Dr. Mark Owen Fenstermacher SEARCHING FOR RESURRECTION: BARABBAS (Changing Too Little) March 16, Mark 15: 6-15

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1 Dr. Mark Owen Fenstermacher SEARCHING FOR RESURRECTION: BARABBAS (Changing Too Little) March 16, 2014 Mark 15: 6-15 First United Methodist Church 219 E 4 th Street Bloomington, IN You ve heard the story read: what do you notice? Did you notice the time of day? The writer of the Gospel of Mark (which was, scholars tell us, the earliest of the written accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus) says in 15:1 that it is morning. That s the New Revised Standard Version speaking. The Today s New International Version is more specific: very early in the morning is what the text says. Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase of the New Testament we know as The Message, says at dawn s first light. What is happening, the decision made about Jesus by the chief priests and elders and teachers of the religious law, happens very early in the morning. In fact, as some of you may know, the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin or Jewish high council is highly irregular. These sorts of hearings are to take place during the light of day. Not under the cover of darkness. Away from the eyes and ears of the public. So it is early in the morning. The experts are wheeling and dealing in the dark. Trying to get their dirty work done without the city even being aware of what is happening. So it was and so it always is when people huddle in the shadows it is almost always not a good thing. In a family or at city hall or in the church. Did you notice that the chief priests and elders and teachers of the religious law decide to hand the prisoner, Jesus, over to Pontius Pilate? The NRSV Study Bible points explains that Pilate was the fifth Roman prefect of Judea. A procurator was a military governor. Who was responsible for military affairs, public administration and the gathering of taxes. The leaders of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish authorities, hand Jesus over to Pilate because the Jewish high council does not have the authority in capital cases. The religious establishment has decided that this rather ordinary looking troublemaker from up north in Galilee needs to be silenced. For good. And the only way to do that and make it look legal is to take him before the Roman military governor. And you noticed that Pontius Pilate is the one before whom Jesus is dragged for a hearing, didn t you? Jesus is, by this time, already bruised. He has been slapped and beaten by those Bible scholars and religious experts, offended as they were by his claim to be the Messiah the Son of the Blessed One. Mark 14 says Jesus, surrounded by these big city boys with the word reverend in front of their names, was struck and spit on by the members of the ministerial association. Then, when Jesus was handed over to the Temple Guards, they went to work on him. Pilate was, at first glance, someone with a load of power and authority. He should have been secure but he wasn t. His career had been troubled. He had been sent far away from Rome to a 1

2 backwater province of the Empire. To try and keep the peace with a nation full of rebellious, strongwilled types who were always on the verge of revolt. Somehow, no matter what he tried to do, he did the wrong thing. When he hung Roman shields in the Jerusalem palace of the Roman governor, the Jews heard that the shields were inscribed with the name of the emperor. They protested. Fired off letters to Rome. And the emperor ordered Pilate to take the shields down. Which made the strong man look suddenly weak. After realizing the city of Jerusalem needed a source of freshwater, Pilate made plans to build a new aqueduct to carry water to the thirsty city. It only seemed fair to him that the project be funded by funds from the treasury of the Jewish Temple. When the Jews heard that their offering money was being used on a Roman civic project, they rioted. It took Roman troops to disperse the crowds and the soldiers had to use bludgeons. The emperor has had about enough of Pilate s bungling. No matter what he says and no matter what he does, it seems to be the wrong thing. Reading about his career in Palestine, you almost feel sorry for Pilate. Because it is clear no one could have kept the peace in a place where the people didn t want peace. So they drag Jesus, bound and beaten and blind folded, to a rather inept military governor named Pontius Pilate. Did you notice someone has whispered in Pilate s ear that the Nazarene has claimed to be the king of the Jews? Others, certainly, have been saying this about Jesus. And the way he entered the city looked, to many bystanders and the Roman secret police, like the entrance of a king. That s exactly the kind of charge that would get the attention of the Roman military governor and his advisors. In many ways the Romans could be rather generous. They would try to avoid getting tangled up in the internal affairs of the Jews, but when it came to political revolution or Jewish pretenders to the throne the authorities became deadly serious. It seemed like every few months there was some new faction of freedom fighters, some band of zealots, popping up. Every year or so there was another character claiming to be the Jewish messiah or savior. Often, they were silly little men. Imposters. Would-be kings. It was rather easy work to chase them down and put them on a cross or run them into the wilderness. Did you notice that a character named Barabbas suddenly is in the middle of the story? We know very little about Barabbas. He is not mentioned before this moment in the Gospel of Mark, and we don t hear another word about him following his release. In Matthew s account of the arrest and trial of Jesus (27:16), the name given for this violent revolutionary is Jesus Barabbas. Some ancient manuscripts simply report his name as Barabbas. In Aramaic the name Barabbas means Son of the Father (bar abbas). Some scholars suggest his name might have been bar rabban or son of the teacher. 2

