Why Did Jesus Die?

Matthew 21:1-11

 

The sign on our noticeboard asks the question, “Why did Jesus die?” and answers it with “Because of his politics.”  This may seem to be a 21^st century response to a deep question that is often answered very differently.

 

For many people the answer to why Jesus died has to do with the crash known as original sin resulting in broken relationships and a paradise abandoned, the story of two people who made a decision resulting in the suffering of generations following. This story turns the death of the man Jesus into one of sacrifice and scapegoating as a response to the frailty of humanity, seemingly out of proportion to the supposed sin and out of character for a God who was, we told, the one who created us in the first place.

 

The story John provides us with today, the wandering rabble entering Jerusalem, is  a story of confrontation with tradition, power and the political system. Jesus has known for some time that his pronouncements about his relationship with God whom he intimately describes as father, his identification with key theological themes via the I Am statements in John's Gospel and his general denouncement of both Rome and the Temple elite is not going to end well.

 

His entry into Jerusalem is an acclamation mark on his political protest. David Ewart reminds us that "Jerusalem is not a large city. And what the authors of the Bible take for granted and fail to mention is that while Jesus is parading in on a donkey through one of the back gates, on the other side of the city Pilate is parading in on a war horse accompanied by a squadron or two of battle-hardened Roman soldiers.” He adds, “ Do you think anyone at Pilate's parade heard about Jesus' parade? Heard what the crowd had shouted? Let's see what unfolds in the week ahead."

 

Now its important to understand that while Jesus death is because of a response to his politics, his politics is not the politics the people of his day, or we of our day are used to. It is not a politic of power and control, of power and control for power and control's sake alone. Much of what passes for politics can be reduced to self-interest, the self-interest of maintaining control over others for your own benefit. Policies are made and implemented that are designed to maintain those in power to remain in power.  Policies, no matter how necessary they may be that would threaten a party’s control on government are quickly jettisoned for those which will ensure power remains in the hands of those who have it now.

 

The politics of Jesus is the politics of the kingdom of God. The ramble into Jerusalem is symbolic of the politic of non-violence, community, wholeness and inclusion that is the kingdom of God and runs contrary to the politics of power, exclusion, individualism and oppression. Jesus is joined in this final confrontation with those on the margins of society; women, rural folk, those who have been healed physically and redeemed from impossible lives due to the rules enforced by those in religious and political power.

 

Jesus uses a young donkey, people hail him as King and he enters in defiance of a show of power occurring simultaneously. Jesus is holding up a mirror to society and challenging it to choose the way it wishes to go. Does it continue to live by violence (the Romans), wish to regain independence by violence (the religious leaders) or to offer something new – a vision of the world in which relationships, justice and hope are freely shared with all? Is it ready for a completely new way of doing life ?

 

Sarah Breuer suggests "Jesus didn't come to take over Pilate's system; he came to replace it. When we confess that Jesus is Lord and Christ, the God’s anointed, we are leaving no room for the Pilates of this world." John makes this very clear when he writes “⁴This took place to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, ⁵“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Interestingly this wasn’t what the crowds watching on saw. “¹¹The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”” This is the danger in every protest, march or alignment with the kingdom of God, those involved will be seen as prophets or protesters, do-gooders who are interesting, perhaps have something to say, but they and what they have to say are quickly marginalised and sidelined as an oddity. Jesus was abandoned by many who followed him or stood by the road in a very short time because the politics of the kingdom of God not only challenged those in power but also those under their power.

The difficulty we find with Jesus and his politics of the kingdom is it is not remote, it is not about them, it is not out there – it is personal, intimate and revealing, it is about how we live and act in the everyday. We are implicated in the violence of the prevailing politically system every time we pay our taxes, cast our vote or support one or other of the possible contenders. Somewhere in the week after Palm Sunday people may have begun to understand the implications of following Jesus and realised the cost and decided it was more than they could pay. They had families, businesses and responsibilities and while this kingdom of God looks good on paper it is risky and it was a risk they did not wish to take.

