Clarification of Motives
GOOD FRIDAY
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 • Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 • John 18:1-19:42
Mixed motives are a part of life, and they’re not always bad. Of course I want my son to hit the ball over the fence so that he will feel his own sense of accomplishment, but is it wrong for me also to want that, at least a little bit, to justify all the time his mother and I have spent taking him to practice? When my daughter does well on a test we studied for together, am I allowed to feel at least a small measure of pride that her good grade is effectively her teacher’s way of complimenting me on my excellent parenting skills? And, when that driver who cut me off a few miles back gets pulled over by a state trooper, must I only be thankful that a dangerous driver is now forced to slow down, or can I celebrate the comeuppance that he got because it feels so good?
When it comes to the death of Jesus, it’s hard to hide our true motives in the shadow of the cross, but that doesn’t mean that the reason he was killed is perfectly clear. Ultimately, the evidence points to a state-sponsored execution of an insurrectionist. The cross was a method of execution used by the Roman Empire to deter other would-be rebels or runaway slaves from even thinking about causing trouble. “This is what Rome does to any who dare rise against it,” the cross declared in its public display of shameful brutality. And the sign that Pilate put on the cross—“The king of the Jews”—leaves no doubt that the forces that drove the nails into his hands and feet were the forces that sought to preserve the power of empire.
But, if Jesus were executed as a would-be king of the Jewish people, he didn’t look much like one, did he? On Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into the capital city to admirers’ shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!,” but he didn’t ride into town on the back of a mighty steed, as a proper king might have, but on the back of a donkey. Have you ever ridden a donkey? They’re reliable and gentle, but they don’t get you anywhere very fast, and you don’t get a lot of compliments as you lumber along. Five hundred years earlier, when the prophet Zecheriah foretold the messianic king’s arrival on such a lowly beast, it was a reminder that the military might of chariots and war-horses hadn’t been able to protect God’s people from disaster. Only when God had delivered them with God’s own might would they dwell in such peace that their king need not wield a sword. There was no way this donkey-mounted Jesus could threaten the power of Rome.
Even when accusations were officially levied against Jesus, it took the religious leaders who brought him to the governor’s headquarters quite a while to get to the subject of political insurrection. “What accusation do you bring against this man?” Pilate asked them. They answered in a way that almost dodged the question: “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” At first Pilate, suspicious of their motives, dismissed their claims and told them to take Jesus and judge him by their own law, but, when the leaders insisted that he had done something deserving death, Pilate naturally assumed that he was responsible for some sort of rebellion, but even the Roman governor responsible for maintaining order in the province of Judea had a hard time seeing it.
“Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked his Jewish prisoner. But Jesus effectively denied it—at least in the sense that Pilate had in mind. “My kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus said to him. “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…But, as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” I’ve always heard those words as an enigmatic proclamation of Jesus’ other-worldly kingship, but, to the ears of a Roman governor, they’re also as much a denial that Jesus and his followers represented any violent threat against the empire.
Trying to placate the authorities, Pilate had the prisoner flogged, but that wasn’t good enough. The soldiers put a crown of thorns upon his head and dressed him up in a royal purple robe, mock-saluting him as a pathetic excuse for a king, but still Pilate was unconvinced. To look upon this powerless prisoner was to see a broken man. There was nothing threatening about him. “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him,” Pilate said. But the people refused to let Pilate off the hook. “Crucify him, crucify him!” they shouted, more interested in Jesus’ death than the Roman governor. “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.”
Finally, the truth comes out. We are not interested in crucifying Jesus simply because he threatens our empire. We want to kill him because he threatens our God.
But neither our motives nor those of the gospel writers are quite that straightforward. By the time the gospel accounts were written down, anti-Semitic and pro-Roman influences had shaped the text to blur the lines between the specific religious leaders who came against Jesus and the Jews who were Jesus’ fellow descendants of Abraham. Within a generation of Jesus’ death, before the these sacred texts were preserved in their final form, Christianity had begun to align itself with the Gentile world as a newfound rivalry with Judaism became hostile and violent. There is no doubt that, in the retelling of the story, Pilate’s role in Jesus’ death is ameliorated and the Jewish crowd’s anger is exaggerated, but the truth that Jesus’ rejection and death were as much a product of religious zealotry as political expediency is not an anti-Semitic trope but a universal problem of human nature.
The thought that we belong to a humble God whose love for our enemies is as real and powerful as God’s love for us is threatening enough to make us want to kill Jesus, too.
Jesus may have been executed as an enemy of Rome, but he was brought to trial by those who could not stand for a religious leader to speak of a God who welcomed sex workers, tax collectors, and other notorious sinners to the divine banqueting table. He was rejected first by those whose ability to stay in power was undermined by Jesus’ teaching that the poor and the disabled have as much a right to be called children of God as anyone else. The King of kings may have been nailed to the cross by officers of the empire, but he was led there by those who refused to believe that God’s Son would use humble, gentle, non-violent means to bring God’s reign to the earth.
It’s always easier to believe in a God whose plan of salvation matches our own plans for our lives and the world, but that’s not how God works. We can accept a God whose vulnerable love wraps its tender arms around us, but what happens when we realize that that love also belongs to the people in this world whom we find hardest to love? What happens when the one who comes to save us reveals that he also came to save them as well? What happens when the savior we’ve been waiting for comes to us riding on a donkey instead of driving an M1 Abrams tank? The answer is the cross.
We come to the foot of the cross to behold a God whose love has no limit and to confront our own complicity in the rejection of that love. Paradoxically, the further we stretch God’s limitless love in our minds, the harder it is for us to accept it because, eventually, we are forced to confront the truth that God’s unconditional love is given to exactly that person for whom God’s love threatens us the most, unnerves us the most, enrages us the most. The good news of Good Friday is that, even though we don’t have the power to imagine a God who loves us enough to die for us and, in so doing, embraces the whole world with God’s love, that’s exactly how God loves you and me. And that’s how God saves each one of us—with a love that defies our motivations and transcends our expectations.
© 2024 The Rev. Evan D. Garner
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas