Remember that musical – Jesus Christ, Superstar. The two don’t seem to sit so comfortably together do they – yet Jesus was a superstar in His day. So – what does that mean for us here and now?

It’s great to be with you again at the beginning of this week, leading into Easter. You know one of my earliest recollections as a young lad in the 1960’s is of the Beatles coming to Australia. I only saw it on TV and then it was only in black and white, but the crowds were just amazing. Young fans screaming, people pushing and shoving, just to get a glimpse of the Beatles – superstars. And then came that quintessential 60’s musical Hair, followed by Jesus Christ – Superstar.

Now that title always struck me as being a bit odd. A Superstar, well that’s a modern term I associated with the Beatles, Jesus Christ, well he was some ancient stuffy character that you can read about in the dusty old pages of a book full of words like “thou” and “thee” and “art”. How could you possibly bring the two together? Jesus Christ – Superstar!

In these weeks leading up to Easter we’ve been just spending some time over the last few weeks looking at the question, “Who is Jesus?” Is He some character on the dusty pages of an old book, or is He some here and now contemporary person that makes a difference? Well, what’s the relevance here and now? I mean, who is Jesus? It’s what we’ve been looking at these last couple of weeks. Today, well we’re heading towards Easter and I though it would be really good to look at those days leading up to the ugly mob calling for His crucifixion, it was like a lynching in those days.

The week starts, the crowds are heading to Jerusalem, you see it’s the Passover festival, it’s a celebration, it’s where the nation of Israel looks back all those centuries to the time when God let them out of Egypt. And God sent all these plagues on the Egyptians and on Pharaoh and the very last plague was where the first born of all the Egyptians were killed. And the Israelites were told to paint blood on the top of their doors and as a result the angel of death passed over their houses and their children weren’t killed. That’s why the celebration is called Passover.

This was the time of the Passover festival, now for the last three years Jesus has been wandering around the country that we now call Israel. North and south, and He’s been healing people, He’s been preaching in the most amazing way and He’s been arguing with the hypocritical religious leaders. Jesus has had so much wisdom and authority in what He’s had to say. People have been really amazed, and of course His compassion for the poor and the needy and the sick and all the people that He’s healed with His power and His love. And there are even rumours floating around about him raising some guy called Lazarus from the dead.

So Jesus is quite a superstar, Jesus has some buzz happening around Him. He’s been drawing huge crowds; imagine He’s preaching to four or five thousand people without a microphone. And so there’s something about this guy. Let’s just pick it up when Jesus comes into Jerusalem just before the Passover. You can have a read about it; it’s in Mark Chapter 11 if you have a Bible you can look it up.

When they were approaching Jerusalem at Bethpage and Bethany near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Look go the village ahead of you and immediately as you enter it you’ll find tied up there a colt that’s never been ridden before. Untie it and bring it to me. If anyone says to you, “what are you doing?” Just say this, “the Lord needs it and will send it back immediately.” They went out and found a colt tied near a door just like Jesus had said, outside on the street. As they were untying it some of the bystanders said to them, “what are you doing untying that colt?” And they told them what Jesus had said and so the people let them take the colt.

Then they brought the colt to Jesus and He threw their cloaks on it and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks out on the road and others spread leafy branches from the palm trees they’d cut down. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, blessed is the coming of the Kingdom of our ancestor David. Hosanna in the highest!’ Then He entered Jerusalem and went to the temple and when He had looked around at everything as it was very late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Does this remind you of anything? You imagine Jesus is coming into town riding on a donkey and there are crowds and they are cheering “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is the One that comes in the name of David!” This is superstar status; this is like the Beatles coming to town. This isn’t about music or rock stars or anything. This is a man with authority and healing and someone who’s confounded the religious freaks, you know, this is someone special.

And He’s coming to town and the crowds are cheering and screaming and pushing. But there’s more than just Jesus is the great public speaking and Jesus has been healing someone happening here. There is something much bigger that the Israelites knew that you and I many not know by reading that little passage just off the cuff.

Israel at that time in the first century was a country occupied and oppressed, since 587BC, so almost six centuries when Babylon invaded Jerusalem, since that time they’d only had a really short period of 127 years, called the Hasmonean period where they had self rule. All the rest of the time they were occupied, and since 40BC there was the Roman occupation. In fact Israel saw no freedom again until post World War II, if you can call this freedom.

They had a great King called David way, way back 1000BC, and after their captivity in Babylon and all the occupations, prophet after prophet prophesied of another King, a Messiah, a deliverer. And one of the key prophesies, they all new it, was Zechariah 9:9 which says this.

