Gospel Say, What?:Decisions, Decisions!

 March 24 2024

Mark 15:1-39

         As many of you might be aware, this year is an election year. When I say this I am sure that there are some of you that are wondering why I would even bring this up because most people know that two things we no longer discuss is politics and religion and here I am doing both. The only reason I am bringing up our countries election is that one of the hardest aspect for us to wrap our heads around is this whole idea of being ruled by a king. I mean, when the Queen passed away, there was no call for an election to see who would be next to sit on the throne. No, everyone knew that the Queen’s son, Charles, would be next in line to be king. For the people of Great Britain, having a king or a queen is just a normal way of life; they have done so for thousands of years. To us though, here in America, the whole pomp and circumstance seems to be one more thing that has run its course and isn’t necessary any longer.

         I say all this because in this series of messages for Lent that I entitled, Gospel Say, What?, we are thinking about the good news that Jesus is our King. One of the difficult aspects of this truth that Jesus is our king is that we aren’t really sure what it is like to be ruled by a king. So to us as people who are ruled by a democracy, a government of and by the people, it is kind of great to find, that here in todays scripture, we hear of a story about an election. As the story tells us, there are two names on the ballot: Jesus Bar-Abbas and Jesus Bar-Joseph. The election isn’t about a specific office; we could only hope. No, this election has much greater stakes because the winner of this election gets to go home alive. The one who loses this election receives only the executioners cross. Such a choice you would imagine would require some contemplation and thought to carefully decide such a crucial issue yet this does not seem to be the case in our story. As fast as the call was made for an election to be held between these two candidates, it was just that fast that the election was decided. By unanimous acclimation, all votes were cast for Jesus Bar-Abbas.Now this vote was somewhat surprising because in a previous poll that was taken earlier in the week when the one candidate, Jesus Bar-Joseph, arrived in the capitol, it seemed that he would certainly be a lock to win any election. I mean, when he arrived, he was welcomed like any candidates would long to be, with cheering crowds who sang his praises. They even threw their coats down on the ground, a statement that shouted that here was certainly one who was cut out to be king. This one, the crowds sang, was the very one who would restore the kingdom that David had brought about so long ago.

         So, yes, just days earlier, this one called Jesus Bar-Joseph, seemed a shoo-in to win any contest. Yet, here he was, defeated easily by this one called Jesus Bar-Abbas. Though their names seemed so similar, they were in fact polar opposite in how they believed change would come to not just their own country, but to the world as well. Jesus Bar-Abbas was a self-acclaimed rebel, proudly taking part in an armed insurrection against the Roman infidels, taking out these occupying forces without so much as a thought. He would have most likely agreed that the only good Roman was a dead Roman. How very different this other guy was, showing up here in the capitol surrounded by Roman forces riding on a donkey. Who cares what the prophet Zechariah wrote, if you want to win an election and the hearts of the people, you sure don’t come into such a situation announcing that now is the time for peace. I mean, don’t you get it, Jesus Bar-Joseph, that if you want the world to change, you got to fight for your rights. Heads have to roll, revolution has to happen! Don’t you know Jesus Bar-Joseph kingdoms come through a declaration of war not an offer of peace? And so, Jesus Bar-Abbas won the election, to live to fight another day. Jesus Bar-Joseph, the true king, was elected to die upon a criminals cross, the king who came in peace would himself become for us an offering for peace.

         While it is obvious that this is how Mark desires we understand that last week of the earthly life of Jesus, that this is how this tragedy of God’s own people played out, that the king of peace would be rejected while a murderous thug was cheered as a hero and a savior, there is more that this scene of two men standing before the crowds is to represent. In these two men, with similar names, standing side by side, was a very similar image that those in the crowd would possibly have been familiar with. They would have perhaps remembered that on the most holy day of the year, what we call the Day of Atonement, the day when whatever stood between God and his people would have been dealt with, there was a strange ritual performed. Two male goats, alike in every way possible would come before the High Priest in the Temple. The reason that there was two goats is found in the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus, where we are told that the Day of Atonement is the day when the people of God will perform two very important rituals. The first ritual would be the means by which the sins of the people would be dealt with, covered over, by the blood of the first goat. This dealing with the sins of the people has to do with a person’s guilt, this knowing that we have done wrong in the eyes of God. Atonement of our sins then, is personal, it is a knowing that a life has been given, the life of the first goat, so that its blood might cover over our sin, a life covering over the death caused by our sins so that our sins are forgotten, and our guilt can be removed.

         So this atonement of sin deals with personal sins and how, through our confession, and our sorrow for our sin, we come and receive this gift of life that God has provided to deal with the sin that had come between us. Atonement then, dealt with the sins that God’s people had committed against him. But in Leviticus we also learn that this day is not only for atonement as there was also a second ritual which had to do with the people being cleansed before God. The question this begs us to ask is just what is it that needs cleansing from our lives so that we can begin again? The answer is that we need to be cleansed from our shame, the shame we have from when we have sinned not just against God but when we have sinned against each other. When people hurt each other, commit sin against each other, these acts are remembered creating shame in the one who had come against a brother or a sister. When we break our promises, when we are jealous of someone’s life, when we cross boundaries that we should have respected, people look at us differently. We lose honor in the sight of our community. And God understands this and so on the very same day that he provided a way for the guilt of his people to be dealt with he, at the same time, came up with a way to deal with the shame that infects a community. God told the High Priest, as a representative of the community, to take those sins that were committed between members of the community and place them upon the second goat. Here was a dramatic ceremony where the people could feel their sins be lifted from them and from between them, sent out upon a goat to be carried away into no-mans land.

