This is not going the way it’s supposed to go.
Definitely for Peter, who probably can’t understand why Jesus tells him to put his sword away, and then finds himself trying to stay faithful and stay out of trouble in the high priest’s courtyard, and discovering he can’t do both at the same time.
Not going the way the chief priests want it to go, when they have to keep arguing back and forth with Pilate about guilt and innocence until he catches on that they are talking about political necessities and the threat of insurrection, not abstract justice.
Not how Pilate wants it to go either. If someone’s going to bring him a criminal, he’d rather it be clear and simple and not messed up with local religious beliefs. And not this baffling prisoner who turns the interview around and instead of answering authoritative questions, asks him, Pilate (the voice of Imperial Rome!) uncomfortable questions.
Not how we would want it to go, watching a friend of ours get arrested on a manufactured charge, and then die, publicly, before our own eyes.
It might, however, be going the way Jesus means for it to go. John tells us, and shows us, that through every minute of this story Jesus knows what is going on, what’s supposed to happen, and that he’s steering events from the moment the guards find him in the garden.
“It’s me. You’re here for me,” he tells the guards. And tells them again “take me, and leave the rest alone,” when the guards have already drawn back from him in fear, and would have probably just watched in silence if Jesus had chosen to walk away.
I have very mixed feelings about this, personally and theologically, but as we remember and retell this story tonight, we can see Jesus shaping the story, guiding all of us toward the cross.
Jesus encourages his own arrest. Jesus walks directly into death.
God dies.
And crucifixion fails.
Because, you see, nailing someone to a cross to gradually suffocate wasn’t just meant to kill that person.
It was one of Rome’s tools for erasing a person.
For making that person so shameful, so untouchable, so unmentionable, that they vanished. So that not only did they disappear from public sight, even their families would stop talking about them.
Being crucified, all by itself, was meant to serve as evidence that someone was the lowest kind of criminal, best rejected and forgotten immediately (if we know what’s good for us).
Most of those who were crucified were never buried, erasing even the record of their death.
And that tactic failed spectacularly with Jesus.
The crucified victim whose name never stopped being spoken.
Whose death has been remembered, and retold, over and over and over and over and over again, including here, today/tonight.
Whose death turns shame into the seeds of glory; turns the erasure of a human being into the revelation of the presence of God;
turns loss into the recognition of a love so deep, so broad, so high, so beyond our imagination that we cannot forget it once it touches our hearts.
The power of the powers of this world is turned upside down, and inside out, and even while death stands over us, crucifixion fails.
Jesus is not erased in this moment; instead, love is revealed.
God is recognized as Mary and Mary and John (and maybe others) stand at the foot of the cross; hear Jesus give them to each other; see and hear him direct the cues and the moment of his death.
And they remembered and told that story. Shared that revelation of love with others, gathered people into their remembrance; as we are gathered now.
As we gather here today/tonight,
standing in the shadow of the cross Jesus has guided us to,
making ourselves present and open to the heartbreak of experiencing God’s own love poured out upon us as Jesus dies before our eyes – or ears, tonight – before our hearts.
Gathered here, you and I are the proof that once again, crucifixion fails, and God’s presence in the deepest loss is felt once again.
And gathered here, we are, in God’s hands, the promise that again and again, every time, the power of the powers that be will fail; that love will be revealed, and felt. Remembered and shared.
That love will win.
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