SUFFERING AND GLORIOUS VICTORY

 Sermon delivered on Good Friday the 2^nd April 2010 by Fr Nicholas JG Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban's Church of England, George Town, Cayman Islands.

 Scriptures: Isaiah 52: 13 - 53 end            Hebrews 10: 12 - 22              Gospel John 18: 1 - 19: 37

 John 19: 10, 11  Pilate says to Jesus, "Do you not know that I have power to release you and power to crucify you?" Jesus answered him, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above."

 

It is a most interesting and instructive exercise to go through St. John's account of the Passion and compare it with the accounts in the Synoptic Gospels, those of St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke. It seems fairly clear that St. John knew some of the other accounts, and quite deliberately made his account different, for the purpose of drawing out some significant emphasis which he believed the accounts that he knew did not do justice to.

 

It is not my purpose to go into these differences in the account of the Passion of our Lord in any great detail, but it is possible from some examples to show something of the emphasis that St, John wanted to draw out, and thereby perhaps to hear an essential message.

 

For instance, in the account of the betrayal in the garden, St. Matthew and St. Mark record that Jesus was kissed by Judas. St. John does not seem to leave room in his account for this action, and St. Luke says that Judas drew near to kiss Jesus, but Jesus forestalled the actual kiss by asking Judas first if he intended to betray Him in that way. St. John makes clear that Jesus went forward to meet the band of people that Judas had assembled to arrest Him, and took the initiative in declaring Himself. St. John is concerned to make it abundantly clear that it was not Judas who was in any way in control at this point. Whether he kissed Jesus or not was immaterial, because that had no bearing on how Jesus acted and whether or not Jesus was arrested. St. John emphasises that Jesus had discerned that the hour for His Passion had arrived and went forward as it were to embrace it. His timing was not controlled by His opponents; on the contrary, what they did was under control from above, and only He, the Son, fully knew what that timing was and when the moment had arrived. So it was He who took the initiative in this event.

 

Another divergence of St. John's account from the Synoptic Gospels is in the conversation Jesus has with Pontius Pilate. In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus is presented as answering no more than the mere minimum when Pilate put a question to Him, but in St. John Jesus converses with Him at considerable length about the nature of His kingship. These details are probably included in order to declare the truth that it was not the Jewish authorities or Jesus' Jewish opponents of any category who controlled Jesus' meeting with Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, the whole scenario was under divine control, and Jesus' words to Pilate declare that divine control. Because of this divine control, Jesus had correctly foretold the manner of His death. Because of this divine control, there had been no opposition from forces friendly to Jesus when the Jewish nation and the chief priests delivered Him to Pilate. Why? Because the kingship of Jesus was not from this world (as He patiently explained to Pilate), not with the motives and characteristics of this world's kingdoms. The basis of the case against Jesus as the Jewish authorities put it before Pilate, in fact hinged upon this issue. For their case was that because Jesus had admitted to being the Son of God, He was in fact trying to cause an insurrection against Roman control. The claim to be the Christ, the Jewish authorities argued, was equivalent to mounting a challenge against the rule of Caesar. They reasoned that the Gentiles might buy the idea that He had put Himself into competition with Caesar. That was the case against Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. What St. John's Gospel has is a sort of defence against this case through Jesus' own words to Pilate. The defence was that Jesus was far from being a threat to Caesar, because the kingship He possessed, unlike Caesar's, was not a this-world based kingship. Indeed the nature and the characteristics of the kingship of Jesus, were truth and truthfulness. The Jewish case against Jesus was fundamentally untruthful, fashioned by lies and the father of lies. But those whose minds were formed by truth would listen to the voice of Jesus. It was in fact Jesus' invitation to Pilate to attend to the truth rather than political lies. Pilate's notorious response at this point, however, was his celebrated rhetorical and mocking question "What is truth?" He was certainly in no position to put truthfulness above politics. The character of Pilate was ideal for the designs of the Jewish authorities. But this combination of characters was not a chance combination. It was by the divine design.

 

The conversation of Jesus with Pilate, according to St. John, continues at punctuated intervals. I surely consider that St. John's account really does fill in some parts which are lacking in the synoptists, rather than putting in to the story things that were not substantially true, as many modern scholars hold. Pilate could not have dealt with the case with only two questions, even if the net result was the same as if he had done, on account of his susceptibility to political pressure rather than the more gentle pressure of the truth. According to St. John the last exchange between Jesus and Pilate, which is our text today, occurred after Jesus had refused to answer Pilate's further uneasy and clumsy probing into questions which he was not qualified to deal with, as to Jesus' divine origins. Pilate gets exasperated and points out that he has the power either to release or to crucify Him. But Jesus then addresses him one more time. Jesus needs no teaching or reminding by Pilate, but in truth Pilate needs much teaching from Jesus. But Pilate would first have to understand that the particular combinations of circumstances and personalities that produced this prisoner before him were not merely of chance. Whatever power Pilate had or seemed to have over Jesus was given from above, not something that he possessed in his own right. Even here, St. John is showing us, Pilate has no control over Jesus. Jesus has made the will of His Father concerning His death for the sins of the world, His own will. God the Father is in control of this moment and Jesus the Son knows the mind of the Father beyond the knowledge of any other man. Pilate is not in control over Jesus, but God, whose Son Jesus is, has complete control over Pilate as He has over the whole situation.

 

Throughout the Passion account of St. John the same lesson is taught again and again, that Jesus goes His appointed way, not as the unwilling and helpless victim of evil men and cruel circumstances, but always, as it were in the driver's seat. He knows that this is the appointed hour of His suffering and at the same time His hour of glory, because when the Father is glorified in Him through His obedience and sacrifice, the Son is likewise glorified. As St. John the Baptist had declared some time before, "This was the Lamb of God, taking away the sins of the world."