April 17 reading: Liturgy of the Passion – Matthew 26:14-27:66 or Matthew 27:11-54
What language shall I borrow? What can we say? How can we—how dare we—add anything to what we have just read? For almost 2,000 years, we Christians have advanced complicated explanations of the events Matthew relates in our long gospel reading.
You’ve heard, and preached, some of those explanations:
• Jesus died to offer the kind of pure blood sacrifice that God demanded, to persuade God not to be angry with the world.
• Jesus died to pay the price, to buy the world—and us—back from the devil.
• Jesus accepted death, in perfect obedience to God. We can’t be perfectly obedient. Jesus had to do it on our behalf.
• Jesus died because we deserve to die, but we’re not good enough to make that sacrifice. Jesus took your place, and mine, on the cross.
All of these interpretations can be read out of and into the Bible. We sing them all in our hymns, whether we accept them or not. All bear truth. None is sufficient in itself. What if we stick to the story today? Maybe there’s something really simple behind the running commentary the gospels give us. Underneath Matthew’s proof-texting from the prophets.
Jesus died. No denying that. Jesus lived. No denying that. Something about him, what he did and said led those who had power to kill him, to kill him. Because he lived, he died. That’s not the end of his story, but that’s our story for today.
People with power to do it killed Jesus, because of the way he lived. Just as people with power to do it have always done, when good people challenge them, offend them, threaten them.
That’s the best illustration of the sin of the world I can think of. You and I live in this world, and it sticks to us like Velcro. Because he lived, he died.
Take the gospel story as a whole. It’s his life, his living that saves us. It’s his life, his living that keeps us coming back to him. The way that led him to death is the path to life for us.
Why would we choose a way that doesn’t protect us, spare us from dying? A way that calls us to die to self and selfishness along the way.
Why live his way, as Christians in the world? Because, along the way, we find God. Jesus knew communion with the One he called “Father,” all along the way. We see God in him. We enjoy that same communion as we walk in his way. His words and his ways judge us in our sinfulness, and offer us forgiveness. Accuse us in our hypocrisy, and affirm our integrity. Purge us of hatred, and fill us with love.
The people who killed him— Roman rulers and Judean leaders, state and church, those who claimed to know God and those whose emperor claimed to be God—are that part of all of us that rebels when God is revealed.
That self in us that turns away from undeniable truth. That spirit in us that seeks, and loves, power and all the illusions power rests on, and feeds. That is Sin, with a capital S. The way of Jesus confronts it head-on. If that confrontation leads to a cross, so be it. Bring it on.
Jesus lived, and died, a witness to the faithfulness of God. Every breath, even his last, a revelation to us. That’s why we can’t take our eyes off him. Even as we watch him suffer and die. We watch and see that God is not defeated, and we are not lost, even though all seems lost.
For a time.
Through this Holy Week, watch, and see. Listen, and hear. Know only this: Because he lived, he died. Because he lived, we live. Because he lives, we will live, even though we die.
