A Sermon on Matthew 26:57-68; 28 1-10
by Rev. Chris Bohnhoff

Grace and peace to you this Easter morning, friends. As the words from our ancient stories sink into our ears and hearts, please join me in a spirit of prayer. Holy presence, creator, and ground of being, we ask that you still our minds. Quiet the busyness that takes us out of full presence to the life we are gifted. Open our ears to the stories of all our spiritual ancestors – the ones who stood up, the ones who stood by, the ones who ran away. Open our hearts to these characters’ stew of fear, compassion, and faith. And, because this story belongs to us just as it did to the generations who came before, open us to the wisdom of our own experience. Help us find ourselves in the narrative, and meet us in that place which is ours alone. Amen.

In the gospel stories, a theme that comes up a lot is the question of Jesus’ identity. In the imagination of the gospel authors, from the moment of his birth to his trial in front of Pontius Pilate, a whole cast of characters ask, who is this man? On what authority does he do the things he does? Jesus himself asks the disciples, who do you – and who do they – say I am? And almost every time the question comes up, its follow-up question is, Could he be the Messiah? The gospel authors want us to get the sense that these questions were on the minds of all Jerusalem as he rode into town on a donkey, opposite Pilate’s grand and heavily armed entry at Jerusalem’s other gate on Palm Sunday.

By the point in the story when the head priests have Jesus arrested and brought before them, they’ve had it with this question. They’ve had it with Jesus – the attention he draws, the way his teachings contradict theirs – so they put him on trial. Witness after witness comes forward with flimsy, unconvincing evidence of ‘guilt,’ until they ask him straight: are you the Messiah?

If Jesus had been looking to squeeze his way out of this narrow place, he would not have answered the way he did, but that was not who Jesus was; Jesus, in that moment, was looking for this confrontation that had simmered for the entirety of his ministry to finally come out in the open. So he answered, You have said that I am the Messiah. Furthermore, I tell you that from here on out you will see the Son of Man (a phrase Jesus often used to describe himself) seated to the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.

At this, the head priest tore his clothes, and all present spat on him, and hit him, and yelled, He has spoken against God!!!

When we dig a bit into this passage, we see how tightly woven the political and the theological run in these stories. Scholars tell us that the head priests would have been named by Rome, and were thus beholden to Rome to use their prestigious positions to make it easier for Rome to occupy Israel: to keep the peace, to find ways to square Jewish theology with the theology of empire that said that the emperor was the son of God, and to keep the taxes flowing back to Rome.

On Palm Sunday, from the Roman perspective, peace was not being kept; peace was teetering on the brink as Jesus reminded the large crowds he had gathered of their God’s continued presence with Israel and against Israel’s enemies and occupiers. During the trial, Jesus pushes this theme when he quotes from the prophet Daniel, who dreamed of a human figure who would come on clouds to strike down those who stood against Israel. The clear implication Jesus made was that God would not stand for Rome’s subjugation of Israel, or for the priests’ complicity.

But there was also the first part, the interwoven theological part of Jesus’ response: you have said that I am the Messiah. Many times, the priests, scribes, and Pharisees tried to poke holes in Jesus’ teachings. They took issue with his dinner companions and the day on which he chose to restore sight to the blind, but they always left theological discussions conceding the argument to Jesus. Now, at the end of his ministry, he tells the head priests, by all the standards of the tradition to which you profess – by virtue of the good news I brought to the poor, the blind who I gave sight, the dead I raised – yes, I am the Messiah. I don’t say it, the tradition does.

The priests made their choice. By refusing to acknowledge Jesus’ adherence to Jewish law and belief, by labeling his words that were against Rome’s gods, not Israel’s God, they chose loyalty to Rome and to their privileged positions. And Jesus was made to suffer and die.

The story has such power because it is a universal story driven by a question faced by us all, particularly people of privilege: what compromises are you willing to make to your values to maintain your personal safety and comfort? How much cruelty are you willing to overlook, how much environmental degradation, how much corruption, how partial the collective justice, so that you can accumulate a nice, cushy barrier of comfort from all the fallout from the misery transmitted by those compromises?

By the morning of the third day after Jesus was killed, the disciples were in hiding. Only Mary and Mary Magdaline were able to override fear of arrest to remember what Jesus had told his followers repeatedly, that something unbelievable would happen that day. And at the tomb, they witnessed the earth itself release its grasp; they saw the angel in blinding white, so reminiscent of the story of Jesus on the mountain, transfigured with Moses and Elijah. They received the commission to spread the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. Their faith was rewarded with the first visit by Jesus. They became Jesus’ ambassadors of grace, delivering the message that he forgave the disciples for fleeing at his arrest.

Jesus’ return, heralded by the two Marys, is the narrative that informs the Christian season of Eastertide – not just this day – fifty days to receive the good news that whatever personal compromises individual humans make, however empire mobilizes collective power to dominate and intimidate, whenever death is used as an instrument, the truth of God’s nonviolent love will not, cannot be destroyed. For fifty days, we are invited to receive that news, to internalize it; to witness to how the disciples were empowered by that news that inhabited them through God’s Spirit, how that good news radiated from them and coalesced into church, the Body of Christ. Into this. Into us.

When we celebrate Easter, we celebrate this rich, universal story. Our celebration touches even Peter, who denied knowing Jesus three times. Even Judas, who sold his participation in Jesus’ arrest for 30 silver pieces. Even the head priests who chose their privilege over their own teachings, just as each of us do in small ways throughout our lives. We celebrate that even these human characters have parts to play in God’s plan and receive Jesus’ forgiveness.

We celebrate Jesus, who did not compromise – this human who we are taught acted only in faith and righteousness, whose spirit and teachings continue to form us, and whose example continues to shine a bright light on the darkness of hypocrisy to this day.

We celebrate that even the worst thing, the cruelest punishment, the most seemingly definitive ending is anything but in God’s plans for the commonwealth of love and justice that God desires for creation. And so, it is right and good for us to celebrate: to dress up, and hide candy, sing hymns, and eat ham, and greet the coming spring. Because Jesus has risen, and with him, love persists over fear, communal care persists over personal comfort. From the frozen ground, the green blade rises. Thanks be to God. Amen.