3 Mark tells us Barabbas is in prison. He is in prison for being with rebels who had committed murder during an insurrection. In the NRSV, Matthew reports that Barabbas was a notorious prisoner. In the TNIV, the phrase used in Matthew to describe Barabbas is a well known prisoner. We know so little about Barabbas. But I ve been wondering. I ve been wondering if perhaps Jesus and Barabbas grew up in the same kind of devout, Jewish family. I ve been wondering if they didn t learn the same prayers, memorize the same scriptures, learn the same songs. I ve been wondering if they both didn t sit in worship, hear the prophets, doodle with a crayon or two on the back of a piece of paper as the rabbi preached, and dreamed a God dream of a different world. The name makes me wonder. Barabbas could mean son of the father or son of the teacher. Both became radicals. The one decided that the way to a better world was the sword. A political fight for liberation. Barabbas decided that the way to a better world, the way to change things, was to use force to take control of the levers of power. If the oppressor could be thrown out, if they could put their candidate on the throne, if if their woman could get to the White House or if their party could control both houses of Congress, then a new agenda of liberation and justice could move forward. The other, Jesus of Nazareth, becomes a very different kind of radical but he is a radical nonetheless. Love your life and getting your way and your own comfort more than anything else, and that is dying, Jesus says. Lose your life for my sake, give yourself away for God, say No to the persistence voice inside you that is always shouting me first! and you ll find your life, Jesus says. Don t strike back but turn the other cheek, Jesus says. If someone wants your coat, give them your shirt as well, Jesus says. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, Jesus says. Don t make stuff your treasure because moths will eat it or it will rust or it will go out of style or the stock market will dip or the Florida real estate will crash or the gold watch they give you for climbing on other people to get to the top will finally stop running, Jesus says. Let your treasure be in heaven.let your treasure be your love for what God loves. No one can serve two masters, Jesus says, so you can t serve God and money. Put down the sword, Jesus says. The one who would be greatest of all must be servant of all, Jesus says. They re both radicals. The one, though, uses a sword. 3

4 The other changes hearts and lives with a fierce, uncompromising, self-giving kind of love that comes straight from the heart of God. And those changed hearts, that fierce and gentle love, changes everything down deep. Did you notice the crowd demands the release of the man with the sword and turns its back on the way who offers another way? That s not such a surprise. We re more interested in getting than in giving, more interested in taking power than giving power away, more interested in getting even than forgiving, more interested in tending our wall than building a bridge so our enemy can cross over, more interested in picking up the sword and enforcing our will rather than loving the enemy. It s not so surprising that Barabbas, deep down in the prison, begins to hear the roar of the crowd out in the city streets, shouting his name. It s not so surprising that the ground begins to shake as the people demand the release of the patriot, the freedom fighter, the man who will use a sword to throw the rascals out, the man who is wrapped in the flag of nationalism, the man who will usher in a new regime. When they come to his cell, when the jailer stands at the door and calls Barabbas out of the darkness, and leads him up the stairs towards the blinding light of day, does the revolutionary stumble along with terror thinking he is being led out to a cross? Does he fall to his knees in amazed confusion when he sees the form of another being beaten and fitted for a cross? Does he understand when a Roman soldier nods in the direction of the stranger and says, It s him. The man from Galilee. He s the one who is doing the dying today? Can anyone answer the question Barabbas keeps asking, Why why him and not me? Did you hear in this story God s invitation to a deeper kind of change? Barabbas is all about change but it is a surface kind of change. He will use the sword, he will change the person who sits on the throne, he will see to it that there is a new name on the top of the stationary that gets printed at the statehouse, but so much will be left unchanged. At the city limits of places like Fort Wayne and Kokomo and Evansville there are small signs that welcome visitors to the city, and often the name of the current mayor is on those signs. Every election the name on the sign is changed. I don t mean to diminish the importance of good government, I don t mean to suggest that politics as a tool to achieve justice and healthier communities is unimportant, but the truth is that the names on those signs change but often the deep things don t change. Neighborhoods are still what they were. Families are still broken. Friendships dissolve in anger. Greed turns souls inside-out. Hearts are hardened. Hatred grows as hatred does like potholes that keep crumbling beneath every new attempt to patch them. Down deep not much changes but the name of the person who sits in city hall.that changes on the sign. Barabbas is about change, but it is change that doesn t run as deep as it needs to run. And it is change that comes violently. With one group winning and another losing. It is change that means people will die. 4

