“What To Do With Jesus?”
A question that can't be avoided or dismissed
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 4, 2004
Text: Matthew 27:11-26
Not long ago I took a cab downtown and was stuck in a traffic jam on Jarvis Street. The jam afforded the cab driver and me the opportunity to start a conversation that he seemed very eager to pursue. It was very evident after just a few minutes that this was a very intelligent, erudite young man. He was inquisitive and interested in life. He asked me where I thought he was originally from. It's always very difficult to determine that when you are looking at the back of someone's head. But I looked in the mirror and tried to see his face and figure out where his accent was from. I went through a whole series of different countries and every time I was wrong.
Finally, he said, “Actually, I am from Afghanistan. I was a teacher in the city of Kabul.” He then gave me a brief history of his country, a history of which I confess I was completely ignorant. I had no idea what his country had gone through and even though I had read a scant, few history books, I was not aware of the complexity of its history.
After that conversation, my curiosity was piqued and I decided to read more about Afghanistan. I read a piece from the Times of London that talked about the destruction in 1996 of the great museum in Kabul. The Mujahadeen had destroyed it, turning it to rubble, and in so doing had robbed humanity of its greatest preservers of artifacts. The museum in Kabul, because of its location in the middle of the world, had been a gathering place of art and history from the Chinese, Persian, Indian and Central Asian areas. The Bagram Collection, a very famous archaeological exhibition of the 20th century, had been there but was now nearly destroyed. Many of the artifacts were sold or pillaged in order to maintain war coffers. Others were destroyed by missiles, wantonly crushed under the rubble - many of them thousands of years old.
It reminded me of something that the cab driver had said: “If we have no history we have no heritage. If we have no heritage we don't know our way forward.” I've thought long and hard about that since, for in many ways it applies to the whole of human existence in this very day. Norman Cousins phrased it interestingly: “History is a vast early warning system.” Know history and we can understand and interpret the present more fully. Understand history and we can move forward on the basis of knowledge rather than ignorance.
All of this, my friends, applies to this day - an historical day in the life of the church - for this is Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday we historically celebrate what is going to take place for the rest of Holy Week. But we do it by reaching a climax early, for what we will do shortly is celebrate what the Jews have celebrated for thousands of years, namely, the Passover. That moment when the people of Israel were saved from death by putting blood on their door so that they were passed over by the angel of death. As a result, they were able to live in freedom under the leadership of Moses, Aaron and others, and enter the Promised Land.
It's a wonderful celebration of God's redeeming love. We celebrate it in Communion. We celebrate it with the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine. Jesus, Himself says, “This is the new covenant, in my blood. This is my freedom for you. This is my Passover for you. This is the meal for you, as Gentiles, to celebrate the glorious freedom of God that I, myself, have brought about.” It's history.
The problem with history is always that it can be frozen in time. It can be left as a place, a heritage, rather than an instruction for the road ahead. That is why I want to use the words of Pontius Pilate on Good Friday. For that ignominious character posed a question to the crowd that I believe, when answering, brings the history of Palm Sunday alive. He simply asked the crowd, “What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?”
By asking this question he takes Easter from the realms of philosophical inquiry. He takes it from the realm of being frozen in time, to being an existential question, a question that resonates throughout the ages, not only to the crowd gathered there on that first Good Friday, but to all successive crowds that have gathered. “What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” When Pilate asks that question to you and to me it is no longer an historical question, but becomes a living question that gives history its meaning.
I want to look at some possible responses. The first might be what I call a dismissive response. This is exactly what Pilate did. He washed his hands of it. He had others make the decision for him. He copped out of the challenge that was before him, leaving it to others to decide. That's the dismissive response. That's the one that says, “I will not take any responsibility for the question, 'What should I do with Christ?' I will just avoid it.” One of the ways in our culture that people actually avoid the question and therefore the need to give an answer is by getting lost in our religion. By that I mean getting lost in our attempts to please God, that which is our doing, rather than responding to what God has done. When we do that we get caught up in all the superficial things, all the things that are external, rather than face the question, “What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?”
In The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, Screwtape, the devil, tries to persuade a young protegé to throw Christians off the track. It's a marvellous book. The advice that Screwtape gives to his young protegé is to encourage Christians to become more religious and yet not think about the cause or the purpose of their religion. There is a wonderful passage in the book:
Let him begin by treating the cause as part of his religion then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit come to regard it - the religion - as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him onto the stage of which the religion becomes merely a part of the cause in which Christianity is valued chiefly for the excellence arguments it can produce. Once you have made the world of religion and end and faith a means you've almost won. It makes very little difference what worldly end he is pursuing, provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes and crusades matter more to him than prayers or sacraments or charity. When we've done that he is ours and the more religious, the more securely ours he becomes.
In other words, my friends, when we turn the question of Pilate into just some sort of outward religiosity, we've avoided the question, we've already decided it's in the external things, the things that make for a religious gain that are the most important, and that can be devastating.
