BY DR. KENNY CAMACHO / SERMON DELIVERED 10 MARCH 2024 FOR REVOLUTION CHURCH
At the start of this series, I said that we were beginning in the middle of John’s gospel because we hoped this would bring out more resonance in Jesus’s story as Easter approached. Today is the day that work really starts to come to fruition… because today we’ll be looking at Jesus’s crucifixion. Now, as usual, we’re going to take a bit of a meandering path to get there! There’s some fascinating stuff in John’s account of Jesus’s final day that I’d like to draw out for us. But it will be good to get the big idea on the table first, and this is it: when Jesus goes willingly to his death on the cross, he is demonstrating that he is fully-committed not only to God’s plan for saving the world… but also to the whole range of human experience. The “intimacy plan” that began when he was born to a peasant mother in a manger, and continued as he grew up in small-town Nazareth and made friends with fishermen and tax collectors, is reaching its climax when he is executed beside common thieves on Good Friday. And this, more than anything else, is what I think we need to feel when we look at the Cross: God has chosen to know what it is like to be one of us.
This is the second of three sermons on Jesus’s full commitment to the role he has been given, and it comes on a fortuitous weekend. Does anybody know what’s special about today? Don’t think churchy thoughts!
It’s Oscar Sunday!
I love the Oscars. They are silly (and almost always wrong!), but I love them. And of course some of the biggest awards of the night are the acting awards: best actress and supporting actress; best actor and supporting actor. If you’re the betting sort, you should know 3 of those 4 awards are pretty much locked up tonight: Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey, Jr. are going to win for Oppenheimer; comedienne Da’Vine Joy Randolph is going to win for The Holdovers. But Best Actress is a toss-up between Emma Stone, for Poor Things, and Lily Gladstone, for Killers of the Flower Moon. I’m rooting for Lily! She’s the first Native woman to ever be nominated in the category, and she’s great.
When we think of great acting performances, we often think of actors who choose to “go Method.” Do you know what this means? It refers to a type of acting developed by Konstantin Stanislavski in the 1930s wherein the actor doesn’t perform their part, they experience it. They look inside themselves for traces of the character, and then draw them out so they can be the character. It gets controversial sometimes, because actors who act this way try not to “break character” between takes, and if they are playing someone nasty, they tend to keep treating their coworkers poorly, even when the cameras aren’t rolling. Drama ensues.
I bring this up because, in its best form, “Method acting” is an attempt at “full commitment”: you become who or what you are playing. And it’s a gateway, perhaps, to a clearer sense of what Jesus has done. You’ll sometimes hear stories about Method actors who spend months living with the real-life person they want to portray, learning to hold silverware the same way the person does or tie their shoes using the same knots. Sometimes, actors will work for a few weeks in a menial job–waiting tables, working the assembly line–to get “in character.”
How, then, might we understand God’s choice not just to “shadow” human beings for a while, but to be born as an infant among them? The Jesus Project has always been to make God known. Jesus prays to God on his last night with his friends:
I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.
John 17:6-8
But Jesus’s role works both ways: he isn’t only communicating messages from God to us, he’s also sharing our experiences with God!
I am asking on [my disciples’] behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.
John 17:9
And what is Jesus asking for us?
Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.
John 17:11
The goal is unity, it is intimacy, between God and human beings. Full identification and connection. A reunification that undoes the damage caused by sin since Adam and Eve in the Garden. One-ness. And by living with us as one of us, Jesus is able to both show God to us and show us to God. He is the bridge that makes real reconnection possible.
Which, I think, begs the question: what is that God doesn’t know?
There’s an interesting thread to pull in John’s account of Jesus’s last hours. It has to do with what, exactly, it means to be a “king.”
You might recall that the issue of who Jesus says he is plays a major part in the events leading up to his death. The leaders of the synagogue are greatly disturbed by what happens when Jesus returns to Jerusalem on the Sunday before Passover. After the resurrection of his friend Lazarus from the dead, crowds have become ecstatic over the possibility that Jesus might be the long-awaited savior of Israel, the Messiah. When word spreads he is coming to town, they run out to greet him, and even
took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!”
John 12:13
This is Palm Sunday, and it sends shockwaves through the Temple: “Does this commoner think he is the One?” And because they have already dismissed the rumors about Jesus before (primarily because of his associations with sinners), the religious authorities latch onto the title the crowds are giving Jesus–calling him “King”–and use this to establish grounds for getting rid of him. Israel is a protectorate of Rome, and thus the authority in Israel is a governor and not a king. Anyone who claims that title, then, is usurping a title held only by the Emperor. Now, it’s important to note that the authorities aren’t fools: a wandering rabbi in Jerusalem isn’t a realistic military threat to Rome! But it’s an excuse, and the leaders of the Temple use it to set Jesus up.
What I want us to notice, as we head down this detour, is that with this ruse, these leaders are emphasizing the opposite movement of authority from what Jesus embodies. Jesus says that, through him, God is drawing near. But these charges rely on Jesus claiming an authority that distances him from the people: they say Jesus is trying to elevate himself above the rest of us, and even above the Emperor! This, of course, is always the problem with how we think of kings: they rise up above everyone else. They take power. They rule. And here’s the thing: if our imagination for authority is always about what is higher than us, then we’re always off the hook: there’s plenty of room for irresponsibility at the bottom.
But what does this thread lead to, if we pull on it? Jesus is arrested, and after he is condemned by the religious leaders, they send him to the governor, Pontius Pilate. Pilate has heard the charges, and he asks Jesus,
“Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”
John 18:33-38
Oh, man, I want to preach about that last line! But not this week. Instead, look at what Jesus says when Pilate asks him if he is a king: “My kingdom does not belong to this world… if it did, my followers would be fighting!” It is the way of earthly kings to elevate themselves. To fight for control. But this is not the kind of King Jesus is: Jesus is the King descending, not ascending.
