John 18-19
Good Friday, April 2, 2010
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church, San Francisco
Some time ago, University of South Carolina scientists gathered decades of death-related data to determine where people were most at risk of falling victim to an unforeseen trip to the afterlife. I’m talking about death. If my mother was here, she would say, “Why are you talking about death? It is bad and it will only bring about bad fortunes. Wash out your mouth!” Can’t you hear your mothers saying that right now?
The scientists did not track the likelihood of death by crucifixion. Rather the group created a county-by-county map of the United States, measuring the risk of hazard-related deaths, due to natural events such as floods, earthquakes or extreme weather. Some people have dubbed it “The Death Map.”
Although death will find each one of us some day, regardless of ZIP code, according to their findings, you might want to avoid certain areas of the country if you’re looking to extend your days—or, at the very least, to enjoy lower life insurance premiums.
For example, hazard mortality is most prominent in the South, where scorching summer heat, hurricanes, tornadoes, and flooding along the Gulf Coast are all a reality. Even in the Midwest, where residents like to think of life as safer and saner than in the coastal areas, there’s significant chance of a hazard-related death, as people experience the combination of blistering hot summers, dangerous winter roads and Wizard of Oz-style twisters.
Surprisingly, according to the research, one place we should all consider moving to in order to avoid an untimely demise is Southern California. With its temperate climate, the area actually carries a lower-than-normal risk of a crazy, weather or natural disaster-related death. That is, when it isn’t on fire from the Santa Ana winds or being rattled by an earthquake.
When we first moved to California in 1978, my mother told me how dangerous earthquakes are and that we should remain in Boston. Based on this study, San Francisco Bay Area has the dark blue designation that means that it’s one of the safest places to live.
Safe Places for Jesus
For Jesus, where on a first-century map would he need to hide out in order to avoid the “hazard” of being persecuted? Jesus said, “They persecuted me. They hated me without a cause” (John 15:20, 25). On a first-century map, where would Jesus be least likely to die for living a life of a Messiah?
Jerusalem had already proven to be no friend to Jesus. The center of Jewish spiritual life, it was filled with rabbis, other religious folk, Sadducees and Pharisees, who each had an opinion about Jesus, none of it good. Jerusalem had a short fuse for guys such as Jesus, especially when they were successful in gathering a crowd together like last Sunday. It was just a matter of time before things in the Holy City got crazy for Jesus and his disciples.
Nazareth seems like a natural, safe spot. After all, this was Jesus’ hometown. This was where he played as a boy and learned the carpentry trade as a young man. Nazareth was home to family and friends who knew him simply as “Jesus the son of Joseph” and the first-born of Mary. Certainly, he and his disciples could continue his ministry there, free from threats and far away north in Galilee from the city of Jerusalem. He could have had an effective ministry there.
But going home can be difficult. Just like any young man who’s made it in the big city comes home to his little hometown would still be seen like that little boy before leaving home. When I used to return home to my home church in Boston, the Sunday school teachers still would call me “little Donald” who was always a good student in Sunday school. Many times when we go home, people around us struggle to see just who we’ve become because they’re most comfortable with who we used to be.
Early in ministry, Jesus experienced just this. Reading from the Scriptures in the synagogue at Nazareth, he publicly proclaimed that he was, in fact, the long-awaited Redeemer of God’s people promised by the prophet Isaiah (Luke 4:16-29; Isaiah 61:1-2). Yet even with Jesus’ advantage of being in his hometown synagogue where he probably had his bar mitzvah, the crowd didn’t react kindly. Jesus was driven out of town to the edge of the cliff, where his own people attempted to kill him. Jesus was right when he said, “No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown” (Luke 4:24).
Like many people today who encounter Jesus, the folks in Nazareth didn’t want to deal with his claims that “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). They wanted the Jesus who was just a good boy all grown up; a good man who made his folks proud. Not a “miracle-working” Jesus or a “one-and-only Messiah” Jesus, but a hometown boy who lived an honorable life.
Nazareth was not a place where Jesus could have found a safer place to live and still fulfill his life’s purpose.
Maybe Jesus could have gone some 40 miles northwest of Nazareth to the region of Caesarea Philippi. It was a part of the world known for its wild worship of pagan gods and goddesses. In Caesarea Philippi, worship anything in any manner was fair game. Here. Jesus and his disciples would just be one crazy cult among many others. Certainly such an open, accepting place would be the perfect place for Jesus to set up his movement.
But the problem is that those tolerant folks who embrace the “all-roads-lead-to-the-same-god” belief are often the same people who are intolerant of those who argue “no” to Jesus when he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). While Jesus’ message was filled with love and acceptance, it’s broad in love but certainly narrow when how one “comes to the Father.”
Midway through his ministry, Jesus brought his disciples to Caesarea Philippi, to the epicenter of pagan worship, and it was there that Peter confessed that Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah (Mark 8:29). Later, Jesus turned to what was a crowd likely gathered to worship false gods promising fertility and pleasure and shouted these words, “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:36-38).
