Bad Guys on Good Friday: April 3

 Year A, Good Friday                                                       John 18:1-19:42                                                         In my first church, my job as the assistant rector was organizing what had become a somewhat elaborate Palm Sunday production.  There were costumes, props and a lot of people involved.  Every year I had to recruit the people and it was never easy.  One year someone said, “Why do I always have to be the bad guy?” I replied, “No one comes out looking good in this story except Jesus and no one wants to be him either.” 

            When you read the passion story, which was that very lengthy reading from the Gospel of John, few people come out looking good.  Judas betrayed Jesus.  Peter denied him. The Jewish leadership condemned him on false pretenses and Pilate (who could have put a stop to the whole thing) went along with the crowd, not because he believed Jesus to be guilty, but because he was trying to prevent a riot.  That was his job, to keep some semblance of peace, even if he had to do that by killing an innocent man.

Then there was the crowd— that is the part where we all get to chime in on Palm Sunday.  We demand that Jesus be crucified even when given a choice between him and a real criminal.  The only people who were loyal to Jesus to the end was his mother, his aunt, Mary Magdeline and the beloved disciple.  By the way, John is the only Gospel that says one of the disciples was there at the cross, which makes it a slightly dubious claim. 

            It used to bother me, all the people who turned on him, the fact that so few were near him as he died.  It still bothers me, but I also find some degree of kinship with Judas, Peter, even Pilate.  Judas betrayed Jesus for reasons we can never understand, but it probably wasn’t a malicious act. One theory is that he was trying to protect Jesus, he hoped the arrest would just scare him—that he never expected that they would crucify him.  If that was the case, that means he didn’t trust Jesus enough to let him be the Messiah he was meant to be.  He assumed that he had to do God’s work himself.  It was pride.  I imagine we can all think of some times where we have assumed we know what’s best and taken God out of the process.  There are times when I have heard God’s faint pleas and I have just ignored them, making elaborate excuses for why I had to ignore them. 

            Peter was scared.  He had seen the guards.  He must have known what was coming.  He loved Jesus, but did he love him enough to die for him?  We know Peter had family as there is a story in the Gospels involving his mother in law.  There were people counting on him. And if Jesus died, someone had to take care of the remaining disciples.    Eventually Peter would die in defense of the Gospel, but he wasn’t ready yet. It takes an incredible amount of strength and love to die for someone else. 

            We know from other historical evidence that Pilate was a brutal leader.  The Gospels make him sound better than he was.  Yet his impulse was one that many can identify with.  Let one person die to keep the peace.  So much violence has been waged using this logic.  It’s ok if some innocent people die as long as we cripple our enemy.  That will save lives in the future.  It sounds logical and many of us love logical reasoning.

            There were the Roman guards, who were just doing their job. They probably didn’t want to do it, but they knew they would suffer if they didn’t.  Roman leadership wasn’t exactly known for their understanding and flexibility.  The Jewish leaders were scared and confused. They might have had a similar motivation as Pilate.  Caiaphas (one of the Jewish high priests) even said in our reading, it was better to have one person die for the people.  The irony in that statement is that was exactly what Jesus was doing.  He was dying for the people.  They just didn’t understand it at the time. 

            Who knows what was going on with the crowd.  They were probably not the people who had known Jesus, who had been healed by Jesus.  It’s possible they were people who only knew him by what they heard from others.  Afterall, if the Jewish leadership and the Roman leadership agreed that this man was a trouble causer, then it must be true. 

            There is a certain degree of shame I feel in identifying with these people, but there is also consolation.  Even though few stood with Jesus in the end, and some were cruel, Jesus still died for everyone.  The Bible is clear on that. Jesus died for everyone, including those who betrayed and denied him then, and those who continue to betray and deny him.  This doesn’t mean we don’t try to be better disciples.  Faith is a journey that we never complete, at least not in this life. We just keep trying, keep believing, especially those times when it is really hard to do so.  We will have our times of unbelief (some for years, maybe some for a briefer time) but those periods of struggle and pain don’t mean that we aren’t still loved by God. 

            One of my favorite parts of the story of Jesus and Peter, was that when Jesus returned to his disciples after his resurrection, he took Peter aside.  He asked Peter if he loved him— three times.  It kind of annoyed Peter near the end.  But Jesus did it so Peter could know he was forgiven, not once, not twice, but three times…the same number of times he denied him.   

            Back to my parishioner’s question about why he always had to be a bad guy. I guess the right answer is that none of us are bad.  We make bad decisions.  We do some bad things. We sin, and then we sin again.  Yet we were created to be good. We were created in God’s perfect image.  Jesus lived and died so that we could be redeemed, so that we would receive mercy.  That’s why we call this day Good Friday.  Horrible things happened that day, but Jesus’s love and grace made that day and this day….good.