It’s a case of mistaken identity.
No one in this story knows who Jesus is.
(No one except Jesus himself.)
They just know who they think he is. Or who they think he should be.
And that’s why they kill him.
The religious governing council think Jesus is a political and theological opponent. A liar, someone taking God’s name in vain by claiming to be God’s son, God’s self. A deluded and dangerous man who says he’s king.
(At least, that’s what they’ve convinced themselves they think.)
Peter’s confused about who Jesus is to him right now. And who he is to Jesus.
Things are changing. He knows it’s all dangerous, and any certainty about Jesus that he used to have has deserted him.
Pilate doesn’t hesitate to announce that he doesn’t know who Jesus is, or what all this has to do with him.
He asks Jesus outright.
Asks the people who bring Jesus to him.
Asks Jesus again.
Still doesn’t know.
In the end, the mistaken identity is publicly declared, with a sign “posted on the cross”:
This is Jesus, the Nazarene, the King of the Jews.
Which is true, in that deep theological sense that God is King, and Jesus is God.
But isn’t what anyone truly meant, anyone at all, about Jesus – who he is, who he says he is, or why they’re killing him.
Scene by scene, all the way to the cross, all the way through the cross, John tells us that Jesus is killed by the force of mistaken identity. That nobody really knows who Jesus is.
And perhaps, we don’t really know who Jesus is, as we make our own way here today, coming to the cross through shared memory and story, through the needs and hopes and challenges of our everyday life.
We may know – like Peter – who we want or need Jesus to be. Friend. Teacher. Powerful miracle worker. Distant legend or close companion.
We may know why we have trouble with Jesus, that stirrer-up of dissatisfaction with the way things are, like the religious governing council knew.
We may be really clear that we have questions about this Jesus, about this whole process, about why we’re even involved, the way Pilate has questions.
But there’s a good chance that we – in our own minds, our own lives – have made some mistakes about who Jesus is.
A good chance that we don’t know the truth that Jesus knows about himself.
Perhaps because we can’t know that truth except in the brief, piercing perspective of crucifixion and resurrection. A timeless moment in which truth is revealed via the mistakes and uncertainties of people so enmeshed in uncertainty and untruth that they have to ask “what is truth?”
So, today, we gather at the cross and we watch what we don’t know or understand.
We look, we listen, we pay attention, for this moment.
Because in the gathering, the looking, the paying attention, we meet truth.
Some raw foundational truth about Jesus, about God, about ourselves is here, in front of us, among us, today. On the cross, at the cross.
We might not understand, or be able to explain, the crucifixion.
We may still not be able to understand or explain who Jesus is.
But the act of paying attention – of making ourselves present for this raw, messy, mistaken judicial killing, this ancient moment here and now – the act of being present to this story, this time, can reveal truth.
Truth we can feel, if we can’t voice it or explain it.
The grief, or wonder, or anger, or gratitude, or fear you or I may feel as we enter this moment – the unnamable stirring in your heart or gut as we open ourselves to the cross – those are the ways that unexplainable truth gathers us in. All those are raw edges of the experience of love – of the experience of truth recognized in being here, where the incomprehensible happens.
Because we are here today – with the beloved disciple, with Jesus’s mother, with unnamed others at the foot of the cross – not to understand, but to attend, to be here, to pay attention.
To let truth be present to us, in the midst of life’s mistakes and uncertainty.
To see truth, to know God, without having to grasp it or explain it.
As we gather around the cross, it would be satisfying for me to be able to explain why Jesus had to die. To be able to answer questions like “how could a good God let, or make, this happen? What’s this supposed to do to improve my life? What does it mean for Jesus’ death to save us?”
But none of those questions are answered at or on the cross.
Nothing is explained today. All the ideas we’ve come up with about Jesus, all the labels we, or the religious council, or Pilate and the secular government can put on the cross, are mistaken.
But that brings us here, anyway.
Here, where instead of explanations, there’s just experience.
Truth that makes itself felt in our being present, in Jesus’ presence, in this one heart-wrenching and inexplicable time and place.
Truth that happens in our hearts, the deep roots of our soul, as the piercing presence of God meets us in grief and wonder and fear, in the unexplainable and the things we still don’t understand.
Perhaps our being here today, our staying at the cross, is practice for the patience and presence and attention that help us recognize truth, recognize God in the everyday messiness of our own ordinary mistakes and uncertainties. The raw openness to love and awe we can experience here – letting compassion and grief reach deep to your heart’s root, letting astonishment and wonder expand our souls – may be making us more able to receive gifts of love in small, unremarkable ways; more able to perceive the power and glory of God in the daily details of our own work and rest, tragedies and triumphs.
Perhaps this moment is enough, by itself.
Enough that the mistakes and uncertainties of Pilate and Peter, Annas and Caiaphas, of unnamed others, and of our own lives, have brought us here to a place where truth – the sheer unexplainable reality of God at work – is all around us.
And perhaps, gathered around the cross, our mistakes still unresolved, our questions still unanswered…
perhaps we, in this moment, with Jesus, are complete.
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