What’s quite beautiful about this is the trust and testimony Jesus gives to his friends. Do you remember what he said to them earlier that very night, after washing their feet?
After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had reclined again, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, slaves are not greater than their master”
John 13:12-16
I think what Jesus knows is that people will always situate themselves beneath their leaders. There’s safety in that! So, what happens when your leader descends? When they embrace humility, even to the point of working your menial job, noticing how you hold your silverware? “Slaves are not greater than their master”… but if the master chooses to serve, not only does that validate service as a good and worthy thing, it insists on service if you want to stay near to your king!
When Jesus tells Pilate, “If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over,” I imagine a smile on his face as he brags on his friends: “they know that it is better to go as low as I’m willing to go; to serve instead of resist.”
Jesus’s claim– “I am a different kind of King”–resonates with Pilate, and in the next verse, he goes out to the crowds and tells them,
“I find no case against him. But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?”
John 18:38-39
Whether sarcastically or not, he honors Jesus’s title and tries to release him. But the crowds, who are hiding underneath the power of the Emperor, refuse, and Jesus is sent to be crucified. If you know that story well, you will remember that Pilate gets one last point in before things are over:
Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”
John 19:19-22
We’ve wandered a long way from “Method acting.” What’s the point?
The point is that Jesus’s life–the 30-plus years he spent on this earth growing up as a child, learning a trade with his father, setting out as a teacher, loving others as a friend–was always about bringing God to us. But Jesus’s death–on the cross, guilty of bogus charges, ridiculed by the people he came to save–is about bringing us to God. That first part is where I have always focused in my own prayer life, and in sermons I’ve preached here at Revolution, Easter season after Easter season. It resonates deeply with me: God chose, because he loves us, to experience the absolute depths of what we feel. Because of this, there is no place we can ever go–no hardship we can ever experience, even to the point of death–that God doesn’t know. There is no pit we can be in where God can’t say, in all honesty, I am willing to be there with you. This is such an incredible truth! God knows our pain, deeply and personally. We have company, because Jesus brought God to us.
But if Jesus is who he says he is–if he really is our Lord, the King of all kings, the greatest authority not just on Earth, but in the Universe–his choice to be fully-committed to our experience, to go ultra, no-holds-barred, total “Method” in his pursuit of us, must also mean that we get to be where our King is. That the gap we imagine between us and him is altogether eliminated. That we belong with him, in his Kingdom. We get to be people of it, not because we’ve gone on some epic journey to crawl up from the depths of our seemingly-pitiful places in the world to the castle where he lives, but because he moved the castle to the cross. He brought it with him, and without us having to move a muscle, he’s settled it right on top of us. We’re not supposed to fight to save him! We’re supposed to delight in what he was willing to do for us. In his commitment not just to hanging out with us for a while so God can get a better sense of what it means to work on an assembly line, or struggle to pay bills, or deal with prejudice and pain… but his commitment to bringing the Kingdom of God near.
The Cross is where Jesus wins victory because he has taken the authority and power of God all the way to Death’s door and declared, “I am willing to be here… and wherever I am, I am Lord.” So, where can we go to hide below this kind of King? A slave isn’t greater than their master… and our Master died a naked disgrace on top of a dung heap. It didn’t make him any less God. Whatever mess we find ourselves in, it doesn’t make us any less worthy in his eyes.
In the final scene of Killers of the Flower Moon–the movie for which actress Lily Gladstone might win an Oscar tonight–the whole story we’ve been watching is revealed to be a radio play, in the racist tradition of the 1920s. The Native roles are all being performed by white actors, and the narrator is played by the film’s director, Martin Scorsese. It’s an upsetting moment, and it seems to be Scorsese’s way of addressing the ultimate truth of his movie: he doesn’t really have a right to be the one who is telling it. This awareness haunts the whole film.
What’s troubling about Lily Gladstone’s nomination is that, although she is the first Native woman to be nominated for Best Actress, she’s not the first woman to be nominated for playing a Native character. White “Method” actresses have been there before, doing their best to pretend to be what she actually is… even though they really didn’t have the authority to tell the story.
This is not what happened on the Cross. Jesus isn’t God, play-acting as a person. He is God and a Person. That he triumphs in the end–that the grave cannot hold him–is a revelation that, in God’s Kingdom, the grave won’t hold any of us, either. We’re not imposters. Jesus’s story is our story… if we’re willing to trust the fullness of God’s commitment to bring us back to the Kingdom where we belong.
For me, that means letting go of the ways I doubt my own worthiness: sometimes I don’t really think God could or should love me this much. Maybe for you it means letting go of a different skepticism: maybe you don’t want to believe a King is supposed to come down to where we are. Maybe you feel safer believing he’s way up there, far away and paying no attention to you.
But if the Jesus who dies is God, the story isn’t just a story, it’s Truth. The Kingdom is everywhere, and the King is close. Maybe the better question to wrestle with is, would a God who does all of this… turn his nose up at anything? Is anything “beneath” him? And if the answer is “no,” is there anything you really need to keep hiding? What if we could let go of our fear and trust that God isn’t just tolerant of us, he loves us so much he brings his glory all the way down to our places of shame?
My prayer is that we will see, in Jesus on the Cross, a God whose arms are open to us wherever we are, and who is eager to welcome us into the life of Hope he has brought near. This is the Gospel: that while we were still sinners, Jesus chose to share our pain and freely offer a way to redeem it. That this is, truly, his full commitment.
Revolution Words 