See your king is coming to you righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on the donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey!

And so as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on this foal, on this colt of a donkey, He was saying something, He was speaking to the people and they knew exactly what He was saying to them.

Interesting, “see your King is coming to you, almost coming for you, coming for your benefit”. And the fact that he was riding a donkey was very symbolic too. Aside from the prophecy to ride into town on a donkey was a symbol of peace. If you were coming to conquer you would ride on a warhorse, but if you were coming in peace you would come in as a signal of that peace on a donkey.

Now it was pretty clear that they were expecting someone like their ancestor David, a warrior King. Someone who would free them from the Roman occupation, and yet these prophesies about a peaceful king. The last three and half years people have been wondering is Jesus the promised Messiah? Is it Him? Yes, no, debate.

Once Jesus said to His disciples, “who do they say I am?” And the disciples said, “Well, some of them say you’re John the Baptist come back to life, others say Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.” And He said to Peter, “Who do you think I am? “ And Peter said, “You’re the Messiah, you’re the Son of God, you’re the one who is coming.” But only His closest disciples knew that, all the other people were looking at this power and authority and miracles and yet He didn’t fit the mould of what they were expecting of a Messiah.

And so the Passover they’re celebrating their freedom the gift from God and Jesus says, “Go get me a colt, I’m going to ride in.” It’s what we celebrate as Palm Sunday. And on that day He was saying something. On that day He was saying, “Yes it’s me, yes I am the One, yes I’ve come to set you free, I’ve come with my peace and my freedom to liberate you.” That’s why they were shouting, that’s why this rock star Beatles coming to town thing was happening then.

But how fickle public opinion can be, because it was only a few days after that, that Jesus was crucified. We’ll look at that for the rest of this week, but right here on that donkey Jesus was saying something that you can’t miss. “Yes! I am the Son of God!”

We all hate hypocrisy. Especially religious hypocrisy. It turns out though – so did Jesus. At one stage, he made a whip and drove the hypocrites out of the temple. Startling. True.

Perhaps one of the biggest objections I ever had to Christianity was what I observed to be a self-righteous hypocrisy. On the one hand they put some old guy on the news telling me this was wrong and that was wrong and on the other hand that same denomination had a club with gambling and poker machines not far from where I lived. Come on; is it any wonder people weren’t flocking to church on Sunday, that’s how I saw it? And so for me that equaled Jesus, which equaled God.

So who needs that sort of religion? Pretty impeccable logic really. Until, well you take time to look at Jesus himself, tell me how would He respond to the church with poker machines? Well actually we know because in His walk on this earth two thousand years ago He had to deal with almost exactly the same thing.

This week well, we’re heading towards Easter, yeah I know, I know, chocolate bunnies, Easter eggs, but that’s not really the main game is it? So, we’ve been looking over the last few weeks and this week again at a question, “Who the heck is Jesus?” It’s a good question heading towards Easter, particularly as we look at how He behaved in that crucial week heading towards His crucifixion.

And yesterday we saw how early in the week He had a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, almost like a rock star, like the Beatles coming to town when I was a kid. This was the Messiah and He rode on a donkey because the whole donkey thing was prophesied hundreds of years before. And so when He came into the city riding on a donkey, all the people that had been wondering for the last three years or so, “Is this the guy?” He was saying to them, “Yeah, I am the guy, I am the Messiah.” And straight after He rides into Jerusalem he goes to the temple. This is what happened.

Then they came to Jerusalem and He entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple. And He over turned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who had sold doves, and He wouldn’t allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying ‘Isn’t it written My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you’ve made it a den of robbers.’

And when the Chief Priests and the Scribes heard it they kept looking for a way to kill Him, because they were afraid of Him because the whole crowd was spell bound by His teaching. And when the evening came Jesus and His disciples went out of the city.

Pretty unexpected, isn’t it? I mean if we see Jesus as some sort of stain glass window in a church, to imagine that he would go into the temple which is the centre of the Jewish faith, I mean it’s like going to St Paul’s Cathedral at the Vatican or you know one of these big places. And what was happening was that people were selling, they were trading. Often had pilgrims come to the temple, the temple was about sacrifice in part so they would sacrifice animals. And so all the traders had set up shop inside the temple.

