The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John
After he said these things, Jesus went out with his disciples and crossed over to the other side of the Kidron Valley. He and his disciples entered a garden there. Judas, his betrayer, also knew the place because Jesus often gathered there with his disciples. Judas brought a company of soldiers and some guards from the chief priests and Pharisees. They came there carrying lanterns, torches, and weapons. Jesus knew everything that was to happen to him, so he went out and asked,
“Who are you looking for?”
They answered, “Jesus the Nazarene.” He said to them,
“I Am.”
(Judas, his betrayer, was standing with them.) When he said, “I Am,” they shrank back and fell to the ground. He asked them again,
“Who are you looking for?”
They said, “Jesus the Nazarene.” Jesus answered,
“I told you, ‘I Am.’ If you are looking for me, then let these people go.”
This was so that the word he had spoken might be fulfilled: “I didn’t lose anyone of those whom you gave me.”
Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) Jesus told Peter,
“Put your sword away! Am I not to drink the cup the Father has given me?”
Can you imagine any of today’s earthly leaders telling their followers to put away their swords? Domination and annihilation are the mantra of the day and assumed to be the key to political success. I recently heard a news story about the proliferation of boot camps promising to turn men (and their sons) into alpha males–real tough guys–because apparently tough guys get their way! It’s as if we’ve become convinced that power must mean power over if it’s to be powerful at all. There’s a race to the bottom-line, basest level instinct that power requires violence, intimidation, physical strength, and a refusal to admit when we are wrong, or to apologize for our mistakes.
Throughout Jesus’ life and ministry, and especially in his passion and death, Jesus reveals what God’s power looks like—the only power strong enough to save the world.
We see this alternative power is on display in the first verse: the power of courage. Jesus could have climbed out of the Kidron Valley and kept on going, but he stayed. He could have taken Peter up on his offer to defend him or called on the powers of heaven to join the fight. But he didn’t. Jesus has the courage of his convictions. He is committed to doing the will of his Father. He protects his followers, asking for their safety, but surrenders himself.
As we continue through this passion narrative, notice how Jesus uses power: courageously, steadily, quietly, persistently, deliberately, sacrificially, like water ceaselessly offering itself and working its way through rock. The power of love endlessly works to transform hearts of stone into hearts of flesh.
Then the company of soldiers, the commander, and the guards from the Jewish leaders took Jesus into custody. They bound him and led him first to Annas. He was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. (Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jewish leaders that it was better for one person to die for the people.)
Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Because this other disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard. However, Peter stood outside near the gate. Then the other disciple (the one known to the high priest) came out and spoke to the woman stationed at the gate, and she brought Peter in. The servant woman stationed at the gate asked Peter, “Aren’t you one of this man’s disciples?”
“I’m not,” he replied. The servants and the guards had made a fire because it was cold. They were standing around it, warming themselves. Peter joined them there, standing by the fire and warming himself.
Meanwhile, the chief priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. Jesus answered,
“I’ve spoken openly to the world. I’ve always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews gather. I’ve said nothing in private. Why ask me? Ask those who heard what I told them. They know what I said.”
After Jesus spoke, one of the guards standing there slapped Jesus in the face. “Is that how you would answer the high priest?” he asked. Jesus replied,
“If I speak wrongly, testify about what was wrong. But if I speak correctly, why do you strike me?”
Then Annas sent him, bound, to Caiaphas the high priest.
Meanwhile, Simon Peter was still standing with the guards, warming himself. They asked, “Aren’t you one of his disciples?”
Peter denied it, saying, “I’m not.”
A servant of the high priest, a relative of the one whose ear Peter had cut off, said to him, “Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?” Peter denied it again, and immediately a rooster crowed.
Here we see two misuses of religious power. Jesus’ preference for inclusion over order, and physical healing over ritual purity, infuriate the religious officials. Jesus’ insistence on bringing about the peace of God’s kingdom risks peace with the Roman empire and the position of power and privilege it affords them.
The Church continues to struggle with maintaining a healthy and holy relationship with power. When have we chosen to exclude rather than risk include? To cover up, rather than admit our faults? To ignore issues of justice, instead of being open to dialogue? When and where has cozying up to political power corrupted the Gospel and justified violence?
Similarly, Peter, on whose faith Jesus promised to build the church, also teaches us a lesson about misusing religious power. He loses his connection with Christ and wilts without him. He forgets the power he has. He does not speak up. He lurks in the shadows. He denies his friend and Lord. When have we—as modern-day disciples and as a church in the world today—lost our connection to the Gospel of Jesus Christ? In what ways have we failed to speak up for the last, the lost, the least? What are we afraid of?
The Jewish leaders led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Roman governor’s palace. It was early in the morning. So that they could eat the Passover, the Jewish leaders wouldn’t enter the palace; entering the palace would have made them ritually impure. So Pilate went out to them and asked, “What charge do you bring against this man?”
They answered, “If he had done nothing wrong, we wouldn’t have handed him over to you.”
Pilate responded, “Take him yourselves and judge him according to your Law.”
The Jewish leaders replied, “The Law doesn’t allow us to kill anyone.” (This was so that Jesus’ word might be fulfilled when he indicated how he was going to die.)
