Good Friday Year C – George Yandell
When I was a little boy in Mobile, my best friend Mikey lived next door. He was a year older than I. He had to lift me over the low fence when we went from his yard into mine. We played together nearly every day. On the other side of our house lived a girl who babysat for me. (I thought she was the most wonderful girl in the world.) Her father grew beautiful daylilies in his front yard. There were 100’s of them, many different colors. One day in the spring, Mikey suggested we pick a few of the daylilies. So we did. And we picked some more. And we picked more and more until we had picked every daylily in Mr. Hodges’s front yard. They were lying all over the ground. I knew we had done something bad. Mikey said not to worry, that no one would ever know how it happened.
Mr. Hodges came home from work and knocked on our front door. Mikey was there, playing with me in our back yard. When Mr. Hodges told my mother about his flowers, she was real upset. As I remember it, she brought Mr. Hodges into the back yard, and said, “Boys, Mr. Hodges has something he’d like to ask you.” I remember freezing up and being afraid. Mr. Hodges asked whether we knew anything about his flowers. Mikey piped up, “No, George and I have been playing back here all day.” I couldn’t bear the look in my mother’s eye, and the frown on Mr. Hodges’ face. I blurted out, “Mikey and I picked them! We’re sorry.” My mother me told later I started to bawl uncontrollably. Mr. Hodges burst out laughing and said, “Well, Honest George! It’s okay about the flowers. Thank you for telling me the truth. Maybe you boys can help me clean up the flowers and put them in bunches to give to your mothers.” And I remember being so relieved. I wish I could say I never was party to any lies since then. ‘Honest George’ is a name that has haunted me more than giving me pride. I’ve found it an impossible name to live up to.
Most lies are like that. Lies speak falsehood at one level, but truth at another. Mikey was right in part- we had been playing most of the day in the back yard. The one story, spoken with words, is the excuse, the cover, a tale that probably has some accuracy to it but not 100%; the other, spoken in feelings, is the truth.
It carries the unspoken (or understated) need for understanding and forgiveness. It is the job of parents and teachers and friends to sort through the tales of our children. To separate the levels of the story, to glean facts from fiction, and to decide which deserves the closest hearing. We have a responsibility to help others learn the value of truth over falsehood, like Mr. Hodges did.
In my experience, this is usually the way such lies go: the words say one thing, the emotional message says another. It’s like the person who says, “I am fine,” and then starts to weep. Some lies, however, are entirely deception. The words are false, the emotions are false, everything about the message is false. Maybe the liar is clever enough to harness both word and feeling to the task of deception, like the tele-marketers who surround their twisted tales with well-scripted interest in my welfare.
The passion of Jesus began with the telling of lies. The religious establishment brought Jesus before the Roman governor and made two accusations: that Jesus had argued against paying taxes to Rome, and that he had publicly declared himself Messiah. In fact, Jesus had done no such things. But the chief priests and the temple rulers were right about this- Jesus undermined their established domination of religious and social life in Judea. And that’s what motivated them to turn him in.
What we might miss is the incredible hubbub that surrounded the Passover in Jerusalem. The normal population of @ 40,000 residents swelled to over 100,000. The Roman governor each year dispatched a much larger contingent of soldiers to keep the peace- in the years prior to Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, there had often been public acts by rabbis and others to disrupt the proceedings and protest Roman policies that were robbing the Judeans of their livelihoods. And to add injury to insult, after paying the temple tax a month prior to Passover (to subsidize the festival and the slaughter of all the lambs) whenever the Roman garrison was increased, the citizens had to pay an extra tax to house and supply all the additional soldiers.
It is very important for us to realize that when the gospel of John speaks of “The Jews”, it does not mean the whole Jewish people. It means those Jewish leaders who collaborated with the King of Judea and the Roman occupation. (The gospel translation we use today is redacted from the National Conference of Christians and Jews which clarifies John’s sweeping term.) More than that, most of the mentions of “The Jews” in John’s passion story mean “The Judeans”, the Jews who lived in or near Jerusalem. The Judean police would have been a kind of militia organized to help the temple rulers keep order, especially during the holy days. The religious rulers referred to, Annas, Caiaphas, and others, were in cahoots with the Roman governors, so their leadership role in bringing Jesus to trial was probably only to support what the Romans were doing. And key among the Romans was Pilate.
