Sermon – Good Friday – 2024 – jwgc
There’s an unwritten rule in baseball –
you do not bring the rulebook onto the field. You can argue… You can, I guess,
kick dirt at the umpire. But you cannot bring the actual rulebook out and point
out to the umpire (or a coach or a player) the rule that proves your point.
And believe me, because I’ve read it, some
rules are indecipherable. Hard to imagine that such a scenario would occur. Maybe
if that actual, unlikely thing happened, you could figure out the rule and
apply it that day.
Otherwise, the rules of baseball are
fairly simple. Most of the time, no rule book is needed.
You know. That unwritten rule, about not
bringing a rulebook onto the playing field seems terribly unhuman, unnatural;
it seems to fly in the face of what we need and crave.
We might not like the person who reads
out loud, the rules of a new board game but we need them. Someone has to impart
that knowledge (those rules) to the group.
Humans like rules. We crave limits. The
Bible has over 600 rules. The church has rules. Governments have rules. Families
have rules. Social groups have rules. Schools; Sports; even war has rules.
I suppose that rules are good. They create
order and presumably safety.
Humans tend to think legalistically: here
are the boundaries; colour within the lines and all will be fine.
Jesus is put on trial for seemingly breaking
the rules. The charge of Blasphemy was serious. You see – people weren’t
allowed to claim to be God. Which one could argue Jesus didn’t really do, but
his followers did and that still qualified as blasphemy.
As well, the charge of Sedition is
serious. You see – people weren’t allowed to claim to be a king, because there
already was an emperor: Ceasar was the ruler, the king, no one else should dare
to presume to challenge him.
It’s an interesting discussion. (For me
at least.) Was Jesus guilty of blasphemy and sedition, or were they trumped up charges?
Legalistically, perhaps he was, and the punishment was crucifixion. At least at
the time that was the punishment.
The people who accused Jesus of these
crimes brought the rule book onto the field. But their game was different from
the one Jesus played. The rules for the game Jesus was playing were entirely
different.
The crux of the problem is identified in
the question: what is truth?
Rules define boundaries, what’s allowed
and what’s not allowed. Rules cannot define truth. What the Jewish leaders
missed; what the Roman occupiers missed was that truth is not a legalistic
thing. Its boundaries are not easily definable.
The person they’ve accused of these
capitol crimes is the embodiment of truth. Truth is a person. God’s truth is a
person. Jesus is truth, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
Pilate tries to play a nasty trick on
everyone – he asks the people, would you have me crucify your king? Pilate
thinks that if they say yes, then they are effectively giving up all hope for a
messiah. Giving up their hope for independence from the occupying Roman forces.
Pilate fails to see the truth as it
stands before him, bloodied and bruised.
We benefit from leaning into this story
as deeply as we can. The trial is ours, as much as it is against Jesus.
In the midst of all this, there’s another
trial going on, easily missed. As Jesus is questioned, as people try and make
him look guilty, we also hear about a man named Peter who is also being
questioned, as if he too is on trial. People
ask him: aren’t you also a disciple? Peter, in order to safe his own skin, (we
suppose that’s his motivation,) denies even knowing Jesus. One can easily
sympathize with Peter. I’d probably want to save myself too.
Peter is who he is, and that’s a
disciple. Peter is effectively denying himself. Denying a relationship with the
Saviour is denying his very self.
You see, after all these things, when
Peter meets the risen Lord, on a beach, for breakfast, it’s not really an
opportunity for Jesus to forgive Peter. What’s really happening there is that
Peter is being given himself. Peter denied himself at the crucifixion and Jesus
is letting Peter reclaim himself. To reclaim his discipleship, to reclaim the truth
about Jesus, so that Peter can carry on the mission of a disciple, of an
apostle, of a follower of Jesus the Christ: the way, the truth and the life.
Today, we too are given the opportunity
to reclaim our true selves, unfettered by human notions of sin, unfettered by
the rule book. Free to live into the truth, free to live into being the Church,
free to live into being the Body of Christ in the world. It’s an awesome trust
God places in humanity, to love, to forgive; to show mercy and pursue justice
even when it’s uncomfortable.
If Jesus was guilty: he was guilty of being the embodiment of God’s love; he was guilty of being the incarnation of God’s
forgiveness; he was guilty of being a servant of mercy; he was guilty of being a
creator of justice and peace. For that they convicted him. May we be so charged
and convicted. Amen.