So here’s the temple, the house of God the centre of the Jewish faith and Jesus walks into the courts of the temple and it’s the smell of animals and the noise of money changers and just for convenience the market had been moved into the temple. There was noise and commerce and cows and exorbitant pricing and people fiddling the books and all sorts of horrible things going on inside the temple. And worse still it was sanctioned by the religious establishment, worse still the High Priests were involved in this scam. It’s kind of like a church with poker machines in it really. That was the scene.

People say, “Berni are you knocking all churches?” No I’m not, absolutely not. There is so many good things that are done by churches right around the world, millions and millions of people who are humbly and quietly living out their faith and serving the poor and reaching out, there’s so many good things, we often miss that. But at the same time religious hypocrisy like this is alive and well, its still happening, nothing else new under the sun. So what does Jesus think about it?

In one of the other gospel accounts it actually tells us he made a whip out of rope and he rages through the temple forecourts and He’s throwing money changers tables in the air and He’s driving them out with a whip, pretty surprising picture of Jesus. This is no mamby-pamby, soft stuffed toy, cuddly Jesus Saviour here. It’s a pretty outrageous thing for Jesus to do. And at the same time He’s throwing down the gauntlet to the religious establishment. Look at the reaction He gets.

The Chief Priests and the Scribes firstly, they want to kill him. It’s interesting most people didn’t really understand who Jesus was and what He was doing. The one group of people that did were His enemies, because Jesus was threatening them, they were plotting to kill Him. No wonder, He was challenging their cushy, hypocritical system of religious oppression, and yet they were afraid. Why were they afraid?

Well what it says is, “Look we’d love to kill Him but there’s a whole crowd in town, the Passover’s happening and Jesus has been out their preaching and healing, even healing people on the Sabbath for goodness sake. We can’t kill him now, I mean there’d be a riot, the crowd would turn against us.” And the crowds were spell bound.

Now either this Jesus was a mad man or a genius, and the people were coming to the conclusion that this Jesus was a genius. I mean He was doing some stuff that was so authentic and so real, showing compassion, hanging around with prostitutes and leapers and tax collectors and people who were the outcasts of society. And yet at the same time He was speaking in a way that had power and authority, there was a ring of “this is real” about Jesus. And He’d directly challenge the religious establishment and the hypocrisy.

Jesus was a religious subversive, He was wild, He wasn’t some tamed animal, look at Him here in the temple forecourts, Jesus was wild. You can’t put Him in a box, you can’t contain this Jesus, it’s almost a contradiction you know, this wonderful warmth and compassion He had for the people who needed Him, and the power that He railed against the hypocrisy of the religious establishment with. It’s such a stark contrast.

This is the only time He actually does this, so let’s not get an unbalanced view but it’s really important to see the compassion He has for little people and the rage He has for religious hypocrisy, it’s important. You look at the church today and as I said before there are millions and millions of humble, kind people sharing in community, touching lives transforming lives through love.

And today still there is a dimension in some areas of the church which is about cold rule based religious establishment. It’s like anything else in the world, you look around and you look at any institution, any group, any thing, there are good parts to it and there are bad parts to it, and it’s sad but there is some of this going on in the church today.

And what happens is we tend to look at that ugly end of the scale, because that’s the only thing that ever makes the 6 o’clock news, is the rotten things that some people in the church do. And then people think that Jesus is like that, and what we ignore in the public image of the church, in the public image of Christianity, is that quiet hidden not noisy not public behaviour of people living in faith communities, millions of them across the globe, being Jesus to people around them.

Whatever or whoever else Jesus was and is He wasn’t a religious hypocrite. He railed against it; He was an advocate of the little people, little people like you and me. And at the end of the day it cost Him His life.

Most of us, when we’re under pressure, real pressure, can only think of saving our own skins. So how did Jesus handle pressure? You can tell a lot about a person by watching them.

When they’re under pressure, mostly when we’re afraid, or we’re hurting, or we’re dreading something, mostly we focus on ourselves. We get absorbed with self-pity, or we try to protect ourselves, or we want to blame someone, perhaps we try and ingratiate ourselves to someone who can help us, whatever, but generally our focus is on ourselves one way or another.

Now imagine if you or I were in fear for our lives, someone was plotting to murder us and we knew it, it’s a scary thought, would we hang around in the danger zone? Would we hide? Would we buy a weapon? What would we do? I’m not sure any of us can answer that, well it happened to Jesus, what did he do?