Pilate needed to sort out truth and falsehood, to separate minute and hour, to discern whether anything about these accusations was true. He saw immediately that the factual charges against Jesus were lies. What about their conveyance: emotions of fear and loathing, a simpering desire to flatter, the obvious self-serving of small men determined to protect privilege? Was there truth in them?
True believers can be a frightening force. They will stop at nothing to get their way. The normal restraints of society are no barrier. They cannot be argued into sense, for they take their lies to be truth. The demonic forces we have seen in our time are rarely wild-eyed. Their eyes are dead, their mouths set in smiles, their words calm and rational. Jesus was powerless against “people of the lie,” as author Scott Peck called them. He could not teach them or heal them. Their evil spirits were buried too deep. Jesus fell silent before such liars.
Pilate gets history’s blame as villain. But Pilate was just doing his job. For him, the arrest of Jesus followed actions not reported in John’s gospel. He probably needed nothing from the temple rulers except their recognition as the decision-maker.
More than likely, these were the reasons Jesus was arrested:
- gathering followers who were of the lowest reaches of society and charging them to live new lives of justice and love;
- teaching with incendiary rhetoric about the coming new kingdom;
- prophesying about tearing down the temple;
- upsetting the tables of the temple money changers;
- and bringing together a large, jubilant crowd at his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
When the gospel of John talks about the crowds shouting, it is probably a literary device of the gospel writer, because the Roman soldiers kept gatherings of the pilgrims in strict order. Because of the uprisings during Passover in years prior, any outbursts could be met with immediate imprisonment, maybe even crucifixion. Most probably, that’s why Jesus himself was arrested and executed- he threatened the order of government.
So the so-called mob who shouted down Pilate had three small components. First were the chief priests – the religious establishment, custodians of old answers, men who had waited their turn and now had power- upright men, respected men. They had been Messiah’s target from the beginning, because they stood between God and God’s people. Second were the leaders – not named, but apparently those who had worked or wormed their way to whatever positions of authority were available in Rome’s domain. Jesus threatened their perch.
Third were the people. Were these the same people who had welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem as a hero just days before? Were these the people who had heard him teach and taken his bread? Or had those people stepped aside and allowed a new group to form? That, I think, is the perplexing and terrifying question, that third group, “the people.” Who were they? What switch turned? What was the mentality that led some to shout, “Crucify him!?” If so, the answer to evil might simply be crowd control. But it was more.
“The people” clutched close the little power they had. In the patronage system of the Roman Empire, if one lost position or patrons, one lost honor. One could lose a settled order, a predictable future. The people prayed that an aloof God would not intrude on their lives. They valued the safety of an unquestioned equilibrium, an equilibrium Jesus threatened.
Christians typically want to connect with the cross. But we need first to connect with the people who called out to crucify Jesus, and to ask, Why? Why did God’s own son die such a horrible death? Why was he tortured, mocked, spit on, and dragged through the streets with his cross on his back? Why was he nailed through his wrists and ankles, gasping in unbelievable pain? Why did he bleed and suffocate in three hours, giving up his spirit? Why did God allow him to suffer and die? Don’t you just know – when he was betrayed his heart must have been jumping out of his chest with fear. He knew then there was no going back, no redemption; death was close. The gruesome end was guaranteed. Why? Because of the normal way empires work. Because those who set Jesus up in Jerusalem that day wanted to keep their positions of authority safe.
We were there when they crucified our Lord. We watched the ones who gawked, spat and nailed him to the hard wood of the cross. In our quiet acceptance of the brutality of empire, in our lack of compassion for those Jesus cares for, we guaranteed his death. Today, Jesus dies from the sins of humanity. His horrifying pain, his blood poured out, is what humans at their worst do to one another. Today, this group is subdued by death. It is what we deserve, yet what Jesus would never allow us to deserve. Jesus dies because his vision of heaven collides with the practices of worldly powers. The ways of Jesus and his followers always offer an alternative to defeat and domination. But on this day, we remember that all Jesus had taught, all the healing, all the love he lavished on those without hope, it all died with him.