Pilate went back into the palace. He summoned Jesus and asked, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answered,
“Do you say this on your own or have others spoken to you about me?”
Pilate responded, “I’m not a Jew, am I? Your nation and its chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus replied,
“My kingdom doesn’t originate from this world. If it did, my guards would fight so that I wouldn’t have been arrested by the Jewish leaders. My kingdom isn’t from here.”
“So you are a king?” Pilate said. Jesus answered,
“You say that I am a king. I was born and came into the world for this reason: to testify to the truth. Whoever accepts the truth listens to my voice.”
“What is truth?” Pilate asked.
Here Jesus shows another facet of Christlike power: clarity of purpose and identity. Just wasn’t deterred or distracted by the temptations in the wilderness, and neither is he now. He knows who he is and what he is about. His kingdom is not of this world. His allegiance is to God alone. There’s a strength in the calmness of Jesus’ demeanor—the result of a holy humility that grounds identity in something that transcends and outlasts the fleeting and tenuous displays of worldly power and importance. Jesus embodies Truth. Pilate can’t even comprehend it. What truth do we cling to about our purpose and identity? What grounds us and returns us to our truest selves?
After Pilate said this, he returned to the Jewish leaders and said, “I find no grounds for any charge against him. You have a custom that I release one prisoner for you at Passover. Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?”
They shouted, “Not this man! Give us Barabbas!” (Barabbas was an outlaw.)
Then Pilate had Jesus taken and whipped. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and dressed him in a purple robe. Over and over they went up to him and said, “Greetings, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.
Pilate came out of the palace again and said to the Jewish leaders, “Look! I’m bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no grounds for a charge against him.” When Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here’s the man.”
When the chief priests and their deputies saw him, they shouted out, “Crucify, crucify!”
Pilate told them, “You take him and crucify him. I don’t find any grounds for a charge against him.”
The Jewish leaders replied, “We have a Law, and according to this Law he ought to die because he made himself out to be God’s Son.”
When Pilate heard this word, he was even more afraid. He went back into the residence and spoke to Jesus, “Where are you from?” Jesus didn’t answer. So Pilate said, “You won’t speak to me? Don’t you know that I have authority to release you and also to crucify you?” Jesus replied,
“You would have no authority over me if it had not been given to you from above. That’s why the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.”
Here we see the power of courageous silence, of nonviolent active resistance. Jesus’ silence rattles Pilate. Pilate would appear to have the upper power hand. After all, without even believing him to be guilty, he matter-of-factly hands him over to be tortured and punished. And yet even after this, standing there dripping blood and beaten to within an inch of his life, Jesus won’t answer his questions. Silence in the face of aggression is powerful.
Rosie, our four-month-old puppy, has discovered this firsthand. There’s an old black and white soccer ball on the playground and every time we get within eyesight of it, Rose begins to bark. As we get closer, she howls and whines, she pounces and charges. And, of course, despite all of her aggressiveness, the ball remains unmoved. This enrages Rosie. She can’t let it go. The ball lives rent-free in her puppy brain. The silent ball has all the power. When and where have we flailed at someone perceived as an enemy? Are they living rent-free in our heads? Rather than perpetuating the violence and aggression, could courageous, principled silence change the situation?
From that moment on, Pilate wanted to release Jesus. However, the Jewish leaders cried out, saying, “If you release this man, you aren’t a friend of the emperor! Anyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes the emperor!”
When Pilate heard these words, he led Jesus out and seated him on the judge’s bench at the place called Stone Pavement (in Aramaic, Gabbatha). It was about noon on the Preparation Day for the Passover. Pilate said to the Jewish leaders, “Here’s your king.”
The Jewish leaders cried out, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”
Pilate responded, “What? Do you want me to crucify your king?”
“We have no king except the emperor,” the chief priests answered. Then Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified.
Here we see what happens when the powers of empire and religion intermingle. The political power of the empire corrupts the religious leaders’ integrity and makes a mockery of their righteousness. It exposes their true loyalties.
The temptation to combine religious zeal with nationalist fervor is still alive and every bit as dangerously toxic today. It’s called Christian nationalism. In a recent newsletter, local pastor John Peterson beautifully articulated the dangers it presents:
“Christian nationalists … conflate the Christian faith with our national identity. They claim that America is uniquely blessed by God and should serve as God’s Kingdom on earth.…Their self-righteous goals are to make the government an instrument of their particular brand of theology and to align the culture, morals, and laws to their rigid interpretation of Scripture. In America, they see the new Israel, God’s chosen people, favored by God and superior to other nations. They are akin to the German Christians who conflated the Gospel with the Reich, and the Barmen Declaration stands as a specific repudiation of their claims. For, the Lord is Creator of all people, and no one nation is favored over any other. Jesus came among us because God so loved the world, and the world is much bigger than any one nation! When we pray, “Thy Kingdom come” we are praying for the kingdom to come to the world, not just to or through any one nation – including ours!” (source)
And now, let us stand out of respect for the King of kings and Lord of lords, whose power is made perfect in weakness.