5 Jesus doesn t just want to change the name on the sign, Jesus doesn t just want to change who is in control of both houses of Congress, Jesus doesn t just want to bring change out there but the Galilean comes to bring deep change to us and to the world. There is this love that comes into the world in Jesus. The opening lines of the Gospel of John say the grace and truth of God have come into the world in Jesus. And this love is a broad thing, a deep thing, a river that won t be stopped, and it has the power to make everyone-no matter where they are or who they are- a child of God. That s what John says. Jesus loves the world with a love that overwhelms the pain and the sin. He takes the pain and sin and meanness and fear and violence of the world into his body, and his love swallows it up. There is all this darkness, all this sadness, all this fear, and Jesus opens himself to all of it.but the darkness cannot overcome the light that is Jesus. God offers the world deep change with the love that comes to us in Jesus. This kind of love is the way to life, but the way is narrow and few find it. I often watch the NBC Evening News. I guess that dates me because I am told that only old people watch the network evening news anymore. Just like when someone under 25 needs a copy of the daily newspaper they look around for someone over the age of 55 because only people over 55 even bother with print media anymore. I often watch the NBC Evening News, and this past week they have had a series on children affected by the civil war in Syria. Night after night Dr Nancy Snyderman has reported back from refugee camps. The number of birth defects has jumped. She said she had seen more birth defects in a few days than she had seen during her entire pediatric rotation in medical school. Children are being born prematurely because of the conditions there. Many of them aren t making it. The other evening a male reporter visited a school, and the children around him began to talk about their fathers who had been dragged away and murdered. They began the interview with brave faces, and then one by one they dissolved in tears. Finally throwing their arms around the male reporter and sobbing with grief over this world where hate is too much and violence our easy answer. The last night or two of the reports I couldn t bear to watch the reports from Jordan and Syria. I turned the sound down because it was too much and it is too much now. In Jesus God offers a deep kind of change, a way forward, but the way is narrow and only a few seem to find it. The crowd cheers for Barabbas, they demand the release of Barabbas, and in doing that they are settling for a world of swords and competing power structures. They are missing out on a deeper change that reaches the soul and heart of the world. They are missing this love of God that is big enough it takes in the pain and darkness and greed and lust of a broken world, but all of this doesn t break Jesus. In Jesus God s love is triumphant. Enduring. Jesus takes the sin of the world into his own body, and what he gives back from the cross is a cry of hope of undefeated love of extraordinary grace. Who will you have? Pilate asks us this morning. Who shall I release for you? 5

6 The crowd chooses Barabbas. They choose the sword. They choose surface change. Change whose in control of Congress or the name on the sign at the edge of town. Put our people in charge. Get our way get my way bend others to my way of seeing things. That is what the crowd often chooses. What if we chose Jesus? What if we asked for the Galilean to be let loose? What if we let God go deep in us, and change us so that it was love we picked up instead of reaching for the sword? What if we let God s love bring deep change to us so we reached out to serve the neighbor rather than seeking power over the neighbor? Reach for more power or give power away? Pick up the sword or put the sword down? Rule over the neighbor or love the neighbor? Who will you have? Who shall I release for you? 6