Bible studies - Monday
The death of Jesus: the grace that
does not abandon us to the darkness of our choices
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“Amazing grace (how sweet the sound) that saved a
wretch like me!” Grace saves. We are saved by grace through faith, Paul
says. What does it mean, though, to talk of grace “saving” us? How does
grace (as opposed to Jesus, or God) save? Grace has to do with God’s
intentions in Jesus. Grace is what gives meaning and content to what God
does in Jesus. Grace spells out the goal of all that God does in Jesus. In
short, “grace” is the word that we use to make sense of the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus! I want today to look at how “grace” makes sense of
the death of Jesus – how, according to Luke, Jesus’ death saves us.
1. Missing the vital moment (Luke 19: 41-44)
Luke’s way of telling the Easter story is
significantly different from all the other evangelists and it is worth
paying close attention to how he combines the elements of the story to bring
out his own particular “take” on how Jesus’ death saves. I want to start our
exploration of Luke’s passion narrative at the point where Jesus weeps over
Jerusalem.
The key moment in his Holy Week is Jesus’ lament over
Jerusalem (19:41ff). It is key because Jesus laments that Jerusalem did not
recognise its kairos – its time of visitation from God. Only Luke uses
kairos. It is an important term. It is distinguished from the usual Greek
word for time, chronos (time measured in hours, days, weeks and years). It
means a special moment; a visitation from God; a time of once-for-all
decision. Jerusalem is faced with her moment of crisis: salvation, or
judgement. And Jerusalem has missed the offered gift of salvation! It’s
tragic: the people have failed to recognise their moment of grace and
salvation, even though they have waited and prayed for it for so long. They
have failed because they did not realise that it came in Jesus. This was
God’s visitation; God’s answer to their prayers for deliverance and for the
Messiah. Jesus was the fulfilment of all God’s promises. God visited,
bringing salvation (the kingdom which Jesus proclaimed) and the people were
having none of it! That is why Jesus weeps. It is the end of everything he
has worked for. Let’s be absolutely clear: Jesus is weeping because he knows
that his mission – his life’s work – has failed, because Jerusalem has not
accepted him.
2. Triumphal entry and trial: “Maybe it will all be
okay!”
Luke places the lament over the city immediately after
the triumphal entry, in which people are shouting, “Blessed is the king who
comes in the name of the Lord!” Which prompts the puzzled question from the
reader, “How come he thinks they’ve missed it? I thought they’d just
celebrated it!”
Luke is a
master storyteller and he gives the reader two “false starts”. Twice in this
Easter narrative, we readers are led to assume that everything might be all
right and that Jesus will not actually have to die. The first is the
triumphal entry with the welcoming crowd of disciples. The second happens
when Jesus stands a second time before Pilate and Pilate declares him
innocent and intends to release him, just before the moment of deepest
darkness in Luke’s gospel.
There is a
double edge to the welcome Jesus receives at his entry into Jerusalem.
Positively, Jesus is welcomed as the king he is – the king he is announced
by Gabriel to Mary to be at the outset of the gospel. He is the Davidic
king, the Messiah, riding on the colt as Zechariah had prophesied.
Importantly, his reign is the reign of peace – of shalom, or salvation. Yet
it is not enough simply for Jesus to be king: he must be recognised and
accepted as such by Jerusalem. Jerusalem has enormous symbolic significance
in the gospel. How Jesus is received there will determine whether or not his
mission is a success. Luke constructs his gospel around the “Travel
Narrative”, which begins exactly at the mid-point of the gospel in 9:51:
Jesus “sets his face towards Jerusalem”. The rest of the gospel is cast as a
journey “on the way to Jerusalem”. There is a sharp contrast between the
welcome Jesus and his message receive outside Jerusalem and the opposition
and execution that awaits him there. Jesus has already made it clear to his
disciples that he expects to have to suffer and be killed there. The
disciples refuse to accept this possibility. They cannot and will not
imagine it so. Therefore they do not understand Jesus.
