As I was
preparing this message and looking once again at the story of Jesus’ death, I
started to think about the people who were directly responsible for it. I mean, we know it was God’s plan and it was
necessary for our salvation, but still, there were people, human beings, who
did things that caused Jesus to die. And
they were not serving God by doing that, at least not consciously. They were serving themselves and their own
interests.
There was
Pilate, of course. We heard quite a bit
about him in our reading for today.
Pilate gets his share of the blame for Jesus’ death, and rightly so. But you know, Pilate had nothing in
particular against Jesus. He really did
not care much about Jesus one way or the other.
Pilate was the Roman governor. He
had no reason to be concerned with this Jewish guy. He was just trying to keep the peace. He’d have been happy to let Jesus go if that
would’ve made people happy. In fact, he
tried to do that. And as you heard, even
Jesus said there were people who were guilty of greater sins in this story than
Pilate was.
There was
Herod. Herod does not appear in the
gospel of John, but Luke tells us that Pilate sent Jesus to Herod, hoping Herod
would take care of the situation. Herod
really did not care about Jesus one way or the other, either. He’d heard about Jesus and was hoping to see
Jesus perform some sort of sign, some sort of miracle, but when Jesus did not
do that Herod lost interest and sent Jesus back to Pilate. Herod deserves some blame, because he
could’ve kept Jesus from dying and did not, but he’s really a pretty minor
actor in this story.
There was
Judas. Judas, of course, betrayed
Jesus. He went and reported to the
Jewish authorities where Jesus was going to be.
But Judas just helped set things in motion. He deserves his share of the blame, too. No doubt about it. But he did not exactly act alone. In fact, without the actions of lots of other
people, what Judas did would’ve made no difference at all.
There was
Caiaphas. Caiaphas did not show up in
our reading for today—he appears earlier.
Caiaphas was the Jewish high priest.
He definitely was one of the ones who wanted Jesus dead. He was one of the priests plotting against
Jesus. He may have even been the one
Judas reported to and the one who sent the soldiers to the Garden of
Gethsemane, we don’t know. We know Jesus
was taken first to Annas and then to Caiaphas, and it was only after that, that
he was taken to Pilate. So Caiaphas
certainly deserves his share of the blame, too.
But even
though Caiaphas was the high priest, he could never have done it by
himself. As I said, he plotted with
other priests to do this. He had to have
them on his side. If the other priests
had opposed him, Jesus would never have been arrested, much less killed.
Those are the
only people who are named as having a role in Jesus death. The rest are just named as groups. They’re referred to as “the soldiers” or “the
priests” or “the Sanhedrin” or “the crowd”.
We don’t know anything about the individuals who were part of those
groups. But each of those individuals
share some blame in Jesus’ death, too.
And we have no idea who they may have been.
And maybe
that’s part of the point. Because it was
not one person who was responsible for Jesus’ death. It was everybody. Everybody who was around there, anyway. Every one of the soldiers. Every one of the priests. Every one of the Sanhedrin. Everyone in the crowd. Every one of those people who shouted
“Crucify” deserves part of the blame for Jesus’ death.
Now, that’s
not to say that each and every one of those people wanted Jesus killed. We don’t know that. But we have no record of anyone trying to
stop it. We have no record of anyone
standing up and saying “No! This is
wrong! We should not be doing
this!” If anyone was opposed to Jesus
being killed, they either kept it to themselves or eventually decided to go
along with it, just like Pilate did. Not
even the disciples would stand up and try to stop it. Judas betrayed Jesus, Simon Peter denied
knowing him, and the rest appear to have run away and hid. No one was willing to stand with Jesus.
Maybe there
was nothing they could’ve done. Maybe if
someone had stood up, it would’ve made no difference. Some of them probably told themselves
that. And maybe it was even true. But we’ll never know, because we have no
record that anyone ever tried. We have
no record that anyone attempted to do anything for Jesus. In the end, it was just Jesus, by himself,
against the entire known world. In the
end, it was just Jesus, alone.
Would we be
any different, do you think? If you or I
had been one of the soldiers, or one of the priests, or one of the crowd? Would we have stood up and said, “No, this is
wrong, we should not be doing this?” Or
would we have kept our opinions to ourselves and decided to just go along with
it, to stay out of trouble?
I see no
reason to think that we would’ve been better than the people in the crowd. I certainly see no reason to think I would’ve
been. And I especially see no reason to
think I’d have been better than Simon Peter or the rest of the disciples. I’d love to think I would’ve tried to do
something, but to be honest, I don’t think I probably would have.
Everybody was
responsible for Jesus’ death. But you
know, it seems like maybe it could not help but be that way. It seems like maybe that was part of God’s
plan, too. After all, Jesus died to take
the punishment of the sins of all of us.
God knew all of us would be responsible for Jesus’ death. God knew we’d all need saving, every one of
us. And so God planned for it.
And you know,
if we really thought that we’d be better than the crowd, that we’d be better
than the disciples, if we really thought we’d be the ones who actually would’ve
stood up and done something, we might also think that we did not need
saving. We might think that Jesus did
not die for us, that we were so good that we did not need forgiveness and
salvation. And we might not take
advantage of the incredible gift of salvation that God gave us through Jesus’
death.
But it’s
because we realize that we are no better than the disciples that we come to
this Good Friday service. I mean, it’s
kind of strange thing, don’t you think?
Can you think of any other faith that looks at the death of its founder
as something to celebrate? I
cannot. And yet, as Christians, that’s
exactly what we do. We celebrate Good
Friday. We celebrate the killing of
Jesus. That must seem so odd to
non-Christians, if they really think about it.
It must seem so strange to them that we would celebrate the killing of
Jesus Christ, the person we claim as our Savior, the person we claim to follow,
the person for who our faith is named.
But we do celebrate
it. We do celebrate Jesus being
killed. We don’t celebrate because we’re
happy that Jesus was killed. We
celebrate because we’re grateful that Jesus was willing to die. We celebrate Good Friday not because of what
happened, but because of what it means.
We celebrate
the death of Jesus because we know he died for us. We celebrate the death of Jesus because we
know that it was not a permanent death.
We celebrate the death of Jesus because we know that Jesus defeated
death and rose again. And we celebrate
the death of Jesus because we know that Jesus did not just defeat death for
himself. He defeated death for each one
of us, too. Every one of us is
responsible for Jesus’ death. And yet
Jesus rose again, and defeated death, and took the punishment for the sins, of
every one of us.
In a little
while, we’ll leave here. We’ll go on
about our business, going wherever we go and doing whatever we do. And before long, everyone will have forgotten
everything I’ve said here today. I don’t
mean that as a criticism of you, or of me for that matter. It’s just the way it is. I’ve heard lots of Good Friday messages over
the years, and I don’t know that I can remember anything from any of them. I don’t know that I particularly remember any
of the Good Friday messages I’ve given myself.
I don’t expect this message to have any more impact than any of those
did.
But I hope you’ll think about Good Friday and what it
means for us. Each one of us was
responsible for Jesus being killed. And
Jesus willingly allowed it to happen, so that each one of us would be
saved. And that truly is something to
celebrate.
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