SERMON-Innocence at the Crossroads
In 2008 in the US state of Nebraska, Senator Ernie Chambers filed a lawsuit against God, seeking a permanent injunction against the Almighty. Senator Chambers said in his lawsuit that God has caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.” God was required to defend himself against accusations of “causing untold death and horror and threatening to cause more still.”
However, the court ruled that as God did not have a fixed address, he could not be properly notified of proceedings, and so the lawsuit was dismissed permanently and deemed not permissible in court again! Sometimes common sense does prevail!
This bizarre lawsuit was in fact Senator Chambers’ protest over the legal system in Nebraska, in which anyone could access the courts and file frivolous lawsuits against others[1]. He was showing how farcical the situation had become.
Yet surprisingly, 2008 was not the first time that God was on trial. God was on trial as, in the Person of Jesus, he stood before the chief priests and the teachers of the law in today’s narrative from Luke. “If you are the Messiah,” they said, “tell us.” But they didn’t really want to know—they had formed their prejudiced ideas of Jesus for some time. They are wanting Jesus to incriminate himself, so that they can do away with him.
Jesus is then led off to Pilate, and the prosecution puts their case: “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king.” But that’s false testimony—one which any decent defence counsel could sweep away in an instant. Jesus had told them to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Luke 20:25). Nor did he claim to be a king, in an earthly sense at least.
The religious leaders make it up as they go along: – “He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching”. They make a mockery of their own law that says a charge must be upheld by the testimony of two or three witnesses. Pilate sends Jesus to Herod, who fired many questions at Jesus, but Jesus gave no answer. All the while, the chief priests and the teachers of the law were standing there, vehemently accusing him. Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked Jesus, dressing him in a purple robe.
Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers and the people to hand down his verdict: “You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him. This is a verdict Pilate repeats three times: As far as he can see, Jesus is innocent. “I find no basis for a charge against this man.”
Not guilty! Innocent! So the prosecution team swiftly switch tactics. They play their wildcard—the ‘Passover release’. There was a custom in Jerusalem that allowed the governor of Judea to release a prisoner sentenced to death and transfer that to another, by popular acclaim. The crowd have the choice to have either Barabbas or Jesus released from Roman custody.
Now here’s the irony—Jesus is innocent, and Barabbas is actually guilty of what Jesus has been charged with—causing unrest. More than that—Barabbas was an insurrectionist, leading a rebellion. He has taken the Romans on, whose rule the Jews hated. It was a murderous uprising. This is what the people expected Jesus to do when he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday! The salvation they wanted Jesus to bring them was political freedom from Roman rule, so that Israel could be independent again: “Hosanna! Lord, save now!” They cheered. But in their eyes Jesus had turned out to be an epic failure. At least Barabbas had a crack—what a legend! He was the kind of Messiah they had been waiting for—not this Jesus bloke! So the whole crowd shouted, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!”
In some ways their accusations against Jesus were a true reflection: “He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching.” The scene was set back in Luke 4, when Jesus stirred up the synagogue at Nazareth so much by his teaching that they wanted to do away with him, then and there. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, the religious leaders didn’t appreciate it when Jesus called them to repent because it wasn’t what they ate, but what came out of their hearts that made them unclean. They didn’t appreciate it when Jesus pronounced woes to them for their hypocrisy in placing burdens on the vulnerable. They didn’t like it when he claimed to be the Good Shepherd yet they were not among his sheep. They didn’t like it when Jesus told them that if they really knew the Father, they would have known him, the Father’s Son, also. They didn’t like it when Jesus told them the prostitutes and tax collectors would be going into heaven before them. They didn’t like that Jesus didn’t follow the traditions of the elders and welcomed sinners and ate with them. They deserved more favour than these lowlifes and outcasts.
The crowd seemed to identify with Barabbas. They seemed to have some kind of respect for him. But they didn’t like Jesus.
But Pilate knows that right there, innocence is at the cross-roads. He appealed to the people again: “What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty.” But they kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” With loud shouts they insistently demanded that Jesus be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will.
