It’s all wrecked

by Deb Auger

TEXT: John 19:16b-24

The English word passion comes from the Latin — to suffer, to bear, and to endure. The journey with Jesus on his final week takes us from the prophetic entry into Jerusalem to the place of execution and finally to the resurrection of Christ. It is a familiar story, and the very heart of the faith we claim and seek to live out. But I think John’s gospel brings a unique perspective, a different voice, as it presents Christ’s passion as ours too — even as we suffer and persevere through life. Certainly it is not in the same way, but it is painful nonetheless. We can draw comfort in knowing that Christ suffers for our sake so that we might know we are not alone in our suffering. This is one story with three parts, three actors, three objects, and three actions: Act 1: Jesus carrying his cross, Act 2: Pilate displaying Jesus’s title, and Act 3: the soldiers dividing Jesus’s clothes.

Throughout John’s gospel, Jesus is in command of the situation. From the beginning, when John is unapologetically equating Jesus with God and as God — here Jesus is still ultimately in control. In this first section of our story I want us to notice that Jesus carries his cross by himself.

Jesus was being executed by the state with the full cooperation of the Jewish leaders who were colluding with Rome to get rid of him. This is his walk, his journey to his death. John’s narrative draws our attention to the people near Jesus in this most painful and public of all executions. Jesus is hanging there with two others, on either side. Even those who are executed alongside Jesus are in proximity to God. In the synoptic gospels, they are described as thieves or bandits, apparently guilty of some crime. They are unnamed and unknown, the guilty alongside the innocent.

Is this different from the justice system in our own country? The innocent punished alongside the guilty? We all bear responsibility for the systemic injustice and unjust treatment of Black and brown bodies in this country. It began with its founding and is interwoven into the very fabric of our society. To be able to move toward freedom and justice we need to admit and own this reality.

I am grateful for how the Covenant Church has contributed to North Park Theological Seminary’s work in Stateville Correctional Center south of Chicago, a maximum security prison where we had our first School of Restorative Arts class of over 25 students graduating with a Masters Degree this spring. One of our students, Alex Negron, wrote a poem that relates to our passage. The poem was published in the newsletter Feather Bricks, a newsletter produced by SRA students.¹

A brown man, born in Bethlehem, named Jesus, hung between two others in that public and humiliating place of execution — wrongly convicted, wrongly executed. The text says that they crucified him there with two others — one on either side, with Jesus between them. The author repeats the location of Jesus as being in-between, underscoring his location.

Jesus is between Alex and me and you and us. Jesus, the true representation of God, as Hebrews says,² hangs in solidarity with all who suffer. He hangs as an innocent person between the guilty ones, and for our sin and guilt. Whether or not someone is guilty, they are human first and foremost. When treated as less than our God-given humanity, Jesus is there between us. Jesus is there with us. When we suffer for any reason, Jesus is there. Imagine the faith it takes to believe that truth in a place like Stateville.

In John’s account of Jesus’s execution, I am struck by the anonymity of the other two people. Are they guilty? Were they also condemned unjustly? Or did they deserve what they got? John seems to be saying, no matter what, Jesus hangs with us. Not to ransom us, but because God’s love could do no less.

Jesus is in solidarity with all who suffer. Maybe even if we bring that suffering on ourselves. It is not too much for God, because God is love. God’s love goes so far as to show us, in his body, in Christ, how great God’s love is. God’s love is beyond the worst thing we can do. God’s love is available to us on the worst day of our lives, for the worst thing we’ve ever done.

We meet Pilate in chapter 18 as the Jews ask that Pilate find Jesus guilty of sedition and he asks Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” to which Jesus replies, “my kingdom is not of this world. You say I am a king. For this I was born, to testify to the truth.”

Here we find Pilate again, later that evening, having given the go-ahead to execute Jesus. As was the custom Pilate dictates the nature of the crime in the title he has made, “King of the Jews.” This phrase would also be nailed to the tree with Jesus for everyone to see, in Greek, Aramaic, and Latin. In all the tongues that were spoken and understood. But don’t be fooled — this was not Pilate standing up to the religious leaders. This was Pilate once again being the weak leader. He gave in to the pressure to have Jesus executed in spite of the fact that there was no evidence that he had committed any crime.

