Sermon — April 18, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him,
came forward and asked them, “Whom are you looking for?”
Jesus is surrounded by pathetic people.
His disciples are failures, almost to the man. Judas betrays him for thirty silver coins, handing him over to people who want him dead. Nine of the other eleven disciples simply flee at his arrest. Peter had said that he would lay down his life for Jesus. But now, when he’s merely asked if he’s one of Jesus’ disciples, he vociferously denies it, three times: “I am not!”
His disciples are a failure. His accusers are a disgrace. When Pontius Pilate asks them, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” they answer, “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” This is a favorite fallacy of tyrants: that criminals or terrorists or enemies of the state don’t deserve due process, that by the horror of their crimes they’ve forfeited their rights. In a just society, the only way to prove that someone has committed a crime is for them to stand trial; to say that “if this man were not a criminal, we wouldn’t have arrested him” is perhaps the most despicable example of the logical fallacy that called “begging the question.” His accusers have the courage to convict him without a trial for a crime they refuse to name, but they’re too cowardly to punish him themselves; “We’re not allowed to put anyone to death.” They’ll break the law of their own people, but they don’t dare break the law of Roman rule, and so they come to try to push a Roman execution through.
Pontius Pilate takes his part with an abdication of his role that rings through history. You can tell he’d rather be anywhere else, doing anything else, enjoying all of the benefits of power without having to handle the responsibilities. He dabbles in philosophy—“What is truth?” He feigns ignorance—“I’m not a Jew, am I?” How am I supposed to know what’s going on? Again and again, he tries to pass the buck—”Look, I find no case again him.” He suggests they ought to break his own laws. “Take him yourselves and crucify him,” he says, when they’ve already said what he knows to be true: only the Roman governor can put someone to death. And then, his final words of throwing in the towel, “What I have written, I have written.” Pontius Pilate, in this story, makes me sick.
The Beloved Disciple and the Marys, the mother of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea, these characters are noble and good. But they are bystanders here. They no real part in the story until it’s much too late to do anything but bear witness to the suffering of the one they love.
And then there’s us. All of us, who bear witness with them, here. This small nucleus of the church, that stands at the foot of the cross, unable to do anything to change what’s going on.
And it’s easy to point our fingers today, at Peter or Pilate, at the chief priests or Judas Iscariot, at the disciples who run or stand by impotently while a horrifying injustice is done.
But we’re no different from the rest. And even as Lent draws to an end, my mind drifts back to its beginning, to our Ash Wednesday prayers, to the Litany of Penitence in which we confess not big, earth-shaking sins, but the small ones that afflict us every day: “all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives… our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves… our negligence in prayer… and our failure to commend the faith that is in us… uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors… [and] prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us.” I don’t know about you, but I am an imperfect person, and these small ins from which we repent year after year are still my daily bread. And so I stand here, listening to this story, and I don’t find myself up there on the cross with Christ—I’m in the crowd of imperfection standing all around him. (That’s why I always claim the privilege of playing Pontius Pilate in the Passion gospel.)
But in a story of cowardice and helplessness, of betrayal and abandonment, of injustice and irresponsibility, Jesus still takes my breath away. Think again about those opening words: “Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, ‘Whom are you looking for?’”
This is the Son of God. He could disappear without a trace. He could flee into the night, like his disciples do. This is the eternal Word of God made flesh, through whom all things were made. He simply says, “I AM” and the police go tumbling to the ground. I’m pretty sure that he could fight them off.
But that isn’t what he does. Knowing that they’re looking for him, he comes forward and asks, “Whom are you looking for?” And John the narrator adds that this was to fulfill the promise he had made, not to lose a “single one” of those whom God had given him.
This is the courage of Christ: to step forward, knowing full well what that means; to sacrifice himself to save people he already knows will not live up to his love; to give his life to protect the very people who will let him down, people who are imperfect at best, and downright disgraceful at worst.
He looks at the people around him, imperfect as they are. He looks at Judas, who has already betrayed him, and Peter, who is going to deny him; he looks at the disciples who will abandon him and the close friends who do nothing to help him; he looks at the soldiers who arrest him and at you and me, who still remember him—at all these people living human lives, sometimes good but not never perfect, not by any means—and he takes a step forward, to die to for us.
It’s easy to understand what that meant on that night. He was arrested, they went free. It’s harder, sometimes, to make sense of what it means for us. There are a dozen different ways to understand the meaning of the crucifixion, and the sense in which Jesus dies for us; you may have read four or five different options written down on Michael’s purple cards, this Lent.
But tonight, we don’t have to understand the effects of that act. Tonight, we can simply feel the love behind it. Tonight, we can simply stand at the foot of the cross, looking on the courage of Christ, who chose to die for each one of us, and we can think about what the choir sang during communion last night—one of my all-time favorite hymns:
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
to lay aside his crown for my soul, for my soul,
to lay aside his crown for my soul!