The Way to the Cross

Mark 14:1-15:47
Part of the reason this story of Jesus’ suffering and death survives is because it has a little bit of everything in it. You want humility? There’s the unnamed woman at Jesus’ feet. You want betrayal? There’s Judas before the high priests and then Peter and then everyone else who had followed him into Jerusalem with the palm branches. You want willful ignorance? There are the disciples around the table, one after the other saying, “Surely, not me, Lord. Surely, not me.”
You want a poignant last moment? There’s the final supper with friends. You want prophecy? There’s Jesus telling them they will all fall away. You want humor? There’s Peter swearing on his life that he will never betray Jesus and only a few verses later doing exactly that three times to the sound of a rooster crowing.
You want agony? There’s Jesus praying in the garden. You want weakness? There’s the disciples’ watch group falling asleep on the job. You want ironic gestures? There’s a kiss that seals his death. You want violence? There’s a frustrated disciple with a sword. You want misplaced his anger? There’s the sword striking the ear of a slave.
You want a kangaroo court? There’s the council. You want a man caught between doing the right thing and his fear of the crowds? There’s Pilate. You want a mob easily swayed by infiltrators? There they are shouting ‘Crucify him!’ You want humiliation? There’s the purple robe and the spit and the crown made of thorns. You want cruelty? There’s the beatings, the mocking, the long march to the hill. You want death? There’s the cross.
This story has a little bit of everything and that’s what makes it so enduring. In part, that’s what makes it so enduring. But the real reason it survives is not just because it is a good story filled with the full range of human frailties on graphic display. It survives because it not only tells that story, but it also tells the story of what God can do with all those frailties, all those failures, all those betrayals, all that mess.
What God can do is to redeem it and to redeem us and to redeem the whole world. We are here today because we believe that in this story is our story. We know we live in a world made wrong by our faults and divisions. You didn’t need to come to church to hear that. What we need to hear today and each day of our lives is that God is taking those wrongs and, through the instrument of the cross, making them right. This week, this story, the whole course of human history leads to this moment on the cross. But what it looks like on the other side and what we look like on the other side of it, is something unimaginably fantastic. The story ends today with a body in a tomb, but stay tuned. This story’s not over. Thanks be to God.