Lent Midweek 5

SERMON 5: LENTEN MIDWEEK 4 "Faith for a Complicated World" Luke 23:1-25 Let's be honest. The world around us is a complicated place that can be hard to figure out. Life sometimes sends us a fair bit of pain and suffering; when you look around, it's not hard to spot cruelty and injustice. Pastors become aware of this especially when they get to walk alongside of people in their suffering. Whether you've come through a lot or been spared a bit, still we all know this; it's nothing new. It's been this way since Genesis 3. And it certainly is that way now. Now, let me be a little direct here, and point out a problem. Sometimes Christians talk as if the world is not a complicated place; sometimes Christians talk as if they sort of have things figured out, by and large. Little sayings go around, and people often mean well, and the sayings can contain some truth. But they tend to make things way simpler than they really are. One example: "I believe in the power of prayer." There's truth in that, of course, but what about the prayers to which God says, "no"? Or what about the prayers that seem to be met only with silence? I've experienced that a lot in my life, and I'm pretty sure you have as well. So, it's complicated, and we don't know all we'd like to know about how it all fits together. Here's another one, and if you like this one, I don't mean to hurt your feelings. It goes like this: "When God closes a door, he always opens a window." Again, it's a simple and hopeful thing to say. It's not in the Bible, you know. And I think I understand the good intent behind such a saying-but it doesn't acknowledge just how complicated the world is, and just how puzzling-and frankly, how hard life can be for people, including us Christians. And yet. Even though God's ways are often hidden to us, still we Christians believe that God is at work in the middle of the suffering. God is at work; yes, we do believe that. And yes, we do pray with faith-because of the kind of God we have come to know. And yes, even with the evil in the world around us, we trust that God is at work against the evil, in spite of the evil, and sometimes God even takes the evil and uses it for his purposes. How God does that I am often not at all sure. But I-we-believe that he does. Is this a blind sort of faith? It's a pretty tall order, actually, to ask people to believe in such a God. The question is, why do we? Now, a full answer would be another sermon series ... or maybe ten sermon series. But in a very beautiful way, the reading for tonight from Luke 23 gives us our answer, our reason for believing. We're going to ponder what happened when the leaders of Israel led Jesus to stand before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea and Samaria, early that morning long ago. What happened then? The short answer is ... evil, real evil in different shapes and sizes, coming against the only man ever to live of whom it could be said, "He didn't deserve any of it." And yet all that evil was taken up and put to use by the living God, the Father of the Lord Jesus, for good; for my good, and for yours, and for the good of the whole world. This is why we can live as we do in a broken world, in faith and in hope. Let's look at the "major players," one at a time, from the reading in Luke 23. There are three major players. First, the chief priests. We met them in the verses for last week that lead right up to this evening's reading. Their evil was the blind ignorance of unbelief. They hated Jesus. In his ministry, Jesus has claimed authority as God's Son and the true King. Jesus rejected the way they thought about their God and one another; Jesus leveled the playing field for all people, shutting out all comparison, teaching that the only way to know the true God is in complete humility, looking only to ... him. To Jesus. For this reason and others, the chief priests have spoken with one voice. And now they have led Jesus to Pilate, and they accuse him of crimes against Roman order and Roman justice. They want Pilate to believe that Jesus is guilty, and they want Pilate to execute Jesus. But it doesn't work. They can't convince Pilate at all. And when Pilate sends Jesus to Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee in the north, the chief priests keep accusing Jesus there, but that doesn't work, either. They can't convince Herod that Jesus deserves to die. Herod belittles Jesus and mistreats him and mocks him. But he doesn't think that Jesus deserves to die. The accusations against Jesus from the chief priests don't work. But that does not stop them or their evil. They keep on coming, they keep on demanding Jesus's death by crucifixion. "We would rather have that murderer, Barabbas, than this Jesus!" Did that convince Pilate to change his mind? Does he take their word for it? No. He knows that Jesus does not deserve to die. But the voices of the chief priests continue. They meant it for evil. They were sincere-at least some of them-and they were pressing, pressing, pressing for what was ... wrong. The blind ignorance of unbelief. Evil in the world. There's another sort of evil in the reading, but we might be tempted to downplay it, oddly enough. We see that evil in the second major player-Pontius Pilate. He is the governor of Judea and Samaria, and he is directly responsible to Tiberius Caesar. Tiberius is the emperor- think "top dog" and multiply it a thousand times. Pilate represents the interests of the Roman empire, and the top two interests are (1) order and peace, and (2) tax money. Pilate has made some mistakes during his years in the holy land. He's learned the hard way how strong Jewish convictions are about spiritual things. It's hard to be precise, but we wouldn't be far off to say that Pilate has been governor for at least four years, and maybe as long as seven. But be clear about one thing. He is the Roman governor. And he has troops at his disposal. And in matters of capital crimes, Pilate holds all the cards. Rome will not let the local leaders-the Sanhedrin-execute someone even if they think that person deserves to die. Pilate himself has to authorize the execution. With an insignificant, poor, non-citizen like Jesus, Pilate is prosecuting attorney, defense attorney, judge, and jury. He can call witnesses or not call them. Pilate holds all the cards. The chief priests get his attention at first when they accuse Jesus of disturbing the peace, interrupting tax revenue, and claiming to be a king. It's the last one that counts the most, and so Pilate asks Jesus point-blank, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus gives the same sort of indirect response he gave to the Sanhedrin: "You have said so." Whatever Jesus's tone of voice, Pilate reads it as ... a "no." He says, "I find no guilt in this man." If the world were a just and honest place, if powerful politicians always did what was right, that would have settled things. But it's not, and they