Good Friday 2014, The Null Point

Holy Week, Good Friday,

John 19: 1-15

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged. The soldiers braided a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and threw a purple cloak around him, walked up to him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him in the face.

And again Pilate went out to them and said, “Behold, thus I bring him out to you, so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.

And Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak. And Pilate said to them, “Behold, the man!” [Behold, this is Man!]

When the chief priests and the Temple attendants saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him, crucify him!”

Then Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.”

Then the Jewish leaders replied, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he has made himself a Son of God.”

When Pilate heard these words, he was even more alarmed, and again he went into he courthouse and said to Jesus, “From where have you received your mission?” But Jesus gave him no answer.

            Then Pilate said to him, “You will not speak with me? Do you not know that I have the power to release you and also to crucify you?”

Jesus answered, “You would not have power over me unless it had been given to you on high. Therefore the greater burden of destiny falls upon him who handed me over to you.”

From then on, Pilate tried to set him free. But the people shouted, “If you release him, you are no longer a friend of Caesar, for everyone who makes himself a king is against Caesar.”

When he heard these words, Pilate led Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat in the place called the Pavement, in Hebrew Gabbatha. I was the day of the preparation of the Passover Festival, about midday. And he said to the people, “Behold, this is your King.” But they shouted, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!”

Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?”

And the chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar!”

Good Friday

April 18, 2014

John 19: 1-15

Christ is coming to the null point. In a few more hours, at the moment of His death, He will have completed his descent into the body of Jesus. He will have become fully and totally human As He is dying, He will descend into Jesus’s very bones. He will enter and take hold of the secret realm of life at the center of the bone marrow, the place where new blood, new life is generated. And He will take this powerful life-generating force with Him into the realm of death.

But meanwhile, he has allowed Himself to be made into an image, a picture of the mockery which human beings have made of humanity in their mistreatment of themselves and others. He is presented as a caricature of the worth and dignity once bestowed on human beings by the Creator. With sarcasm He has been wrapped in a cloak of royal purple; a hollow reed is the scepter; he wears a crown not of gold, but of thorns, glittering with the jewels of his own blood.

And yet shining through the wreckage is still the glimmer of the One from the beginning, the One in whose image and likeness human beings were created, the Son of God. When Pilate senses this, he is unnerved. His wife had already warned him not to have anything to do with this innocent man.

Pilate, in recognizing Christ’s innocence, tries to do the right thing. But the great Cosmic Drama must play out to its bitter end—and into its new and unforeseen redemptive beginnings.  All the characters are parts of the human being: There are the disciples, fled in fear, the helpless weeping women. 

There are the mockers and spitters, the aggressive leaders, the well-meaning Roman governor, all of them aspects of our own human make-up. And in their midst, in willing powerlessness stands Christ Jesus, bruised and bloodied, yet still clear seeing: you would have no power over me were it not already given to you in the great script. You have your part to play.

Christ is an eternal being; therefore everywhere he was, everything he did, is still happening, eternally. It is still happening in the eternal moment of now. He is suffering, dying, rising; He is still to be found in a state of powerlessness. When we ourselves have been stripped and beaten by life, in our powerlessness is where He always abides. When we have come to the null point, there is where we can find Him.