Well we’re heading very close towards Easter and I know, I know, it’s chocolate Easter egg time and it’s bunny rabbit time; and it’s Easter bonnet parade time at school; and it’s all about cute, fluffy, chocolaty stuff; kids on Easter Egg hunts in the garden. Okay, but Easter, at Easter actually we celebrate a political assassination. It’s as though the Burmese government took Aung San Suu Kyi and strung her up, or the death of Martin Luther King, or John Lennon, or John F. Kennedy.

The last few weeks we’ve been looking at who Jesus is, in heading towards Easter (a sensible thing to do), we all have a picture, we all have a stereotype, I guess that we carry around in our heads about Jesus but what’s he actually like? Relevance please, I mean, what does he mean here and now, why is it that 2000 years on, we’re still celebrating this Easter thing, all-be-it that half the world seems to have gone with bunny rabbits and chocolate Easter Eggs and stuff.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a certified chocoholic so I have nothing against chocolate Easter eggs but it’s just a huge leap for me to go from political assassination to bunnies and chocolate. I mean you can’t think of two things that are further apart than those two. So this week leading up to the assassination, to the murder of Jesus, it was full of intrigue.

On Monday we looked at the fact that early in the week he had a really triumphant entry, a real superstar type entry into Jerusalem. And then yesterday we saw that he went into the temple and he turned the place upside down, he drove people out with a whip, and man, that is a very different Jesus to the stained glass image that a lot of people carry around.

And all this time during this week there is a plot by the religious leaders to murder Jesus. Now if you missed any of those other programs, you can listen to them again online at our website www.christianityworks.com. There’s a plot afoot to murder Jesus and it’s an intoxicating mix, there’s fear amongst the disciples, there’s jubilation at his entry, there is a crowd … and target Jesus.

Let’s put ourselves in his sandals for just a minute, let’s walk a mile in his shoes. He knows what’s going on; he knows that the religious leaders are plotting against him. He knows that in just a few days he’ll be beaten, tried and crucified. Okay, you’re walking in his shoes, how does it feel? What do you do? How do you look at other people? Do you sort of think ‘why me?’ I dunno, all sorts of things would be going around in your head.

Well c’mon, how does it feel to be in Jesus shoes in this week leading up to Easter? His public speaking schedule went on unabated; he was out doing the things he always did. He was speaking denouncing the religious hypocrites and the leaders and he takes a break and he sits down opposite the temple treasury for just a rest, let’s take a look at what happens.

He sat down opposite the treasury and he watched people putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put a large amount in and along comes a poor widow, and put in two small copper coins, worth a penny. Then he called his disciples over and said to them ‘have a look at this, truly I tell you this poor widow has put in more than all of those who are contributing to the treasury because all of them contributed out of their abundance but she, she gave out of her poverty and she’s put in all she had to live on’.

Now if you’re on the receiving end of these gifts in the treasury, if you worked in the temple, you know, they paid your wages, you’d kind of really appreciate the rich people, wouldn’t you? You’d really think, “oh you know, look 5000 came in here, 10,000 came in here, ha ha you little beauty” – we’d value them. The widow, well widows in those days, there was no social security, so this woman lived in poverty and Jesus in fact says, “she was a poor widow”.

She was probably a bit older; she probably had some experience and wisdom, who knows? Maybe she saw through the religious hypocrisy but she has a simple heart, a simple faith in God. And Jesus is watching her and he sees her throw in just a couple of copper coins, just a penny’s worth, almost nothing and he calls his disciples over.

I mean remember, Jesus is going to be crucified in a few days, yet he takes the time to call his disciples over, and he takes the opportunity to teach them something. The Son of God looks with compassion and joy on the heart of this widow, under the certain threat of death he discerns between what it cost the rich people and what it’s cost the poor widow. He separates between the establishment of wealth on the one hand and the little person on the other.

And he says to his disciples, “look, as a percentage of her income she has given so much more, she has given everything to God, not like the rich people who gave out of their abundance and had plenty left over.” Ah that is so powerful to me. What sort of reward did she get in heaven? What was the reunion like when she met Jesus in that place?

Intrigue, fear, oppression, the certainty of a painful crucifixion, going to the cross and yet Jesus spends his week teaching and preaching, and loving, and observing people and seeing them and noticing the little things. Man that’s my kind of God. Money can’t buy him, the fear of death doesn’t distract him, he’s not afraid, the fear of death doesn’t distract him. I’ve heard some people say, “Oh well Jesus wasn’t afraid, you know he was the Son of God, you know he wasn’t scared of going to the cross.”

