Good Friday: April 6, 2007.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Psalm 22

Hebrews 10:16-25

John 18:1-19:42

One of the bits of historical trivia that I recall from my elementary-school American history courses is that when the British surrendered to the colonial forces at Yorktown, the British army's band played a then-popular tune titled "The World Turned Upside Down." This factoid is no doubt related to school children as a metaphor for the unlikelihood of the related event: the army of the world's superpower of the day beaten by amateurs.

The Bible repeatedly speaks of even greater reversals of human expectations and values. Often cited are the song of Hannah in 1 Sam 2:1-10 and its New Testament echo, Mary's Magnificat, in Lk 1:46-55. Yet the reversal that rises above all others to the point of stumbling block and foolishness is the cross (cf. 1 Cor 1:23): How can anyone seriously believe that the execution of one Jew among thousands by the Roman imperium constituted the ultimate judgment of all human pretensions to power and the ultimate demonstration of the psalmist's claim "Say among the nations, 'The LORD reigns'" (Ps 96:10)?

Such, however, is the fundamental point of today's Gospel reading, the passion narrative from John. Caesar's vicar, Pontius Pilate, twice asks Jesus whether he is a king (18:33,37) and, with typical Johannine irony, unconsciously proclaims the truth to the crowd: "Here is your king!" (19:14) The soldiers are equally correct, and equally clueless, when they crown Jesus and dress him in royal purple, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" (19:3) What is beyond the comprehension of them all is that they are in the presence of the king not merely of the Jews but of all nations and, indeed, all worlds.

Unlike the other Gospels, in which Jesus speaks exactly two words to Pilate (in Greek), "You have said so," in response to Pilate's question "Are you the King of the Jews?" John's Jesus is positively loquacious with the governor. He spells out for Pilate the nature of his kingdom (18:36), the purpose of his kingship (18:37), and even the relationship between his kingdom and the one that Pilate represents (19:11). He could not be more straightforward. But it's all Greek to Pilate. All he manages to make of it is that Jesus is no danger to the Roman state (18:38; 19:12). Yet by failing to act even on the little that he knows, Pilate winds up as the first evangelist (i.e., gospel writer) in three languages on the titulum nailed to the cross: "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" (19:19). In its own way, the church has never forgotten Pilate's contribution: he is memorialized forever in its two main creeds.

Still, there is nothing ironic or indirect about John's understanding of what was happening that afternoon. When Jesus is "lifted up" on the cross, he is manifested to all as the messianic Son of Man, to whom God gives "dominion and glory and kingship" (3:13f.; 12:32-34; cf. Dan 7:13). In fact, he is all that God had promised and more (three of John's seven references to fulfilled Scripture, plus both cases of fulfillment of Jesus' own words, are in cc. 18-19). His inaugural address is brief: "Tetelestai"--"It is finished!" (19:30) A scribe's addition to an old Latin version of the Psalm verse quoted above says it all: "Say among the nations, 'The Lord reigns from the tree!'"

Read from a confessedly Christian perspective, the Isaiah passage testifies to this same Great Reversal of human expectations and worldviews. Like John's Jesus, the Servant of YHWH is "lifted up" (52:13) to the awestruck incredulity of those who think they know power (52:15). The first six verses of chapter 53 intentionally place us, the readers, among those guilty of incomprehension and culpability via their repeated "we," "us," and "our." We, too, have "no king but Caesar" (Jn 19:15)--that is, no glimmer of how God does "peace and justice" (53:4, 8)--until we can own up to our part in the Servant's weird enthronement and. beyond that, grant that the prophet had it right two chapters later, when he commented on the differential in human and divine calculus: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (55:8f.). Like Pilate, we have to learn that real power comes "from above" (anothen, Jn 19:11), a concept that we can grasp only when we ourselves are born "from above" (anothen, Jn 3:7).

The First Reading briefly references the Israelite sacrificial system in explaining the work of the Servant ("When you make his life an offering ['asham] for sin"--Isa 53:10). The Second Reading is dominated by its imagery and terminology, as one might expect in a reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. Jesus is both sacrificial victim (v. 19) and high priest (v. 21), through whose very body (likened to the curtain at the entrance of the Most Holy Place in the temple) we have both access (v. 19) and atonement (v. 22). Of special interest are the hortatory subjunctives that follow from this state of affairs: "let us hold fast [katanoomen] to the confession of our hope" (v. 23) and "let us consider [katanoomen] how to provoke one another to love and good deeds" (v. 24). Faith and good works as a consequence of Jesus' saving sacrifice are parallel and inextricable from one another. Specifically, the author exhorts us readers to "synagogue" together (episunagoge) in worship and thereby encourage/exhort (parakaleo; cf. "Paraclete") one another (v. 25). Such is, indeed, the nature of a Christian congregation: an assembly where we faithfully confess and "provoke" one another to acts of love, within and without the fellowship.

Everything we are and do, whether in the kingdom of power (the civil order, including the likes of Pilate) or the kingdom of grace (the communion of saint-sinners, including the likes of this or any congregation), finds its orientation and meaning in the events of this day. In fact, the only God we know is the one who thinks a cross makes a very fine throne indeed. GCH