After the procession Jesus makes a full frontal attack on the money lenders and the traders in the temple, a blatant protest against the way the politics of both church and state exploited the anawin or little ones, the ones with out power. While this was an annoyance to those in power it was frightening to those who feared the fallout, the very people Jesus kingdom stood for. And over a period of a week the politicians regained the upper-hand and crucified Jesus. Self interest seems always to triumph even if it is the self interest of better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

If we just look at this story as a story about Jesus the man  who died on the cross we miss the power of Jesus the Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who was there at the very beginning of creation and the one we leads us forward as the Omega – our destination as a creation in him somewhere in the future. We miss the truth that this is not about personal frailty, personal sin or even the sinful nature of humanity (original sin) but about the communitarian journey into wholeness – the journey of all of creation to a place where we enter the Garden for the very first time.

The politics of the kingdom are the politics of whole –ing – of making whole, of breaking down all that separates existence into parts. It is a process that began at the beginning of creation and will continue beyond the foreseeable future. It will indeed replace all Pilates, political or religious and take us into places beyond our imagination.

As we walk the dusty road with Jesus do we have what it takes to live out the politics of the kingdom or do we value our own self interest beyond our commitment to the Source of that kingdom? Tough question to answer.

The Elephant In The Room

My first reaction when I began to write this article was to go looking for the scholarly professional papers on the subject of grief and loss. What do the professionals say? What does the research have to contribute? What can I learn off the grief and loss help sites?

Then I stopped. Why is it that we seek out professional help when none is needed? Why do we want to know what 'they' say (whoever they are) and why is their opinion of more value than mine, or the young people I stood beside in this latest experience of death? Why do we not listen to ourselves and those who have experienced death up close and personal without running it through some theoretical paradigm, which we hope, will render death harmless?

For more follow this link, http://bit.ly/13uKkay or go to www.contemplativejournal.com.

Sandakan Death March

AT 10 minutes to 1 on the 27th (tomorrow) I fly out with 2 students, an ex- student and a father to join 4 other students and a number of teachers and partners from Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar School to undertake the Sandakan Death March in Borneo.

This promises to be a challenging yet exciting event, tracing the footsteps of 2,500 soldiers of whom only 6 lived to tell their story. The rest died on the march between May and June 1945.

Students are walking on behalf of some of those who died. I am walking on behalf of the 5 Indigenous Australians who died their represented by Corporal John 'Jacky' Jackson who died of malaria at Sandakan.

I hope to blog my experience when technology allows, so watch this space.

The Power of Living Non-Violence

Luke 7:14
14Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”

The Tank Man of Tiananmen Square June 5, 1989 held up 4 powerful Chinese army tanks by simply standing in the way. Nothing extraordinary about what he did at one level, at another it was extraordinary.

Extraordinary because he defied the culture and the custom of the autocratic society in which he lived. Extraordinary because from the beginning of the student uprisings 14th April 1989, somewhere between 4,000 and 10, 000 people died and some 30,000 injured. He stood out by standing up – it wasn’t anything he said, just what he did. He confronted death, and became a symbol for life.

While it received international focus, most Chinese students didn’t and still don’t know about it. It is suggested that both the Tank Man and the Tank Driver were executed the former for his defiance, the second for failing to drive over the Tank man, but their feate is unsure.

Here we were faced with the type of non-violent response to violence, both rare and desperately needed in our society.

Readings: (1 Kings 17:8-24, Galatians 1:11-24, Luke 7:11-24)

In our readings we are reminded of the intricate relationship between death and life and how that is played out in the lives of those who have little in the way of resources and resistance to the forces responsible for death – poverty. In these readings Elijah and Jesus exemplify the power of non-violence to overcome the violence of death and those who promote death as a way of life for others.

Elijah obeys God and is confronted by the inevitability of poverty (the widow only has enough for her son and herself). Despite sharing her last meal with the prophet she faces the inevitability of death connected to a life of poverty – it is stark and real. Despite doing the right things in God’s name, both the widow and her son, and Elijah cannot avoid the reality of life.