don't, and it didn't. Pilate begins to move toward committing a great, great evil. Now when Pilate hears that Jesus is from Galilee, he decides to get Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee, into the picture. We don't know exactly what he is thinking. Is Pilate looking for more information? Could be. Does he want to shift responsibility, or unload the blame for what happens? We don't know. Whatever the reason, off to Herod goes the helpless Jesus. And Herod isn't convinced by the chief priests' accusations either. The ruler of Galilee seems to treat Jesus like a source of entertainment; he wants to see a miracle. Jesus doesn't speak even one word to him. And so Herod mocks him, and beats him, and sends him on back to Pilate- and the two powerful rulers seem to think, "Oh, that other guy-he's not as bad as I thought." Where does the evil stand now? Where it was before. Pilate knows ... and he knows that Herod knows ... that whatever else they think, Jesus does not deserve to die. But the chief priests gather all their voices and all their forces, and they simply demand crucifixion. And finally, Pilate played the cards that only he held, the authority that only he could exercise. He decides that Jesus will be crucified. Here is where we might make a terrible mistake. We might shrug our shoulders. We might say, "Oh well, what do you expect? Isn't that the way politics works? Powerful people do what's convenient, they compromise, they give in to special interests." Happens all the time, right? So-we might shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh well, what do you expect?" The living God expects a lot more than that from rulers, and from Pontius Pilate. Governments are God's idea, and whether it's the king of Israel or the king of Moab, whether it's Pilate long ago or a government official anywhere in any nation today, in God's way of looking at things-to whom much is given, much is demanded. The Bible doesn't say a lot about it, but it does say this. Ruling authorities exist to protect the weak and the helpless, the widow and the orphan. God has given to government the responsibility of rewarding those who do right and punishing those who do wrong. Pontius Pilate is no exception, and just because we've come to expect so little of civil servants in our day does not let Pilate off the hook. His choice, his choice to send an innocent man ... the innocent man ... to death by crucifixion is every bit as great an evil as the screaming voices of Jesus's enemies. Rulers are supposed to protect the innocent. And there is no doubt, no doubt; Pilate knows that Jesus does not deserve to die. What an evil thing St. Luke describes: "He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, for whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus over to their will." What kind of a world is that? Same kind of world that we have today. The evil of stubborn, blind resistance to God's chosen One. The evil of powerful people who know the facts and who know what's right, and for whatever reason choose not to do it. Sins of commission. Sins of omission. It was their world; it's ours, too. Hopefully you'll be at least a little surprised by the verses I'm going to read from Acts 4. This truth in these verses may be familiar, perhaps to everyone here. Familiar or not, we can still stand in awe and wonder at the kind of God that we have. Acts 4 takes place only a few weeks after Good Friday and Easter and Ascension and Pentecost. The same enemies of Jesus are now the enemies of his apostles, who are preaching in Jesus's name. They've arrested the apostles and threatened them if they keep on with their message. Here's what Luke writes, in Acts 4:23-28: When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, "Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, 'Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed'-for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place." Did you hear it? "Both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, did whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place." Was it evil? Did the power players do evil? Yes, it was. Was God caught off guard? No, he was not-he had planned it all in advance. Did God take the evil, and use it for good, even though no one could see or understand? Yes, he did. That's the sort of God that we have. Because along with the chief priests and Pilate the governor, the other major player in our reading is ... Jesus. The Lord Jesus doesn't look like the Lord in these verses. The true King seems like anything but a king. He looks like a pawn; the powerbrokers move him here, and there, and he speaks to Pilate once, but otherwise he is silent before the power of evil. But that's because God has not planned to stop the evil. No, God will take it and use it, actually use it. Jesus is the true King, and a true king represents his people. In the ancient world, in the Bible's world, you might even say that the king sums up his people, all right there, in his own person. He is the people. So, what happens to the king also happens to the people. And who could have ever understood this while it was happening? God took the evil that the people were doing and that the people deserved, and he brought that evil against ... the king. Against Jesus. God's plan was not to stop the world from acting. No, Jesus knew this all, and he let it happen. To himself. To our King. To our representative. And Jesus took it ... so he could take it away. He took it, so he could take it away. The evil was deadly. The chief priests had their way. Pilate did the deed, and only Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were there to bury the body, to bury the corpse, to bury Jesus. The evil was strong, it was strong, and it went with Jesus into the tomb. But God is stronger still, and Jesus rose from the dead, leaving the evil behind, having taken the evil away from you. This is how the world is, right? But Jesus reversed how the world is, and he has started a new world. You and I are part of that because we have been joined to Jesus, baptized into Jesus, and we cling to our King. Jesus is our King who takes the evil and works it for good, even when no one else can figure out what is going on. Jesus knows. Jesus knows. Our world is complicated. And there's a lot of pain and lot of confusion. Much of the time, it's probably best for us to say two things. The first is this: "I don't really understand how this is all fitting together, but I am here with you as we go through it." The other thing that we say and that we believe is: Our God is still at work, and he knows how to take the evil and use it for good. It's not a blind faith. The proof of it, simply put, is Jesus. God worked good from evil that night for us and all people, through Jesus our King, our living, reigning King. And God still does that today, for the people of the King. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.