Here it comes: my first Holy Week as a priest. As I was sipping on my coffee in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, a text came in from my seminary classmate, Mtr. Melina, wishing a slew of us all the best this week. It was a nice reminder that I have a crew of colleagues in the church spread throughout the country. That helped to give me a lift as I got in the car for the long drive to Valdosta. 

As is the custom, we did the reading from the Passion Gospel of Luke in parts. As a Mickee Faustkateer, I don't believe in gender-specific casting. And...like so many churches...St. Barnabas has more women present on any given Sunday, so the women have to play men. And, in the case of St. Barnabas, one of members is Transgender and volunteered to read the part of Jesus, a much better choice than the usual casting they've done (apparently, the priest has played Jesus for years. I refused. Theologically, it is not right to have the authority figure in the worship service play the role of the one questioning authority. So says this priest!)

Because the Gospel is so long, I kept my sermon to less than my usual 10-13 minutes. See what you think. 

+++

Text: Luke 22:14-23:56

Politics makes such strange bedfellows. And that can be found in one of the lines in the Gospel text:

“That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies.” (Luke 23:12)

The whole scene involves Pilate and Herod passing Jesus back and forth between each other to determine which imperial leader was going to take responsibility for convicting this upstart Jesus. Would it be the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate or the Jewish tetrarch Herod Antipas? 

This scene only appears in Luke…and no other authorities can verify that it happened. So why is it there?

Maybe Luke wanted to further establish just how much of an outsider Jesus was to the authorities of his day.

It could also be that this ping-ponging of Jesus between the two leaders recalls some of the gruesome details of the execution of John the Baptist…another agitator…whose head got passed from person to person at a birthday party.

I don’t know why it’s there.

But it serves as a useful allegory for us in the 21^st Century of what happens when politics and “religion” become bedfellows…when power perceives a growing threat from those it considers “other.”  It gets ugly. It’s worse when the representative of “religion” is barely recognizable as a true religious authority. Even though Herod was Jewish…he was a puppet of Caesar Augustus…and his kinfolk would have seen him as a collaborator with Rome. And Pontius Pilate was widely known to be a brutal authoritarian.

Even today…when politics and religion get intertwined in a competition of power and dominance…it’s usually those without the power who get hurt.

In our society…our extremely polarized society…there are those claiming moral authority in the halls of power who keep stoking the fires that have led to distrust…and anger…and our inability to have rational conversations with each other.

Here enters Jesus.

Once more…Jesus is showing us that when faced with a corrupted version of justice…when dealing with self-serving power brokers…he refuses to play their games.

When Herod wants him to perform a sign, he stays silent. When Pilate wants to know if he’s the King of the Jews, he gives a non-answer of “You say so.”

Some commentators say that Jesus is presenting an alternate reality. But what I think he’s doing is establishing what is the real reality: Love. 

Love as the more powerful force that doesn’t demand dominance.  

That Love gets nailed to a cross…and yet that cross and grave cannot contain that Love because Love is a greater force than evil and death.

We…as followers of Jesus are invited through our baptism to live into this reality and walk this path. 

This is a way of Love which takes us into the suffering world just as Jesus went…with the promise that if we stick with this source of Love…and when we fall away…come back onto the path…we can and will overcome the obstacles put in our way.

One more thing before I conclude.

As we enter into this Holy Week, we are going to be hearing readings from the Gospel of John that need a lot of context because of his repeated use of the term “the Jews.”

We must always remember that our evangelists were writing at a particular time and to particular groups of people….Luke, for instance, is really more for a Gentile audience.

What John gives us is an insider’s view of the polarized times in the Second Century. There was dissension in the Jewish family between those who believed in Jesus as the Messiah and those who looked around at a troubled world and said the Messiah had not yet come. This was the beginning of the split which would eventually lead to Christianity. We read these texts because John is the one Gospel that makes the strongest claim of Jesus as God…the Word made flesh.

Unfortunately…this Gospel has also been one of those texts that prove my point about what can happen when religion and political power get too cozy and corrupted.

The result has been horrific crimes against humanity…from the medieval Inquisition in Spain…to the Holocaust in World War II to the rise of anti-Semitism in this country and around the world. The Gospels…especially John…have been used to persecute Jews.

The terrible irony is that Jesus was a Jew.

So was Peter.

So was Judas.

So was Mary.

Each of them provide us an example of discipleship:

There’s the one who denies Jesus because he’s afraid of what ridicule and consequences he might face.

There’s the one who betrays Jesus for a profit.

And then the one who loves Jesus and bears witness to both his brutal death and his incredible resurrection.

All of them were on Team Jesus. To be anti-Semitic is to miss the point of Jesus’ whole ministry and mission which is to Love.

With that caveat…I invite you and encourageyou to take this week…this Holy Week…as a time to slow down, and experience in body, mind and spirit what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Come back for a meal on Thursday…and the foot washing at the service. Take a moment to pause and take in the site of an empty altar.

Remember Jesus’ death on Good Friday with the stations of the cross and in the evening service where we name the many ways in which we need God’s help to make for a more just society.

And then return next Sunday to remember the reality: Resurrection is real. We are redeemed. We are loved.