The Gospel According to Soldiers

Tonight we continue our sermon series looking at how the enemies of Jesus proclaim the good news and the truth of who Jesus is. And tonight we continue with the Roman soldiers who mocked Jesus and hailed him as the King of the Jews. As always, they speak better than they know. But tonight I want to look at these soldiers and try to see ourselves in their mocking attitude. It’s an attitude that comes far too easily for us humans and I think we can relate to it.

Trouble in the Text

Imagine for a bit that you are in the shoes of one of the Roman soldiers of the Judean cohort stationed in Jerusalem on this day. For you, it’s a probably a Friday roughly like any other. You were probably recruited several years ago from a neighboring province like Syria. You’ve seen battle a few times, and probably dealt with your share of political prisoners. The life of a soldier hasn’t been easy. Training was brutal, and everything you’ve seen since has made you just as brutal. You’ve seen enough of the world to give you a healthy dose of cynicism. No, it hasn’t been easy, but it does have its rare perks. Like today. You’ve heard that the locals have brought in some Jewish peasant who thinks he’s a king. What fun, the chance to humiliate a prisoner like this is one of the rare opportunities in the Roman army to cut loose and let off some steam. And you could use that. You’ve never had much love for the Jewish people and a few years of dealing with them has made you positively resent them. Just where do they get off being so smug and uppity all the time? Calling themselves “God’s chosen people,” calling you a “dog” and avoiding you like filth. Who do they think is in charge? Really how utterly typical that some grimy prophet from nowhere is getting delusions of grandeur.

Someone in the cohort has a great idea: this guy thinks he’s a king? Let’s give him the full “Hail Caesar” treatment. One officer runs to get his dress cloak to use as a “purple robe.” Another guy pulls up a thorny plant growing in the pavement to make a quick “laurel wreath” for his triumph. And then the mocking and buffoonery starts. You get caught up in the moment and the cruelty of the mob, you get in a few good whacks. You put all the venom and scorn you can muster into your, “Hail, King of the Jews!” After all, there’s only one thing in this world you have any respect for: power. And this man clearly has none. Or at least, so it seems.

Trouble in the World

I don’t think it’s that difficult for us to relate to this attitude of cynicism and mockery. I think if anything, present day American culture has far less that they consider sacred or worth bowing before than a Roman soldier would have. That soldier we were imagining would surely have at least bowed in the presence of Caesar, if for no other reason than that Caesar had unquestionable power over him. But we modern people have very little we would bow to. American culture tells us that we bow to no kings, and mocking our political leaders is a treasured part of our society. Even religious ideas and institutions that were once unquestionable are not beyond mockery. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche defined the “sacred” as “whatever it is in a culture at which one cannot laugh.” You would be hard pressed to find something that that is true of in modern society. If you’re reviewing a comedy these days, the words “delightfully irreverent” would be considered a compliment. Skewering “sacred cows” is considered brave and positive. For us today, it isn’t considered “cool” to take anything too seriously. There is very little room for piety and reverence in a modern way of life. The virtues of modern society are irreverence, insincerity, and irony. And this can lead us to mockery and cruelty. Just like our hypothetical Roman soldier, the only thing that can force us to show respect is power: brute force that makes us bend the knee, whether we want to or not. Everything else, things that used to be sacred, are a joke.

Grace in the Text

But let’s return to our hypothetical soldier for a moment. How little did he know, how could he have known, how appropriate his words and actions were. This man that he was mocking truly was the chosen king of the Jewish people. This man, this sorry looking peasant truly was a divine emperor, a king of kings even greater than his Caesar. What the soldiers did ironically and irreverently was absolutely the proper response to who Jesus is. He is the King and he is worthy to have all people bow before him, not in mockery, but in sincere devotion.

But what makes Jesus so worthy of honor is that he shows his power in a way that’s totally foreign to the world, both then and now. Jesus shows his power and his kingship in restraint and forgiveness. You can almost imagine that while our soldier is laughing and bowing, that he catches Jesus’ eye for a moment. And he’s suddenly taken aback to find Jesus smiling sadly up at him. Now that’s something he’s never seen before. Compassion and forgiveness were not virtues that the Roman military instilled in him. Just who was this man who seemingly could forgive people who were brutalizing him? What kind of king was that? What kind of power? This is certainly nothing like Caesar; if Caesar had caught soldiers mocking him in this way, they would be the ones headed to be crucified. But clearly Jesus didn’t think that way. If he really was a king, then he was like no king the world has known.

Grace in the World

And thank goodness, because that is why Jesus is just the kind of king that we impious and irreverent sinners need. We don’t need another Caesar to bend us to his will, an “uber-mensch” who will dominate us with his will to power and force us to honor him. We need a king like Jesus who is willing to absorb all our mocking and irreverence and cruelty, and take it away so that we can be forgiven for it. Jesus took all of it without complaining. Like the faithful suffering Servant that Isaiah talked about, he gave his back to those who strike, his cheeks to those who pull out the beard, he did not hide his face from disgrace and spitting. We laughed at the most sacred and valuable thing in the world and treated him like garbage and killed him, and Jesus let us. “God is dead . . . and we have killed him.” as Nietzche also said. How right he was on that Friday. But the good news is that God did not remain dead. Jesus rose again, proving that he truly was King of the Jews, and indeed King of all the universe. And the amazing part was that he rose with forgiveness for everything we had done. We killed God and he still forgave us. That is really the most powerful and sacred thing there is. And it’s the antidote to our sin, our mocking and cruelty.

And that’s why we bow the knee to Jesus. The kingdom of God defeats mocking and irreverence, not by mocking in return or by force, but by suffering and forgiveness. Jesus and his people overcome evil with good. In every place that Christ and his message and his people are devalued, mocked, and treated like garbage, somehow more people end up bowing the knee to Jesus and hailing him as the King. The reign of Jesus is recognized in forgiveness. That is how it will be until one day Jesus comes again, and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. So let us kneel before Jesus, not in mockery but in sincerity, and say, “Hail, King of the Jews, hail, King of Kings.”

In Jesus’ name, Amen.