Gospel of the Crucifixion
Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.
J: [We’ve been going through the gospel of] Mark. So hopefully you were tracking, but if you weren't, unfortunately, despite the palms, we're jumping straight into crucifixion. And I'm excited about it, but you might be worried about it. So let's see if I can get you more excited about it than worried. We're just gonna start in the text first. It is the entirety of chapter Mark 15. I mean, sorry, the book of Mark, chapter 15. Tired this morning:
Early in the morning, the religious leaders brought Jesus to Pilate. He asked, "Are you the king of the Jews?" and Jesus replied, "You say so." The leaders accused him of many things but Jesus stayed silent so as to amaze Pilate.
At Passover, Pilate usually released a prisoner. The crowd asked for a man named Bar Abbas, a rebel who had committed murder during an uprising against Rome. Pilate asked, "Do you want me to release the king of the Jews?" He was aware the chief priests accused him out of envy but the leaders stirred up the crowd to demand Bar Abbas instead. Pilate said, "Then what should I do with this man you call king of the Jews?" "Crucify him!" they shouted. "Why? What crime has he committed?" but they shouted even louder, "Crucify him!" Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Bar Abbas and handed Jesus over to be crucified.
The soldiers took Jesus dressed him in purple robes and twisted together a crown of thorns. They mocked him saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" They struck him, spat on him, and knelt in fake worship then led him out to be crucified.
A man named Simon from Cyrene was passing by and they forced him to carry Jesus's cross. They brought Jesus to a place called Golgotha which means place of the skull. They offered him wine mixed with myrrh, a bitter mix that was meant to dull the pain but he refused it.
They crucified him and divided up his clothes by casting lots. A sign above him read, "The king of the Jews!" and the two others who were crucified with him, one on each side. People passing by mocked him, he saved others, can't he save himself? The religious leaders said, "Let this Messiah, this king, come down from the cross so we can believe." Even the ones crucified with him insulted him.
And at noon, darkness covered the land until three then Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Some thought he was calling for Elijah. Someone ran and offered him sour wine on a sponge and with a loud cry Jesus breathed his last. The curtain in the temple was torn into a Roman centurion said, "Surely this man was the Son of God."
Some women watched from a distance Mary Magdalene and Mary, mother of James, Joseph, and Salome. They followed and supported Jesus alongside many other women. And that evening before the Sabbath Joseph of Arimathea dared ask Pilate for Jesus's body. Pilate wondered if Jesus was already dead and so a centurion checked. Joseph wrapped Jesus in linen, laid him in a tomb cut from rock, then rolled a stone in front. Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph, saw where he was laid.
The crucifixion of Jesus is deeply uncomfortable. For many, often it is one of the most weaponized parts of our faith. It is often used to guilt or to shame people into believing. And so sometimes conversations around crucifixion are avoided. Let's be real, especially in many progressive spaces, we try, many of us seek ways to circumvent the crucifixion.
But if we're being honest with ourselves and if we can come to understand those circumstances which surround the people who are yelling "crucify him," there is both important self-reflection to be done for us and good news to be heard this morning.
I can understand. I can deeply understand why people are yelling "crucify him." As humans, we want to see those tangible results. We want that immediate gratification and the Jewish people had been waiting a very long time for their freedom. They have been waiting almost a hundred years at this point. Generations of their people have not been born into freedom. They want liberation from Rome. They want liberation from foreign control. They have been waiting and they have been waiting and this man Jesus who has said he has come to set the people free has offered no immediate solutions. He is pretty weird, he's very cryptic, and he has only offered way more questions than he has offered answers and so I can understand. In their waiting and in their suffering they decide “we'd rather have this guy who's coming in hot against Rome. He's willing to kill for our freedom. He's offering a logic we can understand that is immediate, that is coming now, and so we choose Barabas instead of Jesus.”
Barabas gives people what they want but maybe not what they need. Barabas, aka Barabbas, as maybe we've heard it, is an Aramaic name related to Hebrew and bar means son of and then abba is the father. It means son of the father and ironically people choose son of the father instead of Yeshua which means the Lord is salvation, this true son of the father. Jesus and Barabas both want an end to Roman rule. Ostensibly they are on the same side, but when you look deeper into both of them there is a deep rift.
The fundamental difference between Barabas and Jesus is that Barabas belongs to a political movement seeking the restoration of a human kingdom, free of Roman rule but still rooted deeply in the human ways of running things. Human systems of power and control, a system that still oppresses the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, one predicated still on us versus them. Barabas was simply anti-Roman, whereas Jesus was against the powers of supremacy, isolation, economic exploitation, domination, totalitarian rule. And so it begs the question for us today what kind of Savior are we wanting versus what kind of Savior do we need?
We often choose band-aids for our maladies, do we not? We rush towards our self-interest instead of being willing to do deep and uncomfortable work of seeking out a Physician who intimately knows the knowledge of how to heal the roots of pain and suffering in our world. We choose Barabas because his righteous violence to freedom makes sense. It is a logic that is familiar to our human ways.