         I believe that Mark could not help but think of the Day of Atonement, when he remembered that day when these two very similar men stood before the crowds of Jerusalem. There was Jesus Bar-Joseph, the one we know as King Jesus, the one who was willing to be the sacrifice whose blood would cover over the sins of the whole world, his life laid upon our body of death so that our guilt for our sins might be dealt with. But what about this other Jesus, this one whose last name was Bar-Abbas? If we think of him as being like the second goat then here was the one upon whom the shame of the people was to be found but instead of being carried away, this time the shame of the people as carried in the life of Bar-Abbas turned and came back to them, their shame remained among them. This is what I believe is what Mark also wanted us to consider in this scene. Perhaps the people’s choosing of Bar-Abbas reminded Mark of what the prophet Jeremiah had said of God’s people so long ago, as found in the sixth chapter, where God says, “For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest everyone deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my people, lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace’, when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when the committed abomination? No, they had no shame at all. They did not even know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those that fall; at the time I punish them, they shall be overthrown”. This is how Mark is portraying the crowd that rejected Jesus on that fateful day. They were people who had lost their sense of shame. They had no deep desire to have their dishonor cleansed from them and it has to cause us to wonder, just why this is so? The answer is found in their election of Bar-Abbas as the one who should live because he was the one blatantly living his life in the power of death. Viewing death as the ultimate power causes those who have this understanding to be selective in the lives they will honor by allowing them to live. So all lives become to be seen as being honorable only as far as they are judged to be worthy of another’s honor. So, if one does not honor a person’s life then they can no longer feel dishonor or shame when they sin against them. Those who are seen as being great are those who are absolutely clear just which lives deserve the honor of life and which people are rightfully deserving of dishonor, or shame.  This is why Jesus, instead taught that whoever insults or treats someone with abuse, showing no honor to them, these are those who are guilty of sin. Jesus goes on to say that those who refuse to show honor to every life, this picking and choosing which life we will cast shame and contempt upon, such actions are liable to get us kicked out of life itself.

         This refusal to honor the life in others, this is the shame on display that day when the crowds chose Bar-Abbas. Look at the great contrast between the life of Jesus Bar-Abbas and Jesus Bar-Joseph. Bar-Abbas was known as one who showed no honor to his enemies, the Romans. He felt nothing when he slayed them in rebellion. Jesus our King, though, took the abuse and the shame and the contempt of those same Roman soldiers allowing them to do to him their very worst. They mocked him, pressing a crown of thorns down painfully upon his head. They all began to salute Jesus and hailed him as the King of the Jews in a condescending manner. They struck him with reeds, and they spit on him. They brought him to the place of the skull, the very place of death. There they took the cross piece he had carried upon his shoulders and they hammered nails through his hands and hoisted him up off the ground leaving him to gasp for air as pain tore through his body. The Roman guards showed Jesus absolutely no honor, and obviously, no mercy. They had no shame, felt no dishonor at what they had done because they never had any honor for Jesus let alone any other Jew. Yet, the Roman guard were not alone for many of the very people of God, walked in front of this dying King, showing him no honor, shamefully refusing to show even the slightest respect for Jesus, saying to the crowds that here was one who had saved others but he could not even save himself. If only this Messiah, this one who says he is God’s anointed king, if only he would show some real power, and tear himself loose from that cross piece and come down here, this is when we would show him the honor of believing in him.

         And so, at last Jesus, died. He breathed his last, we are told, and in that moment, news rang out that the curtain of the Temple, that barrier between the Holy and the common, was torn in two. A curtain some sixty feet wide and high and over four inches thick, ripped apart by the invisible hands of God. We can and must understand that here, in the death of Jesus, this place, which was previously off limits because of the incredible holiness of God, has now been opened to everyone. Yet I believe that this act was perhaps more because it appears that in this act of the death of his Son, our Heavenly Father demonstrated his immense grief and he did so in much the same way that people showed their grief, by tearing their clothing. That which clothed the Holy God was torn as the Father acted out in horrific grief as his only Son tasted death all so that everyone might once again discover the honor life deserves.

         In that moment, that moment when Jesus gave one last gasp, this is when the power of this life honoring act of Jesus was displayed. It was at this moment of power, this is when a Roman centurion made the first confession of faith, exclaiming, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” This centurion saw Jesus, responding to the judgment that his life was not going to be shown the honor that all life is due, instead showed mercy to these same people, extending life to all. In doing so Jesus, demonstrated that he honored each and every life. What the Roman centurion had surmised is that if the God who dwelt in the Temple had torn the veil when this man had gave up his last breath, then this one upon the cross had to be one who was loved intensely by this God. In the world of the centurion, if this Jesus is loved by the God who holds all power, then by that same power, those who had killed his beloved should have been destroyed. Yet, here he was standing among the living while Jesus remained among the dead. Instead of judgment, condemnation and death, this Roman had experienced mercy, the giving of life at the hands of a Jewish man who had said he was king. This Jesus had honored the life of this centurion by declaring that he should receive life instead of death. Such life honoring love so experienced causes all who come to the cross to exclaim in faith that here truly is the Son of God. Here in this one upon the cross is one who shows us by his death that all life is worth honor, for Jesus gave his life so that all might know the true honor that it is due to them. Yet even so, Jesus calls us to follow him and be people of the cross, those who refuse to shame another because we know the truth that Jesus gave his life so that all people might find honor and be honored because of what Jesus has done for them.  Amen!