Like Senator Chambers, we too are quick to put God on trial for what we perceive to be his failings in managing the universe, and our lives. Like Adam and Eve, and like the religious leaders in our text, we pretend that we can be the final judge over God’s word, putting God on trial—reminding him how he should be at work in the world, turning from him when we hear his words we’d rather not hear. In his book God in the Dock C S Lewis wrote: “The ancient man approached God…as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.”[2]
The human fantasy is that we make ourselves the authority, and God accountable to us. We put God on trial when things happen to us that we decide shouldn’t, when suffering and evil seem to be triumphing, whenever there is a tragedy or disaster. But the reality is the exact opposite: God is the Judge. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight, everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.” At the end of all things, we will stand on trial before God. And so we too are like Barabbas—we too are guilty and deserve to die under God’s just sentence.
But we too have been pardoned and released!
That’s why Jesus came—to show all people where true righteousness and blessing from heaven could be found on earth—in him. He came stir up those who were lost and condemned in selfishness and self-righteousness, offending the prideful that their righteousness was as filthy rags, and called people to repent—for in him, the Kingdom of God was close by, reigning with divine forgiveness, favour and blessing—and he was ready to dish it out!
Barabbas could never do for Israel what Jesus had come to do. That’s why the will and desire of the crowd to have Jesus crucified was also the Father’s will. It was so the punishment for the sin of the world was taken completely by Christ on the Cross. When he gasped “It is finished” no other payment was necessary. It is done. We are free. God in Christ took our place on the Cross, to trade places with us. In 2 Corinthians 5:21 Paul puts it this way: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”. This is indeed a wonderful exchange, as Luther phrased it:
“Note the wonderful exchange; One man sins, another pays the penalty; one deserves peace, the other has it. The one who should have peace has chastisement, while the one who should have chastisement has peace.”
There are some things in life we don’t always have answers for. Why are we suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? Is God involved in the calamity all around us, or agonizingly absent? Are these things punishments for our sin, signs from above that our faith has failed? Like Senator Chambers we can put God on trial for all the evil we see and know ourselves; all the injustice and suffering.
But the problem is not God. It is us human beings. Ever since Adam and Eve fell to the first temptation (“Did God really say?”) sin has infiltrated everything. What life is now is not what God originally intended it to be. All of creation was plunged into brokenness and fragility, when sin and death entered the world. All of creation groans in bondage to decay, and we are born in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.
That is why God in his great love and mercy sent his own Son into the world, to show us the one and only way to life with the Father. God in Christ wears the same human flesh we do, he knows the same vulnerabilities, fears, weaknesses and temptations, and remained innocent, faithful to his Father for us. And in the Person of Christ, when God himself was nailed to a Cross, staked into the ground, and lifted high, he knew agony, fear, heartbreak, suffering, injustice, pain, death and abandonment. There, Jesus became sin for our sakes, that we might be the righteousness of God.
And so Pilate’s verdict on Jesus in today’s text is God’s verdict of you: “I find no basis for a charge against this man/this woman”. Although we are guilty we have been declared innocent! Paul began chapter 8 of Romans with the sweet words: “There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus!”
When trials and suffering come, these are not a sign that God is against us. When death by war, terror and persecution and disaster are beamed into our loungerooms, this is not a sign that God has clocked off. This is the default experience in a sinful, broken world in bondage to decay, arguing, hating, fighting, killing…before Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead and set all things right.
Until that time, the crucified, risen and ascended Christ has himself promised to be with you always to the very end of the age. He has promised to be your Good Shepherd, to feed, guide and protect you. He has promised to be your refuge and strength when the seas roar and foam and the mountains quake. He has promise to be your light and salvation as he leads us through the valley of the shadow of death in a dark and dying world. And so it is true—as Paul declares (in Romans 8:31-39):
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Amen.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna20827350
[2] C S Lewis (1970) God in the Dock – Essays on theology and ethics Ed Walter Hooper (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge UK) p268