And so Jesus goes to the cross on a holy day which we call Good Friday, but if you're like me, growing up, I had no idea what was good about Good Friday because Jesus is crucified in a very bloody story. What goodness is there in a crucifixion? Well Good News actually does abound. Good News abounds if you have ever been the crucified. Good News abounds if you have ever been a scapegoat.
Jesus all along from the beginning of his story at Christmas has been constant. He has been constant in the pursuit of solidarity with the suffering. In service to embodied solidarity with those who are being crucified in our world. He has been in pursuit to be God with us and in his long walk to the cross, and yes, in his blood, Jesus embodies the final and ultimate act of solidarity with anyone who has ever been made to be the scapegoat. Anyone who has ever been crucified. Jesus sees it through.
When the people choose Barabas and yell "Crucify Him" he could slip away into the night. He could obscure himself, slip away and he could be free from our human justice. Jesus could perform a miracle and dazzle the people into allowing him to live, but Jesus chooses to stay in his human body where other bodies have perished before him out of his compassion. In the Bible previously when it refers to Jesus's compassion, it uses the Greek word splagchnizomai which literally means to have your bowels yearn, to have your gut twisted, to be moved from your innermost parts.
That is the depth of Jesus's compassion for human suffering. It has moved him from his innermost human parts. Not even taking the wine mixed with myrrh that could have eased his pain. Jesus's painful death is often something we grimace at. It's something that I've tried to look away from. We fix ourselves towards Easter. We look for the hopeful resurrection and I deeply sympathize with why we do that. There have been periods in my life where I was happy to skip from Christmas to Easter very quickly but I do fear that in rushing past Golgotha and towards an empty tomb, we miss our crucified neighbor. We miss Jesus.
Reverend Otis Moss III who's the pastor at President Obama's church in Chicago preached that there is no resurrection until you walk by the pain of Calvary, and catch a glimpse in the sunlight of the lynching tree. Church we must bear witness to the crucified. So where is the good news? Where is the good news? In looking at faces that have been crucified? To name that people have been and are being and will be crucified is not meant to shame us into repentance, or harp on social justice. Once again it is to honor the truth of the cross. It is to see the fullness of Jesus's divine solidarity with our beloved other, whose suffering moved Jesus from his innermost parts.
So what I'm here to proclaim to all of us today church is that the crucifixion of Jesus is good news, too. To look upon Jesus's mangled body is—or should at least be—good news to those of us who have been left feeling just as mangled. Those moments when we have been dragged through the mud humiliated, scourged by the powers of control, by domination. It is good news to know there is a God who so loved us that he sent his only son and not just to die for you but in your crucified moments to die with you. To die with us.
Jesus is Emmanuel, not just on Christmas when it's fun to sing songs and play in the snow. Jesus is Emmanuel God with you in the darkest moments of being crucified by the world around you. For Jesus to be Emmanuel, God with us, points us to the truth that Jesus knows the horrors of our lived experiences. That he knows violence against your body. Violence against black bodies, queer bodies, trans bodies, women's bodies, children's bodies, disabled bodies, bodies at our borders, bodies being trafficked, and bodies that are incarcerated. His crucified body speaks to our suffering in the loneliest deserts of depression and anxiety, addiction and eating disorders. To the moments when we contort ourselves, crucifying ourselves, to be more of everything else and less of who we were made to be. And that, that is good news.
We can't rush past what a crucifixion feels like. So what does Jesus's crucified body really mean for us on a day to day? It's great to kind of hear all these amazing proclaimed words, whatever. Well what does that mean when I step out of these doors and go back to work? Well Maria Jose Mendez, a mujerista theologian, writes about a concept called acuerpar, which is a term used in many Central American political movements and it means to give one's body. Mujerista theology is a theology of liberation for Latino women throughout the diaspora and it views the crucifixion as a solidarity we are called to as acuerpar and she says of it against disembodied forms of solidarity that entreat us to bestow empathy on disadvantaged others by putting ourselves in other's shoes instead.
This concept invites us to stand side by side in our own bodies and remake the world through mutual aid. It is a call to be with instead of to try and be in another's shoes. God didn't stay far away theorizing what life would be like if he came to walk in our shoes. God came to dwell among us to be body to body with us in his own body, dying in his own body, not out of charitable pity for how sad our little lives are, but out of a solidarity for the real suffering we experience inside and outside of ourselves.
As we enter Holy Week we are beginning collecting donations for our Easter offering organization, which you might think in your brain is just well that's just what churches do, we just give money. But we've chosen an organization intentionally this year because their philosophy and the work they are doing is to be body to body with neighbors in a particular neighborhood not very far from us. We have chosen Banyan Community which is a nonprofit in East Phillips and it is an organization that does work which mirrors what I have just preached. They use an asset-based model which looks upon the strengths of a community rather than at the failures and the charity to be done. And they desire to come side by side in body. As neighbors, as families, as staff to see abundant life spring forward.
