been taking it down every Good Friday since the first year this church opened and we drag it through the streets of Detroit. And every year we hang it back up on Easter Sunday.”

“Why?”

“So that we don’t forget what we did.”

So that we don’t forget what we did.

At the heart of our faith is the strange and bizarre proclamation that Jesus was degraded and dehumanized by his fellow human beings as much as was possible. 

That he was murdered by decree from the religious establishments and from the state.

That even when given the opportunity to let him go, the crowds shouted “Crucify!” with reckless abandon.

In just about every religious system in the world, there is a huge distinction between those who are holy and those who are unholy, between the right and the wrong, between the godly and the ungodly.

But in Christianity, there is really no distinction, since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. None is righteous, no, not one. (to quote St. Paul)

The crucifixion of Jesus, what we have come here to mark tonight, is not a very religious event. Which is to say, its not very spiritual. It is particularly and specifically rooted in what we might call “the real.” It happens in the midst of political jockeying for power, it is shocking and extremely violent, it threatens the established religious authorities, and it forces us to look upon the darkness of death.

During the time of Jesus, Jews did not crucify people – it was a Roman punishment. And yet, John portrays for us a strange back and forth between those in power. They certainly wanted the rabble-rouser taken care of, some wanted him dead, but no one wanted the responsibility. 

And, as nearly all things in the church go, we could debate the responsibility of the death of Jesus. We can cherry-pick particular verses and try to pin it on someone or some people. 

But the truth about the responsibility of Jesus’ crucifixion is what we were just singing: ’Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee: I crucified thee.

I crucified thee.

It was me.

It was us.

Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. We throw that around a lot in the church, and it might be the most important thing we can remember tonight. 

We are the ungodly for whom Christ died. 

Sure, had we been there in the crowds that day, we might not have shouted crucify, we might not have hammered the nails into his flesh, we might not have mocked him with his crown of thorns and purple robe. 

But we all say “Crucify!” in our own way. 

We make assumptions about people for no other reason than the color of their skin.

We judge people for the name of a politician on their bumper sticker.

We perpetuate systems of injustice in which more and more people suffer.

In the church today we have this strong desire to be inclusive, though we are often unsure as to what that really means. For to be truly inclusive is not just a matter of having different kinds of people in the building. It means a total and unwavering commitment to something that is frankly impossible for us. 

Because even when we are able to ditch an old division between us a new one arises in its place. It is part of our sinful, and human, nature to do so. 

This is no more ironic than outside the churches that have signs saying, “Hate has no place here.” 

That a worthy claim but it is a lie. 

All of us have hate in us, whether we like to admit it or not, and, to make matters worse, saying that hate has no place in a church affirms that that church hates people who hate!

Which leads us back to the cross. The crucifixion of Jesus puts to an end the religious categories that separate people from one another and unites us under a common banner. We might want that banner to be a declaration of love, or grace, or mercy. But the thing under which we are all included is actually our guilt. 

We, all of us, are the ungodly.

And yet Christ dies, for us. 

This is the great generosity of God who, knowing our hearts and minds and souls, dies for us anyway. It is a scandalous generosity because it is fundamentally counter to anything we would do. 

To be honest, the crucifixion is a very ungodly thing for Jesus to do. 

But that’s kind of the whole point.

It was about noon when Pilate said to the Jews, “Here is your King!” They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” Then Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.

So they took him; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscriptions written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” 

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished he said, “I am thirsty.” A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of the hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” And he died.

What’s wrong with the world? I am. Amen.