That is the
negative side to the entry. On the one hand, the welcome Jesus receives from
the disciples is futile, because Jerusalem will reject him as king. In fact,
his kingship is the means by which the authorities will find reason to bring
him to Pilate, who will hand him over for crucifixion. On the other hand,
the acclamation of Jesus as king is also part of the disciples’ refusal to
accept Jesus’ radical redefinition of kingship and messiahship in terms of
suffering! It is both the proper response of welcome to Jesus the king, and
at the same time a protest against a suffering messiah! Ultimately, though,
it will prove futile. Things will not be okay.
The second
incident of raised hopes which are dashed is Jesus before Pilate. Luke’s
gospel alone has all the political horse-trading that goes on between
Pilate, Herod, the chief priests, the crowds and Jesus. Luke portrays Pilate
as a man who wants to be just and free Jesus, but is manoeuvred into a
corner where it becomes too politically expensive to do so. Pilate is aware
of the unscrupulous way in which the religious leaders are trying to
manipulate him. They make no mention of the way in which Jesus has offended
their beliefs, but instead play the insurrection card, guaranteed to get
Pilate worried: this man claims to be a king and is fomenting rebellion. He
is even forbidding us to pay taxes! Pilate goes for the key question
straight away: are you a king? When he is clear that Jesus is no direct
threat to his authority, the leaders press him on the matter of internal
security: he is stirring up trouble all through the province, starting with
Galilee, where he came from. Pilate jumps at this let-out: not my
jurisdiction. He’s Herod’s problem. Send him there.
Herod returns
Jesus to Pilate, declaring him innocent of the charges. But the religious
leaders are still out for blood. So Pilate moves to expose their
machinations to “the people” – Jesus’ instinctive supporters. He gathers
them all together, and makes a last-ditch attempt to out-manoeuvre the
plotters (23:13ff). He announces that Jesus has been accused, tried and
found innocent. Nevertheless, he proposes to have Jesus flogged, and then
released. This is the second “false start”, where the reader thinks for a
moment that Jesus is going to be spared death – albeit with a totally
undeserved flogging.
It is at this
moment that the unthinkable happens: the people join voices with the leaders
and call for the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus! Here’s
the point: Jesus was right when he wept over the city. They only seemed to
recognise their visitation from God, but they have now proved otherwise.
Luke the story-teller has Jesus standing, utterly alone. There is not a
single voice that isn’t howling for his death! And so Luke effectively
includes us all in this last, final, ultimate “No!” to God. We – all
humanity – have missed the kairos.
23:24-25 is
the darkest moment in Luke’s gospel. Jesus is utterly alone, abandoned by
everyone. The people have chosen. And Pilate’s verdict is that they should
be given what they want. “He handed Jesus over as they wished”. God has
visited in grace and salvation, and we have wished instead to crucify Jesus.
This is the free will of the people, freely expressed and granted.
3.
Gethsemane and the new kairos (Luke 22: 39-46)
At the Last
Supper, Jesus declares that a new covenant is in the making – a covenant
made through his body and blood. This is the New Covenant – the covenant of
grace and salvation. There has to be a new covenant, because the old has
been rejected. Jesus foreshadows his forthcoming suffering and death – the
breaking of his body and the shedding of his blood. The new covenant is
about to be made. And here’s the fascinating thing about Luke’s portrayal of
the passion: in narrative terms, the covenant is sealed not on Golgotha, but
in Gethsemane! Look carefully at how Luke portrays the making of the
covenant between Jesus and his Father on behalf of the world in the garden.
Gethsemane is
vital as a decisive event between Jesus and the Father. Contrast what
happens with Mark’s account. In Mark, the moment when Jesus accepts the
cross as the will of God is the moment when the Father/Son relationship is
smashed. The last, despairing “Abba! Father! If it is possible, make this
all go away …” is met with silence. Jesus accepts the Father’s will, but
feels abandoned by God and never again calls God “Abba”. He dies with the
cry of dereliction on his lips, broken and alone. In Mark’s gospel, this is
the moment of utter abandonment. The disciples flee. Jesus is left to his
captors.
In Luke’s
gospel, the moment when Jesus embraces the will of the Father is the forging
of a new unity between Jesus and God. They are united, not divided. This is
followed by the only mention of blood (Jesus’ sweat) and anguish. It’s as
though Luke transposes the suffering and bleeding of the cross to this
moment, to show the cost of accepting God’s will but also to show that this
is the new kairos – the moment when the new covenant is being made. We
missed the first one: now there is a new opportunity, made possible by God’s
love and Jesus’ love and acceptance. And so an angel strengthens Jesus.
