1 - The Garden - Luke 22:39-51
It’s been a long day and it’s now late at night. The disciples have shared in the Passover Meal with Jesus – the highlight of the Jewish calendar. Now is the night when long ago the Angel of the Lord wreaked havoc among the Egyptians, killing the first born son of every family, whilst the Israelites were safe behind doorways they had daubed with the blood of their sacrificial lambs. This night heralds the death of another first born – the Son of God. For Jesus there will be no resting behind the doors of the Passover room, instead it’s out to the Mount of Olives and the garden where he will taste his last moments of freedom. The tired and bemused disciples follow but already he is beginning to journey beyond where they can accompany him. In the garden all is apparently peaceful and quiet, with only the smells of spring and the gentle noises of nocturnal creatures going about their business.
See him now in prayer. In his head he knows what is to come, and yet the mental pain of his impending arrest, torture and execution is not lessened one iota. In Luke’s brief, but powerful, description the anguish brings such sweat that it’s as though he were bleeding. The prayer he prays is simple and direct. He doesn’t hide his feelings from the God who knows how we all feel anyway. He recognises that his own comfort and well-being must be subservient to God’s will. His reluctance to face the path ahead is a marvellous comfort to each of us when we feel the same. In our agony we know we have in Jesus one who has been here before, and who was not vanquished by it. In his victory will lie our victory.
The time of prayer is over, the sleeping disciples roused. For now a crowd is here, with Judas among them, and Jesus is betrayed by a greeting. It’s the hour of darkness, when those who had been afraid to challenge him in the temple have their moment. And yet darkness always carries within it the knowledge that the dawn will follow. Here, crucially, Jesus rejects violent resistance. But what lies behind Judas’s treachery? I’ve long felt that the sin of Judas is to try to force Jesus’ hand. He wants not the arrest of his master but the opening strike in the battle to overthrow both pagan Rome and the corrupt Israeli regime. Had Jesus resisted, the disciples and many of the crowd would have joined in. There could be no turning back. The Messiah would be doing what the Messiah was expected to do, and here at the Mount of Olives where the prophet foretold it would all begin. No wonder Judas is so devastated when Jesus meekly goes off to his death that he kills himself. The Garden will see no Crusade launched, no Holy War proclaimed, after a brief exchange the action is over, the crowd go home, the disciples mostly flee, Jesus and his captors move on to the next scene. Once again only the noise of insects and the rustle of the breeze disturb the quiet. The peace of Gethsemane is like the peace of Eden.
2. The Courtyard - Luke 22:51-62
Our second location on this pilgrimage to the cross is the most unusual. It’s the only story in St. Luke’s account of the events up to the crucifixion when the main character isn’t centre stage. Jesus appears briefly, turns and looks at Peter, and that’s the totality of his involvement. There in the courtyard of the High Priest’s house it is Simon Peter who is the focus.
The night is almost over; it’s got to that time when the earth is at its coldest. It may be early spring and several thousand miles closer to the equator than we are, but the arrest party, the few remnants of the crowd and the High Priest’s servants are gathered round a hastily lit fire, waiting for the dawn that will bring an end to their vigil. Peter is as cold as the rest, and as he huddles closer to the fire the flickering light falls on his face. And a maid recognises him.
Poor Peter. In many ways he’s done better than the other disciples; at least he hasn’t run away. He wants to stay by Jesus, probably for the reasons he has given many months previously – he has no where else to go. Without Jesus his life no longer makes sense – to live is to be with his master. Three times Peter is
3. The Corridor of Power - Luke 22:66-28:25
Three distinct places form our third location: the High Priest’s house, Pilate’s headquarters and Herod’s palace. The action moves rapidly between them, finally ending back with Pilate. Jesus is conveyed by his guards, followed by the crowd, accompanied by his accusers, as he goes from place to place. And yet underneath the three places are one – in modern terminology we would call them the “corridors of power”.
These are the places from which decisions emerge. They are where powerful individuals negotiate with one another, where lobbying is at its most intensive, and yet where often nobody is fully in control. Who is actually responsible for Jesus’ condemnation to death? Pilate has the apparent authority but it’s all too clear how reluctantly he is being propelled down this route. Herod is angry at his rebuff by Jesus whom he had hoped might be of use to him; he will do nothing to protect this strange religious man but he’s pretty quick to pass him back again. Luke is careful too, to make no distinction between the chief priests and the wider crowd. There is a momentum of events propelling Jesus from arrest to execution, for which no one is ultimately to blame, or for which everyone is ultimately to blame.