Well yes, he was the Son of God but also he referred to himself as the Son of Man – All God, all Man! Jesus the man was afraid, Jesus the man was hurting, Jesus the man was looking forward to death on a cross, he knew what that looked like, he’d seen that happen before, the Romans commonly used crucifixion and it was so brutal – a form of punishment and death.

Jesus was afraid, there’s no doubt about that whatsoever and we see all these things coming in on him, the pressure of this week mounting; when will it happen? Will it happen? The spiritual oppression, the fear, the hurt, we see what someone is really like then, is he running around flapping? Is he afraid? Is he trying to protect himself? Is he trying to run away?

Jesus is doing what Jesus does, he’s touching people, he’s loving them, he’s noticing them, he’s blessing them, he’s teaching them, he’s spending time with them. That is an amazing picture of the Son of God, you know, again you and I look at ourselves and we think, ‘I dunno, I don’t think I would be like that’. This is Jesus; this is what God is like.

Easter is a fantastic time; it’s a wonderful time to look at who Jesus actually is.

Food, glorious food. We love to eat. But when we’re afraid or depressed, it’s hard to get the food down isn’t it? Imagine – you’re on death row. Would you invite a dozen friends over for dinner?

It’s great to be with you again today, you know I have a confession to make, I love food, I just love it! I grew up in a European household; I learned to cook when I was quite young. My Mother used to work in the early evenings teaching piano, so often, from about the age of 10 onwards, I cooked dinner for the family. So we’ve established my credentials right. I love food, so it’s not very often I go off my food, it takes a lot for me to turn down a meal. I either have to be really sick, or really dreading something, in fact I can only count the number of times that’s happened to me in the last forty seven years on one hand.

But when you’re facing deep pain, or real fear, well I know for me, I just can’t look at food, let alone host a dinner for thirteen just hours before being arrested and crucified, so what was going on at the Last Supper?

This week heading towards Easter, we’ve been continuing on in our series that we’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks on A Different Perspective, looking at the question of exactly “Who is Jesus?” Easter is a time where we remember a State sanctioned execution of an innocent man. I’m sorry to put it into such blunt, secular, today terms, but that’s exactly what Easter was. The State sanctioned assassination of an innocent man who was changing people’s lives.

It was a tough week at the office for Jesus heading up towards Good Friday. I’ve heard people play it down, “well you know he wasn’t really afraid” but come on; Jesus was a man as well as being the Son of God. He must have felt enormously, the oppression of what was going to happen to him. You know this crucifixion thing was so brutal, it was so painful it took them hours to die on the cross and ultimately what they died of was suffocation, as their muscles just gave up the ghost and weren’t able to breathe anymore.

Now on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus had dinner with his disciples. I’m sure we’ve all seen pictures and paintings of the Last Supper you know, where you’ve got them all lined up at the table and there’s all the food on the table, and of course if you happen to attend a church, you’ll know that the whole celebration of Holy Communion is based on what happened there at the Last Supper.

But in a sense Holy Communion has become a solemn ritual, it’s how we celebrate it today, you know there’s the challis and the little plastic cups to have either the wine, or the grape juice and we have nice little neat squares of white bread cut up, and we say prayers and you know, it’s all a ritual in a sense. But that’s not what it was like on the night.

The night of this Last Supper, the night of the Passover meal (which celebrated the freedom of Israel from Egypt hundreds of years before), it was a bunch of friends, Jesus, his twelve disciples, they ate roast lamb and rosemary, and they drank red wine (no not grape juice, red wine), they ate unleavened bread which is kind of like pita bread, it’s not a soft, white, fluffy thing, it’s quite a gritty, hard form of bread, you know they probably dunked that in the juices of the lamb. And this week the assassination plot to kill Jesus was well and truly under way. Mark records it this way he says:

The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and to kill him because they said ‘we can’t do it during the festival or there might be a riot amongst the people’.

So here are the 12 disciples and Jesus, they’re afraid, they’re sad, Jesus has been telling them he’s going to be crucified but they just can’t believe it. Here’s this man, this Son of God, the Messiah who’s been healing people and doing all this stuff and it’s like a pawl hanging over the function. And Jesus, I don’t know what was going through his heart, I don’t know what was going through his head but I’m sure there was a sense of pain and a fear of what was going to happen, and a sense of oppression and he called his closest friends to the table.

I’d encourage you to remember this Last Supper, the first time this communion was celebrated, it was about the Son of God, Jesus, having dinner with his friends, getting together, eating, drinking, sharing one another’s company. He didn’t call all the thousands of people who had listened to him preach, he called his friends, and Jesus said, “You know you aren’t my servants anymore, you’re my friends if you believe in me,” they’re eating their lamb and drinking their wine and talking, and then Jesus does something really strange, he washed all their feet, all twelve of them, twenty four feet, one hundred and twenty grubby toes!

