One day, according to the Apostle Paul, every knee will bend and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.Until that time we will have what we have always had – the ugly facts of human life.Betrayal.Deception.Rejection.Terror.Death and events that feel like death.
The story we are about to read and hear is the story of disillusionment.Jesus is not the kind of Savior people had hoped for.The disciples are not the kind of people Jesus can count on.The world is not the kind of place where Love can take on human flesh without being crucified sooner or later.This is a story of trust crumbling, of people being let down and people doing the letting down.We are those people, too.
We have been betrayed and we have done the betraying.We have been lied to and we have done the lying.We have all been hurt, and we’ve all done the hurting.
This morning we have entered into Holy Week, but what happened during this week seems anything but holy.This week we remember the hideous truth of who we really are and what we are capable of.The facts of Holy Week are not just facts that belong to one week long, long ago.They are facts that belong to you and me still.How many ways do we still crucify him?How many ways have we lied with our lips or our lives?How many ways have we broken our promises, deceived ourselves, betrayed our relationships, lost our nerve?It is horrifying to ponder all the ways we have failed.The darkness of the human heart is deeper than we can even imagine.
Perhaps the hardest part of facing ourselves honestly, of seeing at last what we are capable of, is the shattering of our illusions.We have these ideas about who we are – we are good, upstanding, moral, hard-working people; we try to do the right thing; we certainly mean well.We have all these ideas about who we are.And then we do something terrible – we betray a confidence, we say something we didn’t mean to say but can’t take back, we manipulate a person or a situation, we break someone’s heart.We do things that cannot be undone.We cannot unring a bell.We cannot make the rooster take back his crowing.Our illusion about ourselves breaks.
This is a week for facing the truth.Love came to town on a borrowed donkey and we put that Love to death.The thirty pieces of silver, the crowing rooster, the release of Barabbas, the washing of hands, the mocking and taunting of a dying man – this is our truth.These are our details.In countless ways we desert, deny, betray and crucify the one we praise and claim to love and follow.We are not who we had meant to be.
So much has broken, and we cannot even begin to fix it.There are so many reasons to weep, and we cannot begin to make things right.The story we are about to hear is a story for people who are ready to be honest about how many ways we’ve gotten things wrong, and to admit our inadequacy in the face of so much failure.
To the reality of so much pain, this story still speaks of hope, even on this side of Easter.At the foot of the cross, with the sky black and the earth shaking, a soldier and his friends finally saw and said the real truth, the truth that stands over all these other ones:“Truly this man was God’s Son!”After so much failure, a foretaste of the future, when every knee will bend and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Now it is time to hear the old, old story, of who he is and who we are, and to be honest about both.Our sin meant death for him.In so many ways, it has meant death for us too.But remember this as well.Death will not be the last word.Not for him.Not for us.Easter’s coming.
May the reading of God’s Holy Word bless all of us who hear it and tell it again.Amen.
