Reading Luke Together #43 – Good Friday
Besides coming to worship this evening, a profoundly moving activity for you would be to find a quiet place and read – slowly, pondering! – Luke chapter 23. There’s so much in Luke’s version of Jesus’ final hours.
The accusations are ridiculous, and yet ironically very true. “He is perverting our nation” – at least as our nation is currently configured. “He claims to be king,” a treasonous notion, since all in the Roman world vowed to serve Caesar as king. Pilate can’t comprehend how Jesus could be king, since he is such a different kind of king.
Rowan Williams compared the story of Jesus’ trial to Franz Kafka’s The Trial. The legal process makes no sense at all. A man named Joseph is arrested without knowing the charge; trying to discover what’s up, he violates rules of which he is unaware, and finally loses his life in the chaos. No sense can be made of the affair; forces blindly conspire and Joseph is no more. Jesus’ trial is the same. Who was responsible for Jesus’ death? The Jews? The Romans? You and me? Pilate hands him to Herod, Herod hands him back, Pilate hands him to the people… “No one wishes to be responsible. That is why they are all guilty. Jesus rolls like a ball between the competitors, thrown from one to another, held by none, undesired by all.”
“Herod was glad when he met him” – a phrase captured hilariously in Jesus Christ Superstar. Barabbas, the criminal, is set free – a bit of a foretaste of what Jesus’ salvation would mean for all of us in our guilt and bondage. Simon of Cyrene is asked to carry Jesus’ cross, a visible symbol of what Jesus asked of his disciples: “Take up your cross and follow me.” Luke alone among the Gospels pay attention to the women in the crowd who are weeping over Jesus’ fate. I love the lovely image, and the precious relic in St. Peter’s in Rome of the Veil of Veronica, she being one of the women who wiped Jesus face with her veil, his features forever imprinted on it – and another visible symbol of compassion.
I often say that all we need to know about Jesus, and what’s in the heart of God, is revealed when Jesus looks down at the soldiers who just drove nails into his flesh, and are now mocking him, and forgives them. They didn’t repent, or ask, or believe. God’s mercy is that wide.
A criminal crucified next to Jesus asks him, “Jesus, remember me,” which we now sing in that lovely Taize tune. “At the 6th hour” (noon) there was darkness. “At the 9th hour” the temple curtain mysteriously tore down the middle, either implying we now through Jesus have access to God, or it’s a judgment on a temple gone astray. And finally Joseph – the 3rd significant Joseph in Scripture! – buries Jesus in a linen shroud, which some believe the Shroud of Turin to be.
Friends, it’s a day to be still, to reflect, to be humble and prayerful, and in immense admiration and love for Jesus.