If Pilate were to give him any title, it should have been related to sedition, which was punishable by death. After all the Jews said they had no king but the emperor — religion and empire in collusion. One scholar writes that, “The Crucified One…turns an obscene instrument of torture into a throne of glory and reigns from the tree.”³ What kind of savior, what kind of God, reigns from a place of death and execution?

Four soldiers are guarding the site of the execution. As was the custom, even Jesus’s clothing was taken from him and divided among his captors. This was a windfall for the Roman soldiers assigned to this detail as they had every right to divide the clothing of the condemned for their own use. All they knew was that this man had been convicted and executed by the state as a result of his crime. While this part of the story is included in two of the three synoptic gospels, John takes care to include the details of how they divided the clothes, the last belongings of Jesus. The final step to his death and removal from society, both Roman and Jewish. Complete humiliation for all who would be witnesses. What is it about human nature that wants others to suffer, even beyond what they may deserve?

Scapegoating is when we blame someone else for the wrongs or mistakes of others. The original scapegoat can be found in Leviticus 16. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Jewish people from the previous year onto the animal. Then the goat was beaten with reeds and thorns, driven out into the desert, and the people went home rejoicing.

Richard Rohr writes that “violence towards the innocent victim was quite effective at temporarily relieving the group’s guilt and shame.” He reminds his readers that “this same scapegoating dynamic was at play when European Christians burned supposed heretics at the stake, and when white Americans lynched Black Americans. In fact, the pattern is identical and totally non-rational.” Rohr goes on to quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who writes, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Jesus became the scapegoat in order to reveal the lie of scapegoating. Violence is never redemptive, only love is. Rohr writes, “Jesus replaced the myth of redemptive violence with the truth of redemptive suffering. He showed us on the cross how to hold the pain and let it transform us.”⁴

St. Paul says it this way “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Luther said that every human is “at the same time sinner

and saint.” We are all in need of the grace and mercy of God.

The cross was not just some gory detail that we mark each year at Easter. It was and is the way we are called to live as we learn to hold suffering and pain so that it can transform us. If we are not transformed by pain, we will transmit it to others.

Jesus’s execution did not justify violence but rather glorified love. Jesus hung between earth and heaven, good and evil and you and me. It is his suffering that redeems us and shows us the magnitude of God’s love. His suffering redeems us because when we suffer we know we do not do so alone. He is acquainted with every grief. As is written in Isaiah 53:3, “He was despised and rejected — a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.”

Pain and loss is difficult to hold, especially our own. We may wonder what’s in store for us? And in that place of not knowing, we grieve. I want you to hear me say it is okay to feel that way, to feel sad and to wonder about the future. But remember, in our sorrow and grief, we are not alone. We have each other and the Christ who is with us and between us in our suffering,

whatever that is for you today. We can learn to hold this pain together.

Let’s be honest, we are surrounded by pain and sorrow. It may even feel like everything is wrecked! Just when we think there is a reprieve, something else hits us. The war in Ukraine rages on with so many innocent lives lost. It is beyond tragic. Violence is never redemptive. We are still coming out of the pandemic, which has touched all of our lives and our life together as a community. If you feel like it is too much for you, you’re right — it is! But for suffering to be redemptive, it must be done together.

Remember that you never suffer alone. In every way that you have suffered, Jesus has also suffered. Jesus hangs in solidarity with all who suffer, whether it is just or unjust. Only a love as big as God’s love can hold us in our pain. Only a love as big as God’s can redeem all suffering. Only a love as big as God’s can accompany us along the way.

Pope Francis gave this encouragement to be in solidarity in our suffering: “In the midst of crises and tempests, the Lord calls to us and invites us to reawaken and activate a solidarity capable of giving solidity, support and meaning to these hours in which everything seems to be wrecked. May the creativity of the Holy Spirit encourage us to generate new forms of familiar hospitality, fruitful fraternity and universal solidarity.”5

This sermon was preached on Palm Sunday, 2022 at Ravenswood Covenant Church.