Can't Look Away

Luke 23:1-5, 13-25 
Moorestown Ministerium Ecumenical Good Friday service

I can’t watch. I can’t look away.

It’s obviously a put-up job, a made-for-publicity set of accusations, meant to condemn Jesus in the court of public opinion, not a legal court.

 

Pilate sees that, too. 

He tries to deny it. Tries look strong, decisive. But he’s giving in to the loud voices, the political manipulators and then the crowds, at every step.

It’s a foregone conclusion, despite all the grandstanding and delay, and it’s just so hard to watch it unfold.

I feel so helpless.

But I can’t look away.

 

It’s a familiar feeling – an experience I know from all parts of life, from high school social dynamics through congressional hearings and national “debates” and all kinds of workplace and family dramas in between.

Maybe it’s familiar to you, too.

 

There are bullies and a victim, or accusers and accused.

There’s someone whose job it is to do the right thing, see that the right thing gets done.

And yet you know all along that the force of “public opinion” – political expediency or majority rule – makes injustice, makes compromise with evil and oppression, a foregone conclusion.

You hate to watch.

You feel helpless.

But you can’t look away.  

Because it’s the only thing in the news sometimes. Because it matters, other times.
Because you can’t help hoping, even though you know it’s going to go wrong.

 

We can’t look away.

And I think, today, that that’s the point.

 

Oh, I want to read this story with you, and talk about how this motivates and transforms us to fight injustice. To learn to be the voice in the crowd that speaks up and says, “No, he is innocent, release him,” no matter what it costs.  To learn from this story to use our authority, our power, as Pilate might have, to save an innocent life, in spite of the pressure to concede.

 

And I think that lesson is there.

But before we learn that, we need to stop and feel the horror of our helplessness.

Feel how easy it is to let one man die for the sake of “peace”.
Feel, with Pilate, how impossible it is to do the right thing, sometimes, when the wrong thing is the only option you are offered.

Feel that helplessness, and the frustration, and the tragedy.

And not look away.

 

Because when we look away – when we tell ourselves this isn’t happening in front of us, to us, among us, either then or now;
when we tell ourselves we would have stopped it, could have stopped it, if we’d been there, 

we look away from ourselves. 

From our own truth, and even our own hope. We look away from the whole of the story.

 

We could not rescue Jesus. Still can’t.

And when we recognize that, we are able to recognize more deeply, more profoundly, the whole truth that Jesus rescues us.

Rescues us from all the sin and evil and helpless grief; from powerlessness, from the death that we cannot vanquish on our own. 

Rescues and heals us, so that we, in turn, can save and heal others.

 

That’s why we gather at the cross today, [at the arrest, at the trial, at the cross and tomb,] and sit face to face with our own powerlessness, our own inaction, in this story and so many others. 

We feel the wounds made by everyday compromise with evil, with oppression, with injustice, to keep the everyday “peace” in our own world. 

Because that’s how we remember that we cannot rescue ourselves,

and know and feel the wonder that Jesus never looks away from us, mired in that messy compromise, that helpless grief, 

looks at us, loves us, and rescues us.

 

It’s hard to watch. Of course it is.

But love will not look away.