The Son of God is about to be crucified and he washes their feet, even the feet of the one man who was going to betray him, Judas. He knew; Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray him. It’s one thing to sit down at the table with this man but to humble yourself and to wash his feet, I think that is just amazing, I cannot imagine having to do that.

And after the meal he took some bread and he broke it, and as I said it wasn’t this soft, white, fluffy sort of bread, it was unleavened bread, brown and gritty; he broke the bread and he said, “this is my body broken for you, take it and eat and when you guys get together again, do this to remember me.” And when they’d eaten the bread he picked up a cup with the wine in it and he said, “this cup represents my blood, it’s the blood of the new promise that God is making through me; the promise of life, the promise of forgiveness, the promise of grace, that’s what this is about, take it and drink, do this in memory of me.”

What gruesome symbolism, the “bread is my body; the wine is my blood that will be shed for you”. What incredible humility, the Son of God, Jesus, through whom all things were made, washing these men’s feet, having dinner with them, sharing time with them before they go to Gethsemane where he prays and where ultimately Judas hands him over through false testimony, through lies, for Jesus to be tried.

Six times he was tried, each time was an unjust trial where the rules of evidence were ignored, the last time was trial by mob where they bade for his blood, and all the time Jesus doesn’t accuse, he doesn’t condemn, he doesn’t hate, he even washes Judas’ feet (not in some religious ritual, not with white fluffy bread and silver challis’). But Jesus, with a rag tag little band of fisherman and tax collectors, men who with the power of God on them, would change the world one day.

What would happen next would just turn the world upside down, what happened next opened the doorway to God so you and I could walk through; we’re going to talk about that tomorrow. It began at this dinner with lamb and bread, and red wine, and friends, they were afraid, sharing some time with Jesus. This picture is a beautiful picture, it’s a picture that God has put there for you and for me to understand what sort of relationship it is that he wants to have with us.

When we’re afraid, when we can’t even get the food down, when we’re looking forward to some things that we just cannot imagine that we would have to face, we can look at this first communion, we can look at this Last Supper and say, “that’s my Jesus, that’s the relationship he wants to have with me. When I’m afraid, he wants to sit down and have lamb, and bread, and wine with me” Ah what a picture of Jesus!

Good Friday. Gee – you read the historical account – doesn’t seem that good. So – was there anything good about Good Friday? They call it “Good Friday” …

… so what’s so good about Friday? Well I guess every Friday’s good; it’s the day before the weekend. But not this particular Friday, it’s a day when the criminal justice system broke down, a day when justice became a sham. It’s a day when an ugly, angry, mob demanded a lynching a day when an innocent man was flogged to within an inch of His life. And with blood pouring from His wounds and soldiers spit running down His face, dragged a huge cross along a road called the Via Delarosa to a hill they called Golgotha, which means the place of the skull. There they nailed Him to a cross and over the next few hours, in excruciating pain He died an agonising death. Justice? Good Friday? Not this particular day.

We’ve all experienced bureaucratic buck passing. You know, when you have to go to the government, you need something and you get handed from department to department to department from official to official to official and you end up hanging the phone, or leaving the office and you get absolutely no satisfaction. Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt. But when it comes to the justice system, well, we kind of expect a lot more from the criminal justice system.

We expect a fair hearing, a fair go, a just outcome. Jesus was betrayed by a man called Judas Iscariot, who goes and hangs himself ultimately. And He’s handed over to be tried, for what? Now there’s a problem. He’s been upsetting the religions leaders because, gee He’s been helping people and He’s been telling them what God’s like and He’s been pointing out the religious hypocrisy that was floating around the system at the time.

So, He’s got up the noses of the religious leaders, He hasn’t broken any laws but they want to get rid of him. What do they pick? Well Jesus did put himself forth as the Messiah. A lot of prophesies in the Old Testament about the King coming back and of course most of Israel was waiting for a king like King David of a thousand years before, to come back and kick the Romans out of Israel and give them freedom again. They had what are called by theologians, Davidic expectations of a warrior King.

But of course there was the Roman Emperor, the Roman Empire and so what the religious leaders did was they trumped up some charges that said, “Look, this guy is putting himself forth as the new King of the Jews. He’s going to overthrow the Roman Empire, He’s a political threat. He wants Israel to sussed.” Yeah, right