The Politics of Good Friday

For four years running, I always posted the text of Dr. Leithart's amazing 2006 Good Friday Homily on Good Friday, but I thought I would post his 2008 homily instead this time around, especially in view of this blog's emphasis on political theology.

And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, "Behold your King!" But they cried out, "Away with him, away with him, crucify him." Pilate saith unto them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar." --John 19:14-15

In medieval iconography, John the Evangelist is depicted as an eagle, and this portrait expresses the opinion of the early church fathers, that John wrote a “spiritual” gospel which has a “loftier spiritual purpose” than the other gospels.  John is the eagle because he soars “aloft to contemplate and proclaim sublime truths,” while the other gospel writers are land animals, preoccupied with the “more mundane aspects of Jesus’ ministry and person.” 

That assessment of John’s gospel is ancient and still very popular, but it’s highly misleading and based on a partial reading of the gospel.  Far from being the work of an eagle who hovers mystically over the earth, John’s is the most contentious of the gospels.  John records more arguments, and more intense arguments, and longer arguments, between Jesus and the Jews, than the other evangelists.  He uses more legal terminology than in the other gospels – “witness” and “judgment” and “testimony” and “convict.”  Even the word “Paraklete,” translated as “Comforter,” is a legal term.

John’s gospel is full of trials, and can be read as one very long trial scene.  The Jews repeatedly bring charges against Jesus, and Jesus repeatedly turns the tables and tries them instead.  It is a politically charged gospel, and no scene is more politically charged than the trial scene before Pilate, which is all about Jesus’ kingship, about power, about who is a true friend to Caesar.

Everyone has a self-interested political agenda.  Pilate rules a cantankerous Jewish people, and is clearly frustrated by their stubbornness.  He asks them to reconsider their attacks on Jesus, but they shout more loudly for crucifixion.  To satisfy the Jews, Pilate permits his soldiers to conduct a mock coronation – crowning Jesus with thorns, putting a robe on Him, bowing before Him in mock deference.  But the mockery is directed against the Jews as much as against Jesus.  “Behold your king,” Pilate tells the Jews.  “This is the king you deserve, you nation of rebels, you nations of losers.”

More generally, the trial scene exposes the foundational injustice of the Roman imperial system.  The Roman empire expanded amidst apocalyptic hope.  Now the world will be remade, Virgil wrote of Augustus; now the golden age returns.  Rome brings final peace and justice to the world.

There was something to that, but in the trial of Jesus we discover the blunt injustice and bald pragmatism on which Roman peace was founded.  Three times Pilate declares Jesus innocent: I find no fault in Him, I find no fault in Him, I find no fault in Him.  But the Jews insist that since Jesus has made Himself a king, He threatens the Roman empire, and it’s clear from the agitation of the Jews that Jesus threatens the peace of Israel.  If I don’t get rid of Jesus, Pilate reasons, I’m going to have no end of trouble from these Jews. I could lose support in Rome, and I could lose my job.  It’s better for one innocent man to die than for me to be faced with enraged Jewish agitators.  It’s better that one man die, than for me to lose the perks of being a provincial governor.

This is Roman peace.  It is peace founded on the murder of the innocent.  It’s a peace designed to protect the interests of those who hold power.  It is peace from the barrel of a gun. Augustine recognized that Roman peace is a kind of peace; you can keep most people quiet if you have enough guns.  But it is only a shadow of the tranquility of order that is true peace. 

For their part, the Jewish leaders realize that Jesus threatens the nation – or, more precisely, their leadership of the nation.  “One man must die for the people,” Caiphas said, thinking not of substitutionary atonement but of national survival.  If Jesus isn’t stopped, he reasons, then the Roman army will come crashing down on us to destroy the temple and scatter our people. 