And Jenia, the development officer at Banyan, will share in just a second but I just want to finish by highlighting a quote from their website which embodies the cruciform story of Jesus's solidarity. This is part of Banyan's philosophy. It says, "To put the interests of the poor before my own (or organizational) self-interest even when it may be costly." I'm going to end in prayer and then invite Jenia up to give us a little bit more about the work that Banyan is doing here in our city. Please join me in prayer. God with us. This morning we pray thanks for the story of crucifixion that even perhaps in the painful ways this story of your body has been used to hurt us. That there are ways to still see good news in the pain of your body. To remember this morning that in the pain of our lives whether it is an internal sense of suffering, it is the long walk of loneliness we're experiencing or whether it is pain from the outside, scapegoating of our own bodies. This morning we pray thanks that you are in solidarity with that experience that you are with the crucified in our world. We pray that you help us slow down in this Holy Week that we do not rush to the joy of the resurrection to exaltation but that we take small and slow moments to remember your whole story this week and Holy Week. For these things we pray in your name. Amen.
Jenia I just invite you up and I'll give you this microphone which is on the floor which I am still oh when you're up here just like it's like playing a game of I Spy. You're welcome to get up on the stage.
Jenia: Thank you J. As J said my name is Jenia Strom and I have the honor of being the Development Officer at Banyan community and as J said we are we're very grateful to be the recipient of your Easter offering this year and listening to J's sermon it really does feel like Banyan embodies this message of this side-by-side. When he was talking about the idea of this it's not it's not just some quick fix this is it's not just a band-aid solution that Banyan is looking for it's looking at a long-term a long-term solution to how are we caring for people how are we looking at community how are we creating truly beloved community.
Banyan is just a little bit north of this congregation right here we're in the East Phillips neighborhood and Banyan's been there for 27 years. Banyan's been caring for and being part of the East Phillips neighborhood for 27 years caring for youth caring for families caring for people of all ages it's been seeing individuals and doing that in a holistic way looking at education and supporting education looking at supporting families coming alongside families and parents of young children you see in the picture up there.
I love the picture at the top we have a senior club that is growing sets I think axe throwing at the carnival spring carnival last year the senior club meets on Thursday mornings this past Thursday morning they had a session on learning about the signs of Alzheimer's so there's educational opportunities as well as social opportunities I think it was it just last month J you got to go along to an Arboretum field trip so there are all sorts of different things what Banyan does is provide a safe place a place where for people to be seen a place for people to be cared for a place for people to fulfill their dreams a place for people to access resources and all of that can be done because of resources that are within the community but also folks coming alongside this community. And so it's been able to to have grown over these 27 years because of resources that are available in the community but because other folks have come alongside.
And so as you're contemplating giving in this time just know that that Banyan and I love the quote that J pulled it from that website we take very seriously the resources that are coming in and knowing this commitment that is being made to these individuals and we know where where these resources are coming we know how important it is to come alongside and we take very important the gifts that people give. I don't know J how long the donations are you doing this for is it for two weeks that your Eastern night donations and I know I can be here for a little bit after the service today but J is here and I know Bennett also is a Banyan employee so if you have questions and I our contact information is available on the Banyan website so if you have specific questions about where resources are going to or where where funds might be…
I just wanted to take—I don't know how much time I have—I know okay I just want to take you through a 24-hour period at Banyan and this is my my favorite example on a Wednesday night through a Thursday and I'll go very quickly and I can talk very quickly but I'll try and talk very quickly. On a Wednesday evening at about 6 o'clock we get high school youth coming into the building and they're there to get support, they're there to get education support. J's in there, Bennett's in there there's other staff in there and they're getting help to help them get through their educational experience this past Wednesday as they came in there also was a Banyan alum there and he was there to tell them about how he chose his career and and what he was doing with his life and he was there with his wife and his child and he was able to share about his success in his life at this point and about how Banyan had played a role in that.
Athere was also at that point there were people there from the University of Minnesota Extension Services and they were leading a class for parents on cooking so there was a cooking class and there was for the larger community there was a Zumba class so also on physical health and that was happening in the next morning there was through Minneapolis public schools there was a ECFE class there for younger families and then there was that Alzheimer class that I was telling you about and then right after school there were our Banyan scholars so those are youth that were there and they were meeting kids they were putting on their vest to go meet kids at the bus stop to make sure that they had a safe way to get to the Banyan community center where they were coming for safe after-school time for food for snacks. And then they were going to be learning and then what else happens? Oh and then there was the seedlings program which was a Spanish again early education time and then then there were more middle school coming so that's just within a 24-hour period so of course all of that takes a lot of funding it takes a lot of resources that was just one 24-hour period that happens again and again and now I'm out of breath! So we are very grateful for your support. Feel free to ask me any questions after the service, ask Bennett, ask J, contact us, thank you thank you thank you for your generosity.