Journeying with Jesus — The Last Week (ch.6)

Mark 15:1-20, 25-26

5th Sunday in Lent, March 17, 2024

Rev. Dr. Ritva  H. Williams

This year’s Lenten reading and reflecting Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan’s book The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week. You will find a bulletin insert with a very brief summary of each chapter, the passage from Mark that is the focus of our preaching, and reflection questions. This insert will be sent out in the eNews too, so you can use it as a guide for your devotions during Holy Week. 

First day, Sunday, Jesus enters Jerusalem.

Second day, Monday, Jesus cleanses the Temple.

Third day, Tuesday, Jesus responds to religious and political challenges in the Temple.

Fourth day, Wednesday, an unnamed woman anoints Jesus at Simon the leper’s house.

Fifth day, Thursday, Jesus celebrates Passover, his last supper becomes the Lord’s Supper. 

After the meal, Jesus and company leave the city, stopping to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. Judas Iscariot shows up with an armed “crowd” sent by the chief priests, elders and scribes to arrest Jesus, who is questioned during the night. We catch up to Jesus in today’s scripture reading at first light Friday morning as the Judean officials decide to hand him over to Pilate.

What stands out to me in this reading is the repeated charge that Jesus is the “King of the Jews.” Pilate refers to Jesus three times as the King of the Jews. His soldiers mock him by saluting him as the King of the Jews. The cross on which Jesus was crucified includes an inscription declaring his crime: being the “King of the Jews.” Might I suggest that this is a trumped up charge?

The threat of insurrection was a very real thing in the world of Jesus. That’s why Pontius Pilate brought his army to Jerusalem for Passover. A man named Barabbas was imprisoned with the rebels for committing murder during a recent insurrection. Jesus is crucified between two of those imprisoned “bandits.” 

The chief priests saw the ‘cleansing’ of the temple as an insult and challenge against the central symbol of their religious, political, and economic control of Judea. In their eyes, both Barabbas and Jesus are revolutionaries because both challenge imperial authority (the chief priests are appointed by Rome). The difference between them is that Barabbas engages in violence and murder, while Jesus engages in symbolic nonviolent resistance.  

Ironically, the chief priests stir up the crowd to demand (a) the release of the murderer and (b) the crucifixion of a person who never harmed anyone. We wonder how and why the crowd one along with the chief priests? As Borg and Crossan state, 

… this is not the same crowd that heard Jesus with delight during the week; Mark gives us no reason to think that crowd has turned against Jesus. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that the crowd from earlier in the week would be allowed into Herod’s palace, where this scene is set. This crowd, the crowd stirred up by the chief priests, must have been much smaller and is best understood as provided by the authorities (somebody had to let them into the palace (p. 144).

Additionally, we need to remember that the arrest, interrogation and conviction of Jesus all occurred during the night and early morning hours while the majority of folk were sleeping off the effects of the Passover feast, precisely because the chief priests did not want the public to know what was happening. 

By 9 o’clock Friday morning, the deed was done. Jesus was crucified on the trumped up charge of being the king of the Jews. The fact of the crucifixion underscores that this was a political maneuver designed to remove an uppity peasant preacher whose provocative words and deeds challenged the authority of the Roman appointed Judean rulers. Crucifixion was the specific capital punishment reserved for runaway slaves, rebels, and revolutionaries who disturbed and threatened the Pax Romana (Borg & Crossan pp. 146-7).

Here you see two of the earliest depictions of the Jesus’ crucifixion. On the left is an ivory carving dating from 420 CE found in Rome. On the right, a 5th century Syrian illustrated version of Matthew’s Gospel. Interestingly, the crucifixion and the cross do not appear in early Christian art until after Christianity was the official religion of the Roman empire and crucifixion had been outlawed as a form of capital punishment. 

If the crucifixion had been the end of Jesus’ story, we would remember him, if at all, as just another victim of Roman imperial collusion. But the crucifixion was not the end of Jesus’ story. The resurrection points to something much bigger. Through the centuries Christians have puzzled and pondered how to make sense of it all. 

Borg and Crossan direct us to the incident where James and John, the sons of Zebedee, ask Jesus for positions of honor in his kingdom to which Jesus responds:  the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:42-44).

Jesus understands his mission to serve humanity by giving his life as a ransom. In the world of Jesus, a ransom was a means of liberation from bondage. In every day life, it might involve paying money (a ransom) for the release of a slave. It might involve an exchange of prisoners of war or hostages. Regardless of what was given as the ransom, the end result was freedom from bondage. The questions for us to consider are: To whom or to what are we in bondage spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, physically, socially? How does Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection ransom, liberate, and free us from that bondage? Most importantly, what does Jesus free us for?

I suggest that our pondering include Patrick, whom we commemorate today as bishop and apostle to the Irish. We are reminded that along with Christianity, St Patrick introduced a particular representation of the cross to Ireland. According to legend, the distinctive mark of this cross is the circle behind it. Here are two early versions: on the left from the island of Iona, a simple engraving in stone (looks a lot like our cross here at St Stephen’s) and on the right, an elaborately carved stone “high” cross (a.k.a. a Celtic cross). 

On this day when we celebrate all things Irish, let learn some Celtic theology too. J. Philip Newell explains:

… in the Celtic tradition, the cross is the greatest showing of God … It discloses the first and deepest impulse of God, self-giving.  It reveals that everything God does is a pouring out of love, a sharing of lifeblood.  And so the whole of creation is an ongoing offering of self, a showing of the Eternal Heart that is pulsing with love in the life of all things.  Not only does the cross disclose love, but it also discloses the cost of love.  To offer the heart is to offer the self.  And so the cross, in addition to being a revelation of the nature of God, is a revelation of our true nature, made in the image of God.  It reveals that we come closest to our true self when we pour ourselves out in love for one another, when we give our heart and thus our whole being. 

… the cross of Christ … is a revelation of the Presence at the heart of the universe. It reveals the greatest truth, that we will keep our heart only by giving our heart away, that we will find ourselves only by losing ourselves in love, that we will gain salvation only by spreading our arms wide for one another and for the earth, and that we will be saved together, not in separation. (J. Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts, pp. 84-85, 104)

In this tradition the cross is a symbolic compass guiding our spiritual journey toward wholeness, inclusion and unity. May we embrace it as such. Amen.