In the event, we know this is ironic, because the New Testament shows that the Jews’ rejection of Jesus and the apostles is precisely what brings the Roman siege engines to Jerusalem.  That irony is already evident in the trial itself.  The Jews are given a choice of Jesus or Bar-abbas, Jesus or this other “Son of the Father.”  They choose Bar-Abbas, and that choice expresses a political agenda.  For Bar-Abbas is not a “robber” but a rebel leader, an insurrectionist, a bandit who uses his banditry to destabilize Rome.  We could without much exaggeration call him a terrorist.  This is the man the Jews want more than Jesus.  This is the path they choose.  To save themselves from the Rome, they choose a man who devoted his life to provoking Rome.
The irony turns tragic when Pilate asks them if he should crucify the Jewish king.  Their answer is, “We have no king but Caesar.”  This is apostasy.  Israel exists as the kingdom of Yahweh, and for no other reason.  And it’s foolish apostasy.  The Jewish leaders have learned nothing from Israel’s long history of political idolatry.  Throughout her history, Israel has longed for kings like the kings of the nations.  Samuel warned them at the beginning that this desire was a death-wish, and that rejecting Yahweh as king would leave Israel to the tyrants.  Every time they wanted to be like the nations, and worship the gods of the nations, Yahweh allowed it, delivering them to Midian and Moab, to the Philistines and the Assyrians, to Israelite oppressors and to Gentile oppressors.  They never learned: When they choose Caesar as king, they get Caesar, and he rules with a club and a cross.

This is the political message of Good Friday: The Word of God, who was with God and was God, the Only-Begotten Son, takes flesh and dwells among us, and in response the most sophisticated religious leaders of the ancient world join forces with the most powerful political leaders of the ancient world to murder Him.  God enters His creation, and His creatures concentrate all their ingenuity, passion, piety, and power to destroy Him.  “Now is the judgment of this world,” Jesus had said.  While the world thinks it’s passing judgment on Jesus, it is really judging itself.

Good Friday is a key moment in the political history of humanity.  Jesus pulls up a rock, exposing all the corrupt priests and Pilates in their naked opportunism.  In the light of Jesus’ cross, we can see the world’s backroom deals, their patriotic rhetoric and pleas for justice, their threats of war and promises of peace, for what they are – cruelty and a lust for domination.

But the political message of Good Friday is not ultimately pessimistic.  Jesus does not say that power as such is corrupt, but instead speaks of a power from above.  Now is the judgment of this world, but in the Roman Praetorium, the bleeding bruised Jewish prophet admits that He too is a king.  Now is the judgment of this world, but in the Roman Praetorium, the King with the Crown of Thorns announces that He too has a kingdom.  Now is the judgment of this world, but in the Roman Praetorium, the eternal Word speaks, proclaiming that He was born to establish a kingdom of truth, justice, and peace.  Now is the judgment of this world, but when Pilate sends an innocent man to his cross, he unwittingly helps to found another kingdom, an eternal kingdom, a kingdom that is not from this world.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The Great Friday Homily

Every year I have to re-post this on my blog, because it is simply the most amazing sermon ever delivered in Moscow, Idaho, or perhaps anywhere else. It is Dr. Leithart's 2006 Good Friday Homily. In your spare time today and tomorrow, meditate on it; I assure you it will not be wasted time.

Good Friday Homily
Paul determined to know nothing but Jesus and the cross. Was that enough? To answer that question, we need to answer another: What is the cross? The cross is the work of the Father, who gave His Son in love for the world; the cross is the work of the Son, who did not cling to equality with God but gave Himself to shameful death; the cross is the work of the Spirit, through whom the Son offers Himself to the Father and who is poured out by the glorified Son. The cross displays the height and the depth and the breadth of eternal Triune love.

The cross is the light of the world; on the cross Jesus is the firmament, mediating between heaven and earth; the cross is the first of the fruit-bearing trees, and on the cross Jesus shines as the bright morning star; on the cross Jesus is sweet incense arising to heaven, and He dies on the cross as True Man to bring the Sabbath rest of God.

Adam fell at a tree, and by a tree he was saved. At a tree Eve was seduced, and through a tree the bride was restored to her husband. At a tree, Satan defeated Adam; on a tree Jesus destroyed the works of the devil. At a tree man died, but by Jesus' death we live. At a tree God cursed, and through a tree that curse gave way to blessing. God exiled Adam from the tree of life; on a tree the Last Adam endured exile so that we might inherit the earth.

The cross is the tree of knowledge, the tree of judgment, the site of the judgment of this world. The cross is the tree of life, whose cuttings planted along the river of the new Jerusalem produce monthly fruit and leaves for the healing of the nations.

The cross is the tree in the middle of history. It reverses what occurred in the beginning at the tree of Eden, and because of the cross, we are confident the tree of life will flourish through unending ages after the end of the age.