In the 1930s, during the civil war in Spain and the emergence of Franco, the great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was preaching at a little church in Barcelona, and seeing the rising tide of evil and war said: “Whether in our time Christ can still occupy a place where we make decisions on the deepest matters known to us, over our own life and over the life of our people, that is the question we need to consider today. Whether the spirit of Christ has anything final, definitive and decisive to say to us, that is what we want to speak about. We all know that Christ has, in effect, been eliminated from our lives. Of course, we build Him a temple but we live in our own houses. Christ has become a matter of the church, or rather, of the 'churchiness' of a group, but not a matter of life.”
Very often, my friends, we dismiss the call of Christ, “What am I to do with Christ?” by simply building houses for Him but living our lives apart, making a religious sphere, separate from the sphere of our daily lives. When we do that, we have done what Pilate did, we've washed our hands and walked away.
There is another response: the reflective response. “What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” asked Pilate. The question is about “I” - me - and it's now “I” who must answer it. What, in other words, am I and are you to do with this Jesus? Oh, we might have decided to live a good life, but to be good is not enough. It is to have the goodness of Christ that matters. We might have a life that is free, but that is not enough if we do not have the freedom of Christ. We might be obedient to the law, but that is not enough if we do not have the law of love in our hearts.
In other words, if we simply strive for good things apart from the power of Christ to give them to us, we're not really reflecting on the question at all. And, it's one that continually and daily challenges us to respond, because very often the way we deal with this question is not to reflect on it at all, but to walk away from it.
I read an article some months ago about a woman who was very concerned about the state of her neighbourhood. When she looked at it she saw that it was poor and rundown, full of garbage. The parks were arid and there was crime and filth. She decided that she was going to do something about it and set out to raise money for the renewal of her neighbourhood. She organized a garage sale with some of her friends, a bake sale, and went to private foundations to raise money. Finally, at the end of it all she had raised $85,000. Then she took the money and bought a house in another neighbourhood!
Our religion is sometimes like that. We want to walk away from it. We don't want to deal with the question. But it is a question that has been asked over the ages and the aeons: “What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” One simply can't just step off to one side. You can't say that you do not have to give an answer. You heard the question, now you have to give the answer.
Doug Hall, the great United Church theologian, once commented that we live in a new world culture that loves optimism. What we really like are people who are always telling us that everything is good and fine and nice. We celebrate the bright side and ignore the dark side. We get carried away by the gurus who tell us that everything is lovely and we must be optimistic and move ahead. Doug Hall said to such a world Good Friday is an anathema. Holy Week is an anathema. It talks about a suffering Lord who experienced bitterness. It talks about pain. It reveals humanity's darker side. It reveals those things that do not look optimistic and so people don't want to deal with them. They shut Good Friday away and pretend it didn't happen - pretend that suffering doesn't happen, pretend that darkness doesn't happen, pretend that sin doesn't happen.
We avoid it because we don't want to reflect on it. But if we reflect on it we find something deeper. What we find is that in the message of Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter, it is that God in the midst of that suffering can take it and turn it into something different through His power. Jesus Christ seems, when He is crucified to be an anathema to our culture. It's a horrible thing to contemplate - that we do these things to one another, but we do them daily, we do them weekly. It's not just a matter of history, it's a matter of current events. The cross of Christ is a reminder not only of the darker side of ourselves but also of the wonderful, self-giving, loving power of God despite it. We must reflect on it.
We must also, lastly, respond to it. When the crowds lined up along the streets of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, they waved and crowned Him as Hosanna, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” On Good Friday, as we all know, the crowd was asked a question by Pilate, “What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” And they shouted for Barabbas and against Jesus. In other words, in both cases there was a need for a decision. There was a need for a response. Pilate made them make it. In a sense, he wouldn't let them just make Jesus a nice religion. He wouldn't let people just sing Hosanna without the cross. Pilate forced the issue, “What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?”
My friends, yesterday was a remarkable day for me. It was the first day in many, many, many months when all the sports teams that I support won. I got up early in the morning and I said, “Lord, this day I am dedicating to you in front of the television set.” I watched my beloved Manchester United win. I continued to watch throughout the day (taking a while to prepare the sermon, I want you to know, and to pray and be good and all that stuff). Then I waited for Hockey Night in Canada to see if the Maple Leafs would win. (Thank God Almighty He is on their side.) And, I thought, “Wow, what a day.” I went to bed exhilarated, that's probably why I didn't sleep. I was so happy and I thought I felt tense, as if I'd played all these games with the athletes, and I thought, “You fool, Stirling, you're a couch potato, you're a spectator. You cheered but you didn't have one, single thing to do with any of the victories.” But, in my heart, I thought they were all my own.
You can't do that with Christ. On Good Friday or Palm Sunday, you can't say, “I'll be a spectator.” You can't sit back and watch, cheering Him on. Pilate won't let us. Pilate says to you, “What are you going to do with Jesus?”
I began this series with a poem from Robert Browning, and I will end it with a quote from him as well:
At the poorest love was ever offered:
And because my heart I proffered,
With true love trembling at the brim,
He suffers me to follow him
What are you going to do with Jesus? Amen.