WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?

(Preached on Sunday, April 1, 2007)

Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, ACrucify, crucify him!@                                               -Luke 23:20-21

 

Madeleine L=Engle provides a powerful reflection on this day in one of her writings.  She says: AOn Palm Sunday in the Cathedral the congregation participates in acting out the Gospel, and we are the mob, and I choke as I shout out, >His blood be on us, and on our children.  Crucify him!  Crucify him!=  I choke not because it is something I would never under any circumstances say, but because just as I do not know what I would have done had I been an ordinary German under Hitler=s regime, neither do I know what I would have done had I been caught up in that mob.  I might well have cried, >Crucify him!= and been convinced that this was the right thing to do.@

 

That is very much a major element in what makes this story still so powerful 2,000 years later.  That is why, even though we did not do a full dramatic re-enactment of the story I still felt it important for you to have a part in it.  This is not a story that should just be observed from the outside, like a disconnected, casual observer, but is something that needs to be witnessed from the inside as one of the participants.  After all, I imagine there were no disconnected, casual observers that day in Jerusalem.  Everyone in the city seems to have participated in the story in some way or another.  Who would you have been?

What would you have done?

There are several options offered by the gospel.

 

There were the disciples, pledging their love for Jesus, their willingness to fight for him.  Yet, even as they do so, acknowledging that within each of them lay the potential for betrayal, as they each question Jesus about themselves, AIs it I?@  They knew themselves well, did they not?  For though only one of them did betray him, in the end, they all fled, deserted and denied him.

 

Or, might you have been one of the women who had been with Jesus since Galilee.  Those who had supported his ministry financially.  They are the true mourners.  It seems they never desert Jesus, following him even to the cross, weeping and wailing for him, watching him die, and taking note of where they bury him.

 

Perhaps you would have been one of the soldiers, doing your duty, perhaps enjoying it a bit too much, using this man for your own entertainment and sport?  After all, you are stationed far from home in a dry, desert land, filled with people who despise you and wish you would leave their land.  You fear for your life each day and must live constantly on guard, alert for any ambush.  Besides, even his own people seem to hate this guy, so you join them as they mock and ridicule him.

 

Maybe you would have been Pilate, or Herod, or even Simon of Cyrene.  Never really involved with Jesus before.  Now, just trying to do your job, or mind your own business, you are confronted with him in such a way that he becomes a problem.  You can find nothing bad or evil in this man, can=t really identify anything he has done wrong, yet you just cannot convince the mob that he is not threat at all.  And, since you cannot convince them, then de facto, he becomes a threat to the order and peace you are to maintain.

 

Perhaps you would have been in the group of Jewish leaders, or in the mob they stirred up, trying to do what is best for the good of all the people and the nation as a whole.  They really weren=t bad people, you know?  They were leaders in their communities, in their synagogues.  The equivalent of pastors and bishops, school teachers and principal, bankers, lawyers, judges, politicians, doctors and business owners.  They all had families to take care of, responsibilities and careers, friends and loved ones.  They were people just like you and me.

 

Finally there are the two thieves and Barabbas, the real criminals, the truly guilty ones.  In a nutshell the three of them represent the three types of response to Jesus. There was the thief who stood up for Jesus, as the disciples wanted to do, as the women did in a sense, as Joseph of Arimathea did.  Then there was the thief who railed at Jesus, mocking and deriding him, as the soldiers did, as the Jewish leaders did, as did the mob.  Finally, there was Barabbas, who benefitted from Jesus= situation, but who was really just a bystander, as was Pilate, and Herod, and Simon of Cyrene.

 

Those are the responses shown to Jesus that day.  What would you have done?  Would you have stood up for him, shouted for his death, or just been caught in the show, even as you tried to stay uninvolved?

It is really hard to say, isn=t it?

 

But it is a question we face more often than just this one day each year.  Fred Craddock tells a story from his days in graduate school at Vanderbilt that demonstrates this truth.  He used to take late-night study breaks at an all-night diner.  One night, while worrying about his New Testament oral exams, he happened to overhear an exchange between the counter man and a ragged, down-on-his-luck customer.

AThen I noticed a man who was there when I went in, but had not yet been waited on.  I had been waited on, had a refill, and so had the others.  Then finally the man behind the counter went to the man at the end of the counter and said, >What do you want?=  He was an old, gray-haired, black man.  Whatever the man said, the fellow went to the grill, scooped up a little dark patty off the back of the grill, and put it on a piece of bread without condiment, without napkin.  The cook handed it to the man who gave him some money, and then went out the side door by the garbage can and out on the street.  He sat on the curb with the eighteen-wheelers of the night with the salt and pepper from the street to season his sandwich. 

 

AI didn=t say anything.  I did not reprimand, protest, or witness to the cook.  I did not go out and sit beside the man on the curb, on the edge.  I didn=t do anything.  I was thinking about the questions coming up on the New Testament.  And I left the little place, went up the hill back to my room to resume my studies, and off in the distance I heard a cock crow.@

 

It is hard to know what we would have done that day.

But we are given opportunities to respond each and every day.  As Jesus taught us, AWhen you do it to the least of these, you do it to me.@

What would you have done?  What will you do?

 

One final note: what is most important in the story is what God did.

And God=s response is clearly present in Barabbas= part of the story.  No one could have expected Barabbas= release.  Pilate certainly did not.  He thought he had an ace in the hole.  Barabbas was a danger, violent man.  Certainly no ordinary citizen would want him back on the street.  He was sort of like one of those high-ranking Al Qaeda leaders being held in Guantanamo.  Someone capable of extreme violence and destruction, murder and harm.  But to Pilate=s surprise, the mob picks Barabbas.  Barabbas goes free.  Jesus is sent to be crucified.

That day, Barabbas is the recipient of full-blown mercy and grace, totally unexpected, very expensive.  It is the same grace and mercy shown the thief who stood up for Jesus: AToday you will be with me in paradise.@

It is the same mercy and grace shown to everyone in the story: AFather, forgive them, for they don=t know what they are doing.@

 

Even in the horror of that day as an innocent man, the finest example of God=s compassion, love and mercy poured into one life, is betrayed, denied, abandoned, spit upon and crucified, God=s powerful grace and mercy are still at work.  Ultimately it is not as important what you would have done, as it is what God did.