Jesus re-enacts this scene, although in a slightly different environment, not one of drought and famine, but of the colonial (Romans in power) and cultural (the religious law) oppression that continued to impact on the poorest of the poor – widows and their families.

"The stories of Elisha and Elijah and Jesus suggest that radical change requires (non-violent) passion and compassion for our political and personal and religious enemies. (This type of) compassion isn’t formulaic or predictable or tidy or even rational—yet it is perhaps the only thing that can save us." Debbie Blue

Jesus crossed path with a funeral procession and this very ordinary event touched Jesus. It seems Jesus was deeply affected by death. In a violent society he had not become inured to it and felt it deeply. He confronted it in others and was aware of the consequences he himself would face as a result of the style of life he was living and exemplifying. –

He touched the bier. "In the midst of the complexity of human need is hope and the possibility of renewal and life." William Loader

Jesus’ act fulfils Loaders call in three ways:

• It was a non-violent protest that was powerful.
Jesus reached out almost casually but with purpose and love. Almost immediately, the procession stopped, stopped in its tracks. All present turned their focus on this teacher who had dared to touch the funeral bier.
And the procession buzzed with:
‘What is about to happen?’
‘Why would a religious teacher purposefully make himself unclean?”
“What is he going to do now!”

His act, so innocuous and ordinary, was anything but. He made himself ritually unclean by the every act of touching. He placed himself outside the religious respectable and became an outsider, as poor and as broken as the widow herself. He broke the religious rules to show that love gives life.

He was not interested in the myth of an anaemic popular form of love prevalent in our society, but a deep compassionate love that stops a funeral bier at great personal cost and sends a clear and undeniable message to the political and religious powers within his society.

• It was an act where the ordinary met the extraordinary
Death is the prevalent image in our society as it was in Jesus’ time. Fo those in Jesus time colonial and religious oppression brought with it death by separating those who were righteous from those who were not and, for those who were placed on the outside, this hastened death

In our culture we only have to look at:
Television programming:
Murder and murder investigation shows
Reality shows which are little more than a profitable way to publicly humiliate and destroy others in the name of entertainment (and money)
TV news and documentaries
Computer games
Modern music

Government policies on issues such as indigenous, refugee, gender or environmental issues which focus on political expediency as against justice and compassion. Death is our dominant fear and preoccupation.

Jesus confronts the fear of death by touching the bier. By doing so he is saying death is not to be feared, death is in fact just another face of life and, if embraced as part of life, leads to renewal. Luke is also saying boldly that Jesus is more than just a prophet by placing him in the tradition of Elisha and Elijah as one who has life giving power over death, a fact that is confirmed by his death and resurrection.

• It was an act that asks us to get our hands dirty.
Compassion speaks of being at one with another, having a love which sees the other as yourself and by doing so being prepared to meet the other in their pain and poverty. It is the whole meaning of the good news of Jesus – God became man to know what it means to be human. Jesus acts and indentifies fully by becoming ritually unclean, overcoming death through compassion.

‘He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 13When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her’

Compassion for the widow who was now all alone – outcast – destined to a life of poverty. Compassion included the son, but not as the initiator of the compassion. That was the identification with the one who was now poorer than poor.

For a religious teacher who had a reputation for being confronting, this ups the ante. It was no longer simply good enough to be good, you can’t hide behind it at all. Like the Good Samaritan story Jesus acts foolishly with his compassion, risking his life and his reputation, and asks us to do the same.

Unfortunately like most of Jesus’ teaching this is not formulaic – it isn’t a clear and precise set of actions we can know and follow. How and where we show this non-violent form of love, compassion, is not spelt out for us, except that it is to be how we live our ordinary life within the ordinary events of human life.

Like the Tank Man of Tiannamen Square, Elijah in the famine and Jesus on the road, it will be seen how we respond to others in everything we do. For Jesus Compassion, love, is the hardest commandment, to love God yourself and others is all that matters.