That’s how corridors of power work. We see it in our own public sphere. Some huge mistake takes place; perhaps the failure of the Home Office to deport convicted aliens at the end of their sentences. Somehow there’s very rarely any one person found to be at personal fault. Again we have been promised an offence of corporate manslaughter for some years, to enable directors of companies to be sent to prison for the death of someone in consequence of their corporate actions. To date nothing has hit the statute books. The corridors of power don’t like personal responsibility.
But enough of the great and the good (or not so good). What about you and me? We’ve just as adept at being part of wrong doings for which there isn’t anybody available to blame. The big issue of the year has been climate change. When the rains fail in part of Africa and millions die, whose fault is it? It is governments who won’t enact tough legislation? Is it international companies who refuse to take responsibility and simply move to the country with the laxest regulation? Is it the wealthy who jet around the world with lavish lifestyles? Is it you who insist on out of season strawberries and buy your food smothered in plastic packaging? Is it me when I find it more convenient to drive to Malvern than to take the extra time and effort to catch the train? And is it worth me doing anything to change my own behaviour when everybody else just goes on as they are?
So many are responsible that nobody’s responsible. Every one can pass the blame elsewhere. In Luke’s account the crowd do not cry out, as they do in Matthew, “His blood be upon us and on our children”, nor is it suggested that the chief priests have persuaded them to appeal for Barabbas to be the beneficiary of a pardon.
The challenge of the corridors of power is to accept our share of responsibility, even if we might feel others are more to blame. Because ultimately it is when lots of individuals take that stance that the world becomes a better place.
4. The Road to Golgotha - Luke 23:26-31
Most Saturday mornings I go to the local gym. I try to be there as soon as it opens at 8 o’clock, because that way I get it over with as soon as possible. I don’t enjoy the exercise – its just something I feel I have to do to keep in a passable physical state. The majority of the time I’m on the “cardio-vascular” equipment: rowing machines; stationary bicycles; stepping apparatuses. The only one I can usually face is the treadmill. Its advantage is that all I have to do is set the speed and angle of incline and then keep my legs going. Every other machine requires me to keep on pedalling or pulling or stepping – if I choose to stop, it stops too. But the treadmill goes on regardless, forcing me to keep up – I don’t have to be mentally committed, just to keep the legs moving.
The Romans were good at knowing how to add to the suffering of a condemned man. Jesus and the other two convicts are forced to carry their own crosses from the city to the place of execution. They are made to be active participants in their own punishment in a way that will no longer be the case once they are nailed to the wood. The difference is the same as that between the rowing machine and the treadmill. Perhaps a more fitting analogy may be that of the Holocaust victims who were forced to dig their own graves before being lined up and shot. Even when Jesus’ legs give way under the weight of it, and Simon is pressed into service, he still has to tread the path to Golgotha, and to converse with the distraught women lining the route. There’s no point yet when he can mentally withdraw and try to let it all pass over him. He’s not on a treadmill; he’s still having to row hard.
There are times for you and me, on our Christian journey when we too are called to go on making a positive effort, mental as well as physical, even though we can’t see any benefit in the direction we are having to travel. We’re called to stick at things when we’d much rather give up. I recall a couple, quite some years ago, describing how hard it was to stay worshipping in the small rural parish where they lived when it was all so much more exciting and fulfilling at the big suburban parish a few miles away. Yet they knew that the odds were if they left the village church there would not be enough energy left in its largely elderly congregation to keep it from terminal decline. I think in part they wanted to be told it was OK to leave and to follow their own preferred style – to be fed rather than having to feed others. On that occasion though I didn’t feel this was right.
Sometimes it’s the job that we do that is draining, sometimes it’s the relationships we have with those closest to us. Sometimes it’s all the voluntary commitments we’ve taken on. Sometimes it’s right to stop rowing, to let the machine slow down and stop, get off and go exercise somewhere else. But sometimes the right course, the godly course, is to carry on exactly where we are, making what we may feel to be unrewarded effort, and trusting that somewhere in it all God remains in control, and that what we are doing is to his greater glory.
As Jesus trudges heavily through the streets of Jerusalem and on up the hill of Golgotha, sometimes weighed down by the cross, sometimes by the weeping crowd, these are the same judgement calls he has to make. And here, he goes on.
5. The place of the skull - Luke 23:32-47
High on the cross, up on the hill of Golgotha, Jesus has become a public spectacle. Powerless, he can only hang there whilst anyone who wishes makes what comments they will. There’s jeering and mockery, but mixed with a plea for assistance from one of the two criminals being executed with him, and a final confession by the centurion in charge that they have killed an innocent man.