Jesus, strong in the power of what has been decided, rebukes the sleeping
disciples. And significantly, Luke does not record the disciples abandoning
Jesus. Gethsemane in Luke’s gospel narrative, therefore, is the start of
something new, not the utter disintegration of the old.
4. The
cross – forgiveness, hope and the new temple
Because Jesus
has already (in effect) bled and suffered in Gethsemane, Luke is able to
make Golgotha a place of hope. Having abandoned Jesus and rejected the
kairos, all we can do is follow, weeping, to the cross and stand there and
listen. As we do, we hear three statements from Jesus – words of astounding
hope.
Luke has his
readers on the ropes. We’ve missed the kairos. What is left for us? How
could we have decided what we did? Surely we wouldn’t if we’d known what we
were doing? We hear Jesus’ first words (23:34a): “Father, forgive them, for
they do not know what they are doing!” We did not know, and Jesus recognises
that and asks for forgiveness for us!
The second
words are addressed to the thief. Here is a man who can claim no excuse of
ignorance and does not. He is dying as someone justly sentenced. Here, on
this engine of death, he looks at Jesus and recognises his own, personal
kairos. He turns to the one whom he recognises as a king about to enter his
kingdom and says, “Jesus, remember me …” And Jesus’ reply is, “Truly, I tell
you, today you will be with me in Paradise!”
The third set
of words is Jesus’ final words. “Father, into your hands I commend my
spirit!” Contrast this with Mark. In both gospels, we stand at the cross,
shrouded in thick, mysterious darkness. We are cut off from everything
except the sounds of the dying men. In Mark’s gospel, we then hear the awful
cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus is as abandoned and
in the dark as we feel. But Luke tells us something else: Jesus is communing
with God! We might be alone and terrified, but Jesus is talking to his
Father. In other words, Jesus has brought God into the most god-forsaken
place on earth and moment in history.
This is the significance of the tearing of the temple
curtain. It doesn’t function as a symbol of open access to God in Luke’s
narrative. It’s function is to show us that the Holy of Holies is empty! God
is not there! God is not in the place kept sterile and uncontaminated. God
is in the very place where God has no place being: on Golgotha! And this is
Luke’s point. Because of the new kairos in Gethsemane, Jesus on the cross is
the priest of the new covenant, dispensing forgiveness and acceptance, and
bringing God to where we are – lost and in darkness. Where is God when most
needed? God, in grace, is with us, forgiving us, saving us.
5. The grace that does not abandon us to the
darkness of our choices
God’s grace
(in Luke’s gospel) means that we are not abandoned to our free will! That
was expressed in ultimate rejection of God. It was the moment of utter
self-destruction. As we saw in the Parable of the Lost Son yesterday, God’s
grace will not let that stand, because God comes to liberate and forgive.
We talk about
“free will”, but that is a misnomer. Our wills are not free. We are bound by
all sorts of things: our upbringing, our culture, socio-economic forces, our
psyche, our circumstances, our access to power, the limits of our
imagination, our capacity for greed, cruelty and evil. We are bound
creatures, in need of liberation; slaves in need of redemption and exodus.
“Free” does not mean objective and dispassionate. To say that we have “free
will” means only that we have choice, and that God gives us the freedom to
exercise our choices.
We human
beings have a tragic capacity to choose death over life. We do not choose
the things that make for Life and peace. We reject the Light and love the
darkness; we crucify Jesus and choose to be godforsaken.
These are the
things that we choose. Yet in the death and resurrection of Jesus, God
chooses differently. We will our own self-destruction, but God, in grace,
wills Life, salvation and flourishing. We cling to our “free will” in
self-importance, asserting our own pretensions to deity. Grace saves us from
the choices we make! Ultimately, it is not our human will that has the final
word, but the will of the human Christ that is important. That is what
Gethsemane is all about, and there we see Father and Son united in the will
to love, forgive, accept and save. We are saved because we are forgiven from
the cross for our ultimate rejection of God. God will not reject us. That is
grace. It is amazing. And it saves! Hallelujah! Amen.
© Lawrence Moore 2006
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