Playing our Parts

“All of them deserted him and fled.”

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Sit with that for a minute. How does it make you feel?

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“All of them deserted him and fled.”

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What if we substituted the word “us” for “them”? All of us deserted him and fled.

How does that make you feel?

It’s easy to sanitize the rawness of the passion story if we project the players there as some “other” - either imagining we would have done different or just leaving it to be a story of the past, not (as it actually is) the ongoing story of every age.

Judas and Peter get the bad wraps for betraying and denying Jesus, but it is significant that not one character in Mark’s passion narrative stood by Jesus rather than betraying, denying, accusing, deserting, or fleeing.

Every one of us sitting here today will literally play the roles of those who did this in Jesus’ story - not the headliners like Peter and Judas.

No, we will be the unnamed witnesses who stood up to misquote Jesus and accuse him of heresy or worse.

And so, ask yourself: how have you used Jesus or the church for your own ends, and not God’s?

We will be the crowd, so worked up in treating Jesus as wholly other and repulsive to us that when Pilate demands to know what evil Jesus has done, we only shout louder “Crucify him!”

And so, ask yourself: how have you washed your hands of people you misunderstand and decided to treat them as less deserving than you?

We will be the soldiers who dress Jesus as royalty and mock him for daring to claim that others should listen to a higher authority.

And so, ask yourself: how have you belittled or dismissed those more idealistic than you, those who try to change the world, even when it seems improbable?

We will be the bystanders who taunt Jesus, demanding that he save himself if he really is who he claims to be.

And so, ask yourself: how have you consented to leave those who start out disadvantaged to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?

There’s no avoiding it. We are all these people: the witnesses, the crowd, the soldiers, the bystanders. And yes, the disciples and religious leaders who also turn away from Jesus. All of them deserted him and fled.

But even if we didn’t know what happens next Sunday and where the story ends, Jesus has given us a sign to provide hope and direction and pull us away from crowds that yell and jeer because we are looking to put ourselves above someone else and tear them down.

Instead this sign pulls us toward a different kind of fellowship, one grounded in a more durable reality than which group our clique has decided to blame our problems on today.

You have heard today: what Jesus did when he came to Jerusalem, knowing he would be killed and also knowing that he would be deserted by everyone he knew along the way.

He called the disciples together in an upper room and did what? He gave them the gift of a sacrament - Holy Communion. Why use bread and wine (and why use water in baptism)? Because we as Christians can see those signs and share them and recognize God in the stuff of our everyday lives.

I want to show you something.

[Walk to baptismal font, grabbing a couple of palm branches on the way, then dip them in the water and splash the congregation by swinging the branches]

Now, if I tell you to remember your baptism, then maybe you who are doing ok right now can nod and be comforted. But if you literally feel the baptismal waters splashing on your face, it’s hard to ignore, even and especially in the midst of deep struggle - it’s literally a splash of cold water to wake you up and remember who you are, a child of God, buried, risen, and part of a community of faith that spans every generation.

So even when we feel hopeless, when we fail to trust God and instead point fingers at others or decide someone or something else is more important - the sacraments are there to remind us that God, in Jesus, took all of that into himself - and never has nor will he ever look back and second guess or change his mind.

That doesn’t mean we are free to continue playing these roles as if nothing has changed though. The gift of the gospel is a call - we are perfectly free Lords of all, subject to none through the grace of God, but that gift is only fully realized when we freely subject ourselves to serve others out of gratitude and a desire to share that good news, along with a freedom from the need to focus first on ensuring we are good enough.

So I ask you one last time to consider as we read, how does it make you feel that all of us deserted him and fled?

But now I also ask you: how does it make you feel that Jesus did not desert us or flee?

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believed in him may not perish but have everlasting life - a new life that starts not when we die but now, and every time we behold his mercy and instead of calling out crucify him, recognize with the centurion that surely this one is the son of God.