There is something perverse in the human psyche that is attracted to watching the tragedy of others from a position of safety and impunity. It’s there in the tailbacks that occur on the motorway carriageway opposite where an accident has occurred. I suspect it’s much the same that is there in the fascination with reality TV shows in which the participants are set up to fight. I’m sure it’s there in the way that celebrities are built up by the media just for the enjoyment to be had from kicking them down again. The Germans, not surprisingly, have a long word for it “Schadenfreude”. So on this Friday there’s a crowd gathered to watch the spectacle of three men twisting in agony on wooden crosses until at last they die. There’s even the opportunity for audience participation in the taunts and challenges they issue.
The paradox at the heart of the Christian faith is that this voyeuristic trait becomes part of our path to salvation. It’s St. John who makes it explicit, drawing a precise analogy between the Israelites in the desert, who were saved by looking up at the figure of a snake which Moses had had placed on a pole, and our gazing upon the crucified Jesus. When we truly gaze on Christ as he hangs on his cross he becomes not a symbol of our degradation but the promise of eternal life. As St. Paul says, it’s folly to Greeks and sacrilege to Jews, but for us the cross is the wisdom of God and the power of God.
Look at the spectacle. Look at Jesus. Look at Jesus and be saved. For when we look at him he looks back. Not with anger or hatred but with forgiveness, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”; with hope “Today you will be with me in paradise”; with confidence in God, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”. And these words are not addressed to some neutral audience but to participants in his agony, both those present in the flesh and all of us whose burden of sin he mysteriously takes from our shoulders and carries with him to the tomb.
When Martin Scorsese released his film “The Last Temptation of Christ” some 15 or 20 years ago, it was attacked by the Vatican and boycotted by some Christians. Jesus, dying on the cross, is tempted to come down. And he imagines the sort of peaceful life that may lie ahead of him. The devil whispers sweetly to him that it isn’t necessary to die, he’s suffered enough, a loving God requires no more of him. Jesus has tried; that he has not been listened to is not his fault. At the end of the film Jesus resists the temptation. As he did in real life. Without his death it would not all be accomplished. And without our watching his death it won’t be accomplished for us either. In these final minutes of Good Friday afternoon it’s tempting to turn away from the horror of it all, or to watch it impassively from a place of safety like a TV audience or motorway rubberneckers.
Keep watching, keep listening, stay involved – for this death is his death and your death, his death and my death.
6. In the tomb - Luke23:48-56
The final stage of Jesus’ earthly journey through Holy Week takes him off the cross, and via Joseph of Arimathea to a bare tomb guarded by a heavy rock placed across the entrance. The disciples are stood at a safe distance, but the women among them at least follow Joseph to see where the body is, so that they can bring the appropriate spices once the Sabbath is over. And at last, after the frenetic activity of the last 24 hours, and the busyness of the previous week, there is stillness, the pierced and tortured body of Jesus is at rest.
But here’s a thing. The tomb was not cut out of the rock for Jesus. It was Joseph’s, meant no doubt for his own body at some future date. We could simply take this as yet another demonstration of how Jesus is left with nothing; even his last resting place is borrowed. But I suspect Luke means rather more than that. The dead Jesus has taken the place of the future dead Joseph. Jesus has died in Joseph’s place. Because Jesus has entered the tomb, Joseph won’t need to. As the Old Testament makes clear death is a consequence of human sin. The sins of Joseph will bring him to his death, but Jesus has got there ahead of him. Even before Easter Day we have the first statement that the death of Jesus has accomplished Joseph’s, and hence our, passage into eternal life.
Every death we mourn, we mourn in part because it is a premonition of our own death. We too will travel to that place. But when we gaze upon the dead Jesus and the tomb in which he lies it is no longer a premonition but a replacement. The physical gateway of death may yet lie ahead for each of us, but the consequences of death have been abolished.
Neither Joseph nor the women understand that yet. To them the tomb can only appear as the final symbol of a failed mission. Not only Jesus is dead but all he had lived for. The principalities and powers of this world are the ones that appear to be beyond judgement, to hold eternity in their grasp.
Just as the death of the physical body of Jesus displaces our own so the death of his mission and vision displace the deaths of our own deepest yearnings and hopes. What we stand for, what we know to be ultimately true and beautiful, has also been died instead of. This too can pass into eternity.
As we gaze at the tomb we need fear neither for ourselves or for the faith, hope and love which we live in and live to proclaim. Like some infinite lightening conductor, all the forces that would have destroyed us and them have been drawn instead into Jesus.
Words fail. Like the woman we can stay in silence for a while and then make that most bizarre journey of all, back to the ordinariness of our daily lives, whilst we wait for something even more astounding to break upon us.
For which we will begin to gather tomorrow night.
Bishop David
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