NO, Its none of my business, get someone else!

Matthew 27:27-37

April 8, 2004

Maundy Thursday

The Soldiers Mock Jesus

²⁷Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters,^£ and they gathered the whole cohort around him. ²⁸They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, ²⁹and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” ³⁰They spat on him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. ³¹After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

The Crucifixion of Jesus

³²As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. ³³And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), ³⁴they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. ³⁵And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots;^{£ 36}then they sat down there and kept watch over him. ³⁷Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”

This week, I was finally able to get out and see Mel Gibson’s movie, the Passion of the Christ.

I must say that in many ways, it lived up to its hype.  While not quite the most brutal or bloodiest movie I have ever seen, it was certainly a challenge to sit and view the absolute carnage that human beings are capable of inflicting upon each other.

The simple brutality and the thorough depravity depicted in this movie rivals anything else I have ever seen on film.  However, this movie had a sophistication and an artfulness that would be a shame to miss.  Even the difficult scenes, the bloodiness, the cruelty and malicious perversion depicted had depth and art.

Those who have complained about the violence perhaps have missed the exquisite subtle touches this movie depicts.

·        The blessing frozen into the fingers of Jesus’ hands even as they have been nailed to the cross.

·         The ferocity and agony with which Judas wipes his lips on the stone columns of the temple and on the leather of the purse containing the thirty pieces of silver, sorrowfully bloodying his mouth in an attempt to wipe off the sting of his own betrayal kiss. 

·        The luxurious crackling, stretching sound Governor Pontius Pilate’s leather tunic makes under his warrior’s armor as he paces back and forth questioning Jesus. 

·        The perverse teasing of the Roman guards, who show us that sadism and brutal cruelty are only a few millimeters away in the human heart from the schoolyard taunting of malicious little boys. 

·        The way in which Jesus both gives and takes strength as he stares deeply into the eyes of his Mother and Mary Magdalene his suffering begins.

·        How when Simon of Cyrene is called upon to carry Jesus’ cross the rest of the way to Golgotha because it seems that Jesus can go no further, Jesus does not simply shamble and trudge along behind the Simon, but places his bloody and beaten shoulder up against the wood of the cross, embracing both Simon and the cross as the carry the load together.

But these little observations of mine are not at the true heart of the film.  The heart and vocation of this film is to show the simple reality that sin and ignorance of truth are the root of evil and are at the root of what killed Jesus.  This film also wishes to show the depth of Jesus’ sacrificial love.

“See I make all things new,” Jesus says to his mother, in the one of the very few moments they meet after his arrest.  He has fallen again and the Apostle John leads Mary to a place where he can reach out to her son.  At first she cannot bear to go to him.  She has witnessed all the brutality perpetrated on him and is afraid, perhaps too afraid to show her sorrow and weakness when he needs her strength.  She freezes and cannot even look at him as he suffers.  Then she sees in her mind’s eye a time when a four-year-old Jesus has fallen in the course of his regular play.  She remembers how she ran to him, how she held him and kissed him and caressed the pain away.  Finally, she looks up at him and sees that he is the same son she has loved from childhood and runs to be with him.

He says to her, “See I make all things new.”  It is a perplexing, almost pathetically funny statement.  “New things?  All you are doing is suffering! And people have done that since the beginning of time” 

“My son. When and how will you choose to be delivered of this?” she had asked as the scourging began.  Perhaps she entertained this again in that moment. 

But before she can give him a reply or even a word of encouragement, he is dragged away again. 

Yet he was creating something new.  The hope that such a depth of suffering as so many in history have experienced, need not be meaningless, need not be without hope, need not be in vain, was certainly a new reality.  For through that suffering, he was teaching, teaching about turning the other cheek, teaching about non-violence. 

Malchus was the name the authors of this screenplay gave to the High Priest’s guard whose ear Peter cut off in the garden of Gethsemane, in the very first scenes of the movie.  The guard Malchus was healed and changed forever.  He did not return with the palace guard, beating and taunting Jesus along the way.  He stayed behind, shocked and awed by Jesus’ non-violent and healing power. 

Also, because Jesus healed Malchus’ ear, Peter was not arrested with Jesus.  In the commotion, he too was left behind.  As they lead Jesus away in chains, Malchus the healed guard and Simon Peter the Jesus friend are left together alone in the Garden.  And Peter was neither tortured nor crucified with Jesus, he was spared to become the rock upon which the church was built.

Through all that suffering, Jesus was creating something new.  He was establishing the ground for a new reality, for life everlasting.  In the final moment of the film.  The stone is rolled away and light comes into the utter darkness of the abyss of tomb.  The funeral clothes deflate and Jesus stands clean & restored but with holes in his palms.

This is the heart of this film.  Yet for me, the most moving and powerful moment is not the healing of Malchus, is not the compassion of a mother for her son in that moment of remembrance I just mentioned, despite my own tears at that instant.  For me, the most moving and most powerful moment of this film is another moment I have already mentioned.  It is that moment when Simon is called out of the crowd and forced to carry Jesus’ cross.

He seems only to be blindly passing through the same space as the procession to execution purely by accident.  He is trying to get by and shelter his little daughter from the horror they have stumbled upon.  He should have known better perhaps than to take her through such a spot.  He must have heard the commotion as he drew near.  But something draws him there and as he comes through the crowd, his daughter cries out at what they witness.  Jesus has fallen yet again and the guards are whipping him in a mindless attempt to motivate him to his feet.  Their captain rides up on horseback and roars at them.  “Can’t you see he cannot go any further!”  Then more quietly he tells them, “Help him.”  As the captain rides on, the sadistic guards look at each other.  They’re not going to carry this huge wooden cross.  What are they going to do?  They turn to the crowd and one of them, perhaps it was the squad leader, and  randomly yells out to a passerby, “You there, come here.”  It is Simon.  “What, who me?  Why?  What have I done,” he says as he shelters his sobbing little daughter. 

“Come, carry this man’s cross,” they yell at him.

And here was the most powerful moment for me.  Simon responds.  “No, not me!  This is none of my business!  Get someone else!”

The guards threaten him.  The crowd around him has no sympathy for him.  They begin to yell at him and throw things at him.  “Alright, OK,” he cries, “But let everyone know, I am an innocent, I am stepping in only to carry this cross for this condemned man.”

He tells his daughter, “stay here, I’ll be back”  And he steps forward to carry the cross.

But Jesus who has been laying prone on the ground, who has been writhing in pain and unable to move, when he sees this Cyrenian man take up his cross, he somehow, miraculously gathers himself up and throws his bloody and shoulder up against the wood of the cross alongside Simon.  He  embraces the cross once again and Simon as well and together they carry the load.

And then, the man who had yelled, “This is none of my business!  Get someone else!”  when they get to Golgotha, the final resting place of that cross, can not tear himself away from this Jesus.  He looks into the eyes of this man with whom he had traveled the final steps of his life and he is transfixed. 

But the guards want to get their job done and they communicate the only way they know how.  They descend upon Simon with their whips.  They yell at him.  “Go!, You can go!  You are free to go!  Get out of the way!”

Finally, now he gets up and turns away and he too is sobbing as he runs away to find his daughter.  Bud like Malchus the High Priest’s guard whose ear is restored.  Simon of Cyrene is forever changed. 

He had wanted no part of this man, of this burden.  But by the end of their painful bloody journey of only a few miles, he could not leave him.  He had even placed his own life on the line and confronted the vicious guards at one juncture when Jesus had again fallen and they had pounced upon him to punish him again.

The man who cried out, “This is none of my business!  Get someone else.”  Would no doubt tell his children and his family and his friends of the strength and the courage and the love he saw in that man’s eyes, even as he shared his burden for a short time.

I have cried out, “This is none of my business!  Get someone else.”  I have wished God would call on someone else to do his work, to care for the fallen and the afflicted and to search out his truth.  So did Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Jesus,  who said “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” 

We have all experienced this feeling.  This sense of “Why me Lord, can’t you call on someone else?”  Virtually every prophet of the Old Testament had this sentiment too, before he took on the mantle of God.

I give thanks to God that throughout history, however, that sentiment has not always been the final word. 

Even as Simon did eventually pick up the cross, even as Jesus followed up his words, My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” He continued with “yet not what I want but what you want.”  Despite bitter protesting, so many throughout history have eventually taken up the cross of Christ and followed him.

Today as we gather at this communion table, we have that choice again before us.  What will we do with what Jesus showed us? - with his teaching, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” - with the living example of his teaching, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Will we relent and take up that cross like Simon the Cyrenian did and be changed forever because of it?  Or we turn away and lose heart like Judas, who himself regretted his decision?

This day we are called, to be Jesus’ disciples, to be his companions, to be recipients of his grace, of his teaching, of his mercy and his love.

Receive it and accept new life and resurrection the gift he paid so dearly to be able to give. 

Amen.