As a general rule, people who’ve already found a god they enjoy don’t like it when others tell them they’ve gotten it all wrong. Jesus couldn’t coexist with all the other cultic religious groups in Caesarea Philippi. His teachings didn’t allow this “all-paths” lead to the Father or a “big boat” Jesus where other professed gods can be included in the boat or an “it doesn’t matter who or what or how you worship” kind of Jesus.
For Jesus to be safely hiding in Caesarea Philippi, he would have had to stop his boldly preaching and teaching and healing and get along with all the other religions. Jesus wasn’t about to do that. Caesarea Philippi is still on the first-century Death Map.
No Safe Place
The truth is that no matter where Jesus went with his message, at some point he would be met with hostility. Regardless of where he might go on a map, conflict with people who would refuse to confess him as Christ was inevitable. This was true then and it’s true now.
We want a Jesus to be our friend who always listens and never criticizes us. But Jesus is divine and when he is with us, we are conflicted with all the things that we have fallen short of what God expects us to become.
We want a Jesus to fit into our own sense of what God is like so that we can continue to worship all the other gods in our lives—god of consumerism, god of materialism, god of a good health plan, god of personal and unbridled freedoms, etc. But when Jesus comes into our lives, we can’t be satisfied with these isms that compete with our loyalty to Christ.
We want a Jesus who’s just a good teacher of some moral truth so that we might live a peaceful and ethical lifestyle and to just “get along.” But when we get to know Jesus, God reminds us that just “getting along” is not enough, we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
There are still some people who want to kill Jesus so that we can remain comfortable in the status quo. We rather not bow down to him as King and be transformed by him forever. Keeping the things the way the Romans and the Pharisees have pre-arranged them allows us to get on with our everyday lives.
But Jesus is determined not to avoid this conflict by skipping to some “safer” town but to confront it and to crush it. For Jesus, hiding out in Nazareth or Caesarea Philippi was not an option. Finding a “hazard-free zone” was not possible. For Jesus, he went toward the heart of the action, in Jerusalem and ultimately to the cross.
It was there, on the cross, where the conflict between who Jesus claimed to be and who the world wanted him to be came to a head. It was there, as the world killed a man people thought was a lunatic and a liar, that Jesus initiated his reign as Lord, shedding blood for their sin and procuring their future in the Father’s family. And when those who killed him were confident they’d proven him wrong, three days later Jesus would quietly but confidently come back, assuring the world that everything he said was true.
No Safe Zones in San Francisco
It’s no longer Jesus’ turn to die. It’s ours. Coming into our churches on a Sunday morning or even here tonight is only temporarily safe for us. We are in a seismically reinforced building, safe from any earthquake. We’re located in that dark blue section of the “Death Map.”
But it’s our turn to take the message of Jesus Christ to the other different points on the map. We’re to take it to our friends, to our children and to our community. We are to take it to the other religious groups in Chinatown who have yet to know the love and grace of Jesus Christ. That’s what is happening upstairs in our evangelistic service to the residents of Chinatown.
Some of those destinations will welcome the message of Jesus. Most will meet it with at least a little hostility and the potential for hazard. Just like the disciples and the apostles who followed Jesus footsteps in Rome, Athens, Corinth, Philippi, Egypt and to the ends of the earth—to all the hazard-prone sections of the globe, met hostility and threats, we will too.
It’s our turn to die.
We are not only to willingly run to the conflict around us, but, first and foremost, we are to confront the conflict within us. We must confess that we, too, desire a Jesus other than the one we’re given in the gospels. We, too, desire a Jesus who meets our needs and let us love other gods rather than a Jesus who rules or lives, drives us to repentance and forgives our sins. We must face the fact that often the person who presents the greatest hostility to Jesus in life is us; we ourselves. And in response, each day we are the ones who need to die—to our earthly desires, our wicked ways—so the reality of Christ and the truth of Christ might live in us and be shown through us (1 Corinthians 15:31).
In California we get many wild forest fires every year. Do you know where is the one place where a fire cannot reach? It is the place where the fire has already burned itself out. Calvary is the place where the fire of God’s judgment against sin burned itself out completely. Because of what Jesus Christ did tonight, we are now safe with the Lord.
For Jesus and for his followers, there’s no hiding out in hazard-free zones or finding the safest place to live. Instead Jesus and we head right into the action when we go outside this church building and into the streets of San Francisco with the unconditional message of love and forgiveness found only in God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
Let us pray.
Lord, there were no safe places for you to hide but perhaps with fear and anguish, you remained faithful and obedient to your purpose and plan for life. Show us the way to have courage and strengthen our faith to be able to go into the various places in our lives to testify and give witness to your love for the world. On this night of suffering and sacrifice, we believe in the hope and promise of renewal and new life in the resurrection of Christ Jesus. Grant us your spirit on this night and in these days to come, we pray in the name of our crucified Christ. Amen.