The cross is the wooden ark of Noah, the refuge for all the creatures of the earth, the guarantee of a new covenant of peace and the restoration of Adam. The cross is the ark that carries Jesus, the greater Noah, with all His house, through the deluge and baptism of death to the safety of a new creation.

The cross is the olive tree of Israel on which the true Israel died for the sake of Israel. For generations, Israel worshiped idols under every green tree. Israel cut trees, burned wood for fuel, and shaped the rest into an idol to worship. Now in the last days, idolatrous Israel cut trees, burned wood for fuel, and shaped the rest into a cross. The cross is the climax of the history of Israel, as the leaders of Israel gather to jeer, as their fathers had done, at their long-suffering King.

The cross is the imperial tree, where Jesus is executed as a rebel against empire. It is the tree of Babylon and of Rome and of all principalities and powers that will have no king but Caesar. It is the tree of power that has spawned countless crosses for executing innumerable martyrs. But the cross is also the imperial tree of the Fifth Monarchy, the kingdom of God, which grows to become the chief of all the trees of the forest, a haven for birds of the air and beasts of the field.

The cross is the staff of Moses, which divides the sea and leads Israel dry through it. The cross is the wood thrown into the waters of Marah to turn the bitter waters sweet. The cross is the pole on which Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, as Jesus is lifted up to draw all men to Himself.

The cross is the tree of cursing, for cursed is every man who hangs on a tree. On the tree of cursing hung the chief baker of Egypt; but now bread of life. On the tree of cursing hung the king of Ai and the five kings of the South; but now the king of glory, David's greater Son. On the tree of cursing hung Haman the enemy who sought to destroy Israel; but now the savior of Israel, One greater than Mordecai. Jesus bears the curse and burden of the covenant to bear the curse away.

The cross is the wooden ark of the new covenant, the throne of the exalted savior, the sealed treasure chest now opened wide to display the gifts of God – Jesus the manna from heaven, Jesus the Eternal Word, Jesus the budding staff. The cross is the ark in exile among Philistines, riding in triumph even in the land of enemies.

Jesus had spoken against the temple, with its panels and pillars made from cedars of Lebanon. He predicted the temple would be chopped and burned, until there was not one stone left on another. The Jews had made the temple into another wood-and-stone idol, and Israel must have her temple, even at the cost of destroying the Lord of the temple. Yet, the cross becomes the new temple, and at Calvary the temple is destroyed to be rebuilt in three days. The cross is the temple of the prophet Ezekiel, from which living water flows out to renew the wilderness and to turn the salt sea fresh.

The cross is the wood on the altar of the world on which is laid the sacrifice to end all sacrifice. The cross is the wood on which Jesus burns in His love for His Father and for His people, the fuel of His ascent in smoke as a sweet-smelling savor. The cross is the wood on the back of Isaac, climbing Moriah with his father Abraham, who believes that the Lord will provide. The cross is the cedar wood burned with scarlet string and hyssop for the water of purification that cleanses from the defilement of death.

The cross is planted on a mountain, and Golgotha is the new Eden, the new Ararat, the new Moriah; it is greater than Sinai, where Yahweh displays His glory and speaks His final word, a better word than the word of Moses; it is greater than Zion, the mountain of the Great King; it is the climactic mount of transfiguration where the Father glorifies His Son. Calvary is the new Carmel, where the fire of God falls from heaven to consume a living twelve-stone altar to deliver twelve tribes, and turn them into living stones. Planted at the top of the world, the cross is a ladder to heaven, angels ascending and descending on the Son of man.

The cross tears Jesus and the veil so that through His separation He might break down the dividing wall that separated Yahweh from his people and Jew from Gentile. The cross stretches embrace the world, reaching to the four corners, the four winds of heaven, the points of the compass, from the sea to the River and from Hamath to the brook of Egypt. It is the cross of reality, the symbol of man, stretching out, as man does, between heaven and earth, distended between past and future, between inside and outside.

The cross is the crux, the crossroads, the twisted knot at the center of reality, to which all previous history led and from which all subsequent history flows. By it we know all reality is cruciform – the love of God, the shape of creation, the labyrinth of human history. Paul determined to know nothing but Christ crucified, but that was enough. The cross was all he knew on earth; but knowing the cross he, and we, know all we need to know.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.