Episodes
Friday Apr 18, 2014
Good Friday Meditation
Friday Apr 18, 2014
Friday Apr 18, 2014
Rev. Dean Snyder
We are here to remember an execution … to watch in our mind’s eye an execution.
I have images in my mind of modern-day executions that I have garnered rightly or wrongly from TV newscasts and movies and novels.
The modern-day execution in my mind takes place in a prison somewhere in Texas. There are various groups of people present. There are the warden and prison guards and the prison chaplain all crisply, almost robotically, doing their jobs, following their checklists. The professionals doing their job.
Then there is a group of people invited to sit in a dark room inside the prison where they can watch the execution through a window. These may be relatives of the person who will die, it may be relatives of the victim, it may be others invited by the person being executed to be there.
In my mind’s eye there are two separate groups of people outside the prison. One group is there to protest the execution. This group includes some nuns. They are holding signs saying “Abolish the Death Penalty.” They are singing hymns and crying.
The other group outside the prison are those who have come to celebrate the execution. They are holding signs that say things like “Watch Him or Her Die,” cheering and chanting and waiting for the big moment to come.
Then there is another group. This is those of us watching from home on cable news, eating our supers, drinking a beer. Watching updates throughout the evening on cable news until we finally see the lights of the prison dim and we crumble our last beer can of the night and head up to bed.
Jesus’ execution was not much different.
There were the Roman soldiers and officials more or less doing their jobs professionally. There were those like Mary, Jesus’ mother, and his youngest disciple John standing near the cross where they can watch. There were a group of women weeping. There were those shouting “Crucify him, crucify him.”
And then because the Roman authorities made crucifixion days a holiday and encouraged ordinary people to attend so that they could see what happens to people who challenge their authority, there were crowds of people sitting a distance away with their families eating their lunches as they watched those being executed being hung on crosses.
Were you there when they crucified when they crucified my Lord? Or maybe the question is where were you, where was I in that crowd when they crucified my Lord?
We are going to hear a reading of the story of the crucifixion today based on the account in the Gospel of John. John is the most popular crucifixion account to be read or sung on Good Friday. The passion of John.
One of the questions the Gospel of John wants to ask is who
is really to blame for Jesus’ death? In Matthew, Mark, and Luke it is pretty
clear that Jesus was executed as a rebel and revolutionary by the
Roman authorities in collusion with the high priests of the Temple who were
upset about Jesus’ populist teachings and his latest act of turning over the
tables of the money changers in the Temple. Church and state cooperated to
crucify him
By the time the Gospel of John is written 70 years after the fact one of John’s themes in his Gospel is “He came to his own and his own received him not.” (John 1:11) John’s version of Jesus’ execution suggests that the Romans executed Jesus begrudgingly and the only reason they did it was because the Jews pressured them. So the Jews were really mostly to blame.
Reading this out of context, as we always seem to do with the Bible, has helped fuel 2,000 years of discrimination and persecution of Jewish people who have been forced to live in ghettos, who have been outlawed, and who have been murdered in the millions upon millions.
But even post0holocaust, we still ask the question “Who is to blame?”
There is a church in California whose podcast I listen to regularly. Some time again they did a service on the question “Are all religions alike?” So they invited an interfaith panel to come to the service and the pastor interviewed them as the sermon. There was a Muslim, a Buddhist, an agnostic humanist, an evangelical Christian and a Jew.
The last question the pastor asked them was whether there were any closing remarks they wanted to make. The Jewish panel member said a couple of things and then ended by saying: “Remember it wasn’t the Jews who killed Jesus, it was the Romans.”
Apparently the evangelical Christian may have been Italian because he immediately began saying: “Wait a minute. Wait a minute here.”
So go back a minute to the images in my mind’s eye of a modern day execution. Say the person in Texas is executed and it is discovered later that he was really innocent, as has actually happened.
Who is blame for his unjust execution and death?
Is it the prison warden and guards and chaplain following their checklists, doing their jobs? Is it the relatives watching in the special dark room inside the prison? Is it the weeping nuns? Is it those celebrating his or her execution on the prison lawn? Is it you and me at home watching cable news over our supper?
Where was I, where were you when they crucified our Lord?
So far this year 2014 there have been 17 persons executed in the United States. Askari Muhammad, 62, was executed January 7 in Florida. And then 15 others. And then Jose Villegas, 39, was executed in Texas two days ago. This past Wednesday. I had to Google that because executions aren’t even news anymore. While they were professionally, almost robotically, being put to death, we weren’t there at all.
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