Grace
to you and peace from God our father and our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen
The
text for this meditation is written in the Gospel according to St John Chapter
18: Verse 1 – Chapter 19: Verse 42.
The
only innocent Man is put on trial today. Even the godless heathen,
Pilate, knows what a sham this trial is. Christ, meek and mild, is
accused of being a violent insurrectionist against Rome. His peaceful
demeanour and gentle answers make His innocence obvious to Pilate. The
Roman governor can find no fault at all in Him.
Yet
Pilate, the coward, cannot stand against the people, so he sentences the
innocent Man to crucifixion, and participates in the death of God's own Son.
Christ
could have cleared Himself at any time. He could have given wise answers,
as He had answered the Jewish leaders so many times before when they tested
Him. He could have confounded them with His words until they were
compelled to set Him free again.
But
He did not defend Himself. He was silent when He could have gone free.
He did not open His mouth to save His own life.
Christ
was so perfectly innocent that the Jewish leaders had to resort to a night
trial, which was illegal under their own codes of law. The witnesses
could only bring false testimonies against Christ. Their words were so
obviously lies that they could not even agree with one another. Even that
illegal, kangaroo court could not condemn Christ based on those trumped-up
charges.
In
the end, the Jews condemn Him for the truth: because He claimed to be the Son
of God. Pilate's charge is that Jesus claimed to be the King of the
Jews. Christ was both of those things, the Son and the King. So He
dies for the truth. As Christ said, "If I have spoken evil, bear
witness of the evil." No one could show anything Christ had said
that was false. His was the only pure tongue to ever speak, upon which
the poison of lies and false witness never was. He who is the Truth is
destroyed for truth.
We
humans are so twisted and false that we must destroy the only absolutely
innocent Man to ever stand trial. We must slander and accuse
falsely. We must destroy with our tongues, and we must destroy what is
pure. So Christ was destroyed by us.
At
the trials, Pilate was the representative of all us Gentiles, and Caiaphas the
representative of all Jews. Even if that were not true, it was our sins
that accused Him and drove Him to crucifixion. Every hateful lie and word
of slander from our lips struck Him more painfully than the soldiers'
fists. Our tongues lashed Him more than any whip could.
It
was we who deserve the blows and the scourging. We fully deserved every
thorn that pierced His innocent brow. Our sins crushed Him down on the
Cross into death. But it was our death He died. We should have been
there, nailed to the wood, gasping our last air under the Father's
condemnation.
But
it was Him, not us.
"My
Kingdom is not of this world," He tells Pilate. He brings no worldly
peace and love. He establishes no millennial utopia. His Kingdom is
not even visible to worldly eyes. Eyes of flesh cannot see the boundaries
between His Kingdom and the kingdoms of flesh. The world sees suffering
and pain, and no glorious kingdom. Yet Christ's Kingdom is there,
nonetheless. His people are persecuted as He is persecuted. They
are killed off in the midst of injustice. The wicked world seems to
triumph over them all the time.
Yet
He must always conquer, and His Kingdom with Him. For His Kingdom is
founded upon the Word that endures forever. As He says to Pilate,
"Everyone who is of the Truth hears My voice." The world cannot
overcome Christ and His Word. So the world cannot overcome those who
belong to His Kingdom.
So
the one and only innocent Man is declared guilty by Caiaphas and Pilate.
But we are declared innocent by the Father in heaven, a far better
verdict. The Son of God willingly lays down His life, and we become
innocent like Him, cleansed by His life-blood. The Truth dies, nailed to
the Cross, and we live. The Word of God incarnate says, "Father,
forgive them," and we are forgiven. The sun is swallowed by the
darkness of the Father's rejection of His own Son. So we become sons of
God, never rejected.
Upon
Christ's brow is a crown of thorns. What more glorious crown could He
wear? He has come to reverse the curse of thorns, the curse laid upon all
the earth. When Adam and Eve sinned, God said, "Cursed is the ground
for your sake; in sorrow you will eat of it all the days of your life; thorns
and thistles it will bring forth to you." Christ is crowned with the
curse. He embraces the corruption that has infected all that He created
in the beginning. Because He is crowned with the curse, He is making all
things new, until a new creation shall appear, the home of righteousness, where
thorns are no longer found.
So
the curse is removed by the innocent death. The Tree of the Cross
overcomes the Tree that condemned us in Eden. The fruit of the that life-giving
Tree is given and shed for us. The fruit is the Body and Blood of Christ,
which give everlasting life. We eat and drink of this fruit and are
invited back into Paradise, where death is reversed into life, and sin is
erased forever by the perfect innocence of Christ.
What
a bitter – sweet privilege to stand at the foot of the cross this Good Friday
and look up at our Lord and Saviour on His throne of agonising glory. This is
the ultimate gift of grace to you, to me, to the whole world. This amazing
grace that is beyond all human understanding is the “solar gratia” – the “Grace
Alone” which signifies that God forgives and saves us not because of who we are or
what we do, but because of His
abundant love acted out in the passion of Christ. Amen
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