Matthew 26.57-68, Matthew 27.1-2, 11-14
Palm Sunday, 5 April 2020 - churches closed
Why was Jesus silent before his accusers?
After all, wasn’t this the Jesus who had spent his entire public ministry confronting the authorities:
- reminding the scribes, priests and elders of their proper place as servants of God, and their dereliction of their duties through their abuses of power;
- making Rome constantly aware of the impermanence of their empire in contrast to the everlasting kingdom of God which Jesus came to keenly announce;
Wasn’t this the Jesus who had turned over the tables of the money-lenders to clearly make his point to the Temple authorities, and who had put the Roman Empire in its place when he said, ‘Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what belongs to God…? Why, now, in the High Priest’s courtroom and the Governor’s palace, the most public and influential platforms on which Jesus had ever stood, why now his silence before his accusers?
And why was Jesus silent in the company of the accused?
After all, wasn’t this the Jesus who had spent his entire public ministry liberating the accused ones of his society:
- bringing into his company those who society kept outside: tax-collectors and sinners; Samaritans; a woman caught in adultery;
- bringing healing and release to those who society condemned as unclean: lepers; the possessed; a menstruating woman;
Wasn’t this the Jesus who looked on those who lived in constant accusation of being the bad ones, the causes of society’s ills - and chose them to be his companions, dinner-guests, friends - affirming their humanity, their equal status before God? When he had the opportunity to demonstrate his innocence before his accusers, why now was Jesus silent? Why silent, thus clearing the way for them to condemn him to a deadly punishment?
Sometimes God is silent. And you may feel that the time we are living through now is such a time. The coronavirus has quieted our industry. It has minimised our interaction with others. It has splintered us apart and left us unnaturally alone. Some may feel abandoned, forsaken in a place of uncertainty and fear. And ‘if we are rational people (including Christian rationalists) then we want explanations; or if we are romantics (including Christian romantics) we want to be given a sigh of relief.’ [2] So, through all the chatter and clamour of the rolling newsreels, we sit waiting and hoping and maybe praying for that deeper silence to break.
When the worst plague in history swept the world in the fourteenth century every Christian knew its cause, and the way to deal with it. There was no silence around the Black Death, rather the clamour of a public directed not by a Chief Medical Officer but by their clergy, who preached the plague as God’s judgement on a sinful people, and taught that salvation from it could only come through acts of penitence. The opposite of social isolation took place as parishioners flocked into churches, travelled together on pilgrimages, made confession together to put themselves right with God to be assured of heaven after their imminent death. [3]
Only when the death toll rose did their confidence and their faith decline. In John Hatcher’s historical novel based on the effects of the Black Death on a Suffolk village in 1349, the parish priest Master John began to feel himself ‘in imminent danger of collapsing into despair.’ With his entire universe of understanding falling apart, God had become silent to him. The story goes that:
‘One night in the depths of his depression, as he was agitatedly turning the pages of his Bible in a desperate search for advice and comfort, God caused his fingers to rest and his eyes to fall on the 91st Psalm, and he read: ‘I will say of the Lord; He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust.’ [4]
In a time of God’s silence, in our time of silence, perhaps what we need more than anything is to recover this biblical tradition of lament.
Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centred worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world. It’s bad enough facing a pandemic in London or New York City. What about a crowded refugee camp on a Greek island? What about Gaza? Or South Sudan? At this point the Psalms, the Bible’s own hymnbook, come back into their own, just when some churches seem to have given them up. “Be gracious to me, Lord,” prays the sixth Psalm, “for I am languishing; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.” “Why do you stand far off, O Lord?” asks the 10th Psalm plaintively. “Why do you hide yourself in time of trouble?” And so it goes on: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?” (Psalm 13). And, most notable of all, in this of all weeks, Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. [5]
Jesus broke his silence with that Psalm as he quoted it in his agony on the cross. It begins despairingly, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ but it ends in passages of hope and praise:
Before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn. [6]
As the Christian scholar N.T. Wright said this week,
It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain - and to lament instead. As the Spirit laments within us, so we become, even in our self-isolation, small shrines where the presence and healing love of God can dwell. And out of that there can emerge new understanding, new possibilities, new acts of kindness, new scientific understanding, new hope. [7]
Notes
[1] Drawing on my previous talk, He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word, preached at West Camel, Good Friday 2015. Music at start: The Welcome Wagon. He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word, from ‘The Welcome Wagon’ ℗ 2008 Asthmatic Kitty.
[2] N.T. Wright, Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To. Time Magazine, 29 March 2020.
[3] James Meek, In 1348. London Review of Books, Vol. 42 No. 7 · 2 April 2020
[4] John Hatcher, The Black Death: An Intimate History. p.163.
[5] N.T. Wright, Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To. Time Magazine, 29 March 2020. Adapted.
[6] ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Matthew 27.46, Mark 15.34 and Psalm 22.1. Concluding verses Psalm 22.29-31.
[7] N.T. Wright, Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To. Time Magazine, 29 March 2020.
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