“Was I There?”
John 18:1-19:42
With the death of Jesus on Calvary, we witness, amid the noise of soldiers and criminals, gawkers and passers-by, what looks like the final triumph of evil.
All the ugliness and violence we can imagine takes place in the events that lead-up to the six hours during which God in human form hangs on a Cross on a hillside outside the gates of Jerusalem.
God has come into our world and we killed Him.
Jesus could have destroyed all the people with just one word.
Instead, for our sake, Jesus willingly carried His Cross, this horrible thing upon which He would be nailed.
“For God so loved the world.”
On Good Friday, we witness our human capacity for evil and the deadly consequence of our actions, silences, cruelty and collusion.
Jesus died because of our collective and representative sin.
Jesus was killed because of us.
Let’s allow that to sink in a bit.
I’m not trying to get us all depressed, but we really cannot appreciate Easter until we have been to the Cross.
It’s only when we have seen the full extent of evil on display there and have witnessed the apparent victory of death that we can even begin to appreciate the amazing, grace-filled, love-filled, life giving triumph that is Easter!
Crucifixion was a horrifying death.
The Romans used it as a crime deterrent.
That is why crucifixions took place where people would see them.
The goal of crucifixion was to inflict the most agony possible for the longest period of time.
Many of the victims would hang on a cross for days before they finally died.
Because of movies and pictures most of us imagine that Jesus, on the Cross, was quite a bit off the ground—but in reality, most crosses were no more than 9 feet tall leaving the victim’s feet just 3 feet off the ground.
So, on the day Jesus was crucified, He hung on the Cross just 2 or 3 feet above His mother, His aunt, Mary the wife of Clopas, the disciple Jesus loved, the soldiers and the ones who were laughing at Him and hurling insults at Him.
He could look into their eyes and they could look into His, as He struggled as He bled…as He died.
Many believe that those who were crucified most often died of asphyxiation.
This is because hanging on a Cross, it was extremely difficult to exhale without raising your body up.
And the longer a person hung on a Cross and the more exhausted a person became, the more difficult it was to breath.
Others think a buildup of fluid around the heart caused congestive heart failure.
We don’t know for sure.
But what we do know is that it was an extremely effective way to torture someone for a long period of time.
Jesus, bloodied and naked, hung on a Cross that way for 6 hours.
Can you imagine the amount of love involved in what God did for us on that first Good Friday?
Who would willingly sign up for something like that?
I can’t imagine.
Can you?
And so, today we come to the Cross and we are faced with the fact that we humans are so broken that we are capable of murdering God.
If we are willing to face it, Jesus’ suffering and death are a mirror held up to our souls, a reminder of the jealousy, pettiness, self-centeredness, spiritual blindness and darkness that lurk in all of us.
Every year on Good Friday we replay the details of Jesus’ death to make sure we get the story straight and to remember, but have we also ever found ourselves inside the story as well?
Here’s what I mean:
Let’s take Judas for example.
None of us would have done what Judas did, would we?
I mean, he betrayed Jesus!
But what if we believed that Jesus was the political Messiah we had been waiting for, and that all He needed in order to start the revolution we wanted was just a good, strong push from us?
Have we ever pushed someone because of our own impatience or because we were trying to get them to do what we wanted them to do?
Have I?
Have you?
Let’s ask ourselves: “Is there anything about Judas in me?”
(pause)
And what about Peter?
None of us would have done what Peter did, right?
He promised to follow Jesus all the way to the grave but he ended up denying Him three times because a servant girl, with no power and no clout, asked him if he was one of His disciples.
Who knows what we would really do under the same circumstances.
Who knows how strong our survival instinct would be.
Peter needs some credit for even showing up in the courtyard where Jesus was being tried at all.
(pause)
And certainly, none of us would have done what Caiaphas the High Priest did.
He made the claim that “it is better for one person to die than that the whole nation perish.”
I mean, have we ever weighed a difficult situation and then chose the lesser of two evils?
And is it any less evil, just because it’s the lesser of the two?
(pause)
And none of us would have done what Pilate did, would we?
I mean, he kept going back and forth between Jesus and Jesus’ accusers, hoping to find an easy answer—an easy way out.
How many times have we listened--long past the time when we knew what the right thing to do was, just because the right thing was neither easy nor popular?
How many times have we taken a survey rather than a stand?
How many times have we given-in to the pressure of the crowd and done something we knew was wrong to save face or our own skin or to be popular or to fit-in?
(pause)
And none of us would have done what the chief priests did, would we?
They shouted “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” and then followed that up by saying, “We have no king but Caesar.”
Then again, have you or I ever been part of an angry mob?
Have we ever called for a leader’s undoing?
Have we ever wished that someone who was making our lives difficult would just go away…disappear?
Have we ever done anything to make that departure more likely?
(pause)
None of us would have done what the soldiers did, would we?
They flogged Jesus, dressed Him in purple and put a crown of thorns on His head.
None of us would have nailed Him to a Cross or gambled for His clothing, or pierced His side, would we?
Then again, good soldiers do what they are told to do every day.
They are commended for it, decorated for it.
Sometimes innocent people die.
We call it “collateral damage.”
(pause)
Jesus said, “Whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done it for me.”
(pause)
Look what Mary did.
She stood there at the foot of the Cross and watched her Son’s life drain away.
She watched as He was mocked, spit upon, flogged, as He carried His own instrument of execution, bled, cried out in pain…hung from a cross…
(pause)
And look what “the disciple Jesus loved,” Mary the wife of Clopas and Jesus’ aunt did.
They risked their lives by standing there with Mary.
Maybe this is where we need to ask God to allow us to enter Good Friday.
We are all guilty of betraying, denying, judging, condemning, rejecting, mocking, cursing, flogging and killing Jesus with our thoughts, words, actions and inaction.
This is why He came and died.
Let us take a moment to confess and repent of our sins to God.
(pause)
And let us ask God for His grace and strength to experience the NEW LIFE that comes by standing there at the foot of the Cross with others who love Him, and putting our arms around each other for comfort and strength, so that when they ask us later what happened we can say, “I was standing at the foot of the Cross watching Him die for my sins, for me.”
(pause)
Were you there?
Was I?