The soldiers took Jesus prisoner. Carrying his cross by himself, he went out to a place called Skull Place (in Aramaic, Golgotha). That’s where they crucified him—and two others with him, one on each side and Jesus in the middle. Pilate had a public notice written and posted on the cross. It read “Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and it was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. Therefore, the Jewish chief priests complained to Pilate, “Don’t write, ‘The king of the Jews’ but ‘This man said, “I am the king of the Jews.’”
Pilate answered, “What I’ve written, I’ve written.”
When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and his sandals, and divided them into four shares, one for each soldier. His shirt was seamless, woven as one piece from the top to the bottom. They said to each other, “Let’s not tear it. Let’s cast lots to see who will get it.” This was to fulfill the scripture,
They divided my clothes among themselves,
and they cast lots for my clothing.
That’s what the soldiers did.
Jesus’ mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene stood near the cross. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother,
“Woman, here is your son.”
Then he said to the disciple,
“Here is your mother.”
And from that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
Here, even from the cross with death rapidly closing in, Jesus offers one more lesson on power: the power of community, the power of shared presence. He connects the beloved disciple with his own beloved mother, knowing the power of a community grounded in loving commitment to one another. Where and when do we experience the power of community and connection? How do we foster it?
After this, knowing that everything was already completed, in order to fulfill the scripture, Jesus said,
“I am thirsty.”
A jar full of sour wine was nearby, so the soldiers soaked a sponge in it, placed it on a hyssop branch, and held it up to his lips. When he had received the sour wine, Jesus said,
“It is completed.”
Bowing his head, he gave up his life.
It was the Preparation Day and the Jewish leaders didn’t want the bodies to remain on the cross on the Sabbath, especially since that Sabbath was an important day. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of those crucified broken and the bodies taken down. Therefore, the soldiers came and broke the legs of the two men who were crucified with Jesus. When they came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead so they didn’t break his legs. However, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. The one who saw this has testified, and his testimony is true. He knows that he speaks the truth, and he has testified so that you also can believe. These things happened to fulfill the scripture, They won’t break any of his bones. And another scripture says, They will look at him whom they have pierced.
After this Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate if he could take away the body of Jesus. Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one because he feared the Jewish authorities. Pilate gave him permission, so he came and took the body away. Nicodemus, the one who at first had come to Jesus at night, was there too. He brought a mixture of myrrh and aloe, nearly seventy-five pounds in all. Following Jewish burial customs, they took Jesus’ body and wrapped it, with the spices, in linen cloths. There was a garden in the place where Jesus was crucified, and in the garden was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish Preparation Day and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus in it.
We humans persist in in our misguided attempts to save the world by our own power, with our own strength. Take for instance the wars in Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Sudan. Have those acts of earthly power and military might saved anyone? Does the endless cycle of horrific violence and unrelenting vengeance make the world safer for our children and grandchildren? Do we trust the alternative power revealed in the cross of Christ, the power of God’s love to save the world, or do we see it as weak and ineffective?
Fr. Bill Barnwell tells the story of something his father did that forever changed his mind about both his dad and the power of agape love—and by that he means the self-giving, sacrificial, unconditional, courageous, humble, “no strings attached” love of God revealed in Jesus’ death on the cross. He begins the story by admitting that at the time of the incident, he had come to think of his father as being a “sissy”—weak and afraid. He was ashamed of him.
“One day,” he writes, “All that changed….
My father and I were riding on a train for one of our vacations in the North Carolina mountains. We were near the end of the trip and were standing close to the exit area ready to get out and meet the rest of our family. Standing next to us was another family consisting of a teenage girl, her mother, and her father. The teenage girl was laughing and cutting up with her mother, and probably by mistake said some four letter word, or maybe it was a curse word.
Her father, a great burly man, with hands twice the size of anybody else’s, suddenly turned around, and, just about as hard as he could, it seemed, slapped his daughter across the face, knocking her up against the side of the train. But he didn’t stop there. He pulled her up and was just about to slap her again, but he couldn’t.
He couldn’t because my father, my 5‘8“ “sissy” Father had shoved himself between this large, angry man and his daughter. “Hit me,” my father said quietly. “Hit me instead.”
The man balled up his fist this time, pulled it back, ready to smash [my dad], but he couldn’t. His fist stayed reared back, trembling, for what seemed an eternity. It was as though his hand was suspended in the air. I could tell he wanted to say something awful to my father, but no words came out. And then to my great surprise, this huge man started to cry a little. His hand fell to his side. Finally, he said, “Thank you, Mister. I had a real bad day today. I’m sorry.” At that point everybody in both families began to cry. In those few moments, my view of the old man changed completely…”
Was Fr. Barnwell’s father weak or strong? Was he foolish or wise? He certainly had the power to change the hearts and minds of the people on that train. I’m reminded of St. Paul’s words to the church in Corinth:
“God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
Human strength and earthly power won’t save us. The power of God’s love is the only thing strong enough and wise enough to save the world, to transform our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. By his holy cross, Jesus has redeemed the world. When we walk in the way of God’s powerful love, we change the world too. “May we, walking in the way of the cross, find it none other than the way of life and peace.” (BCP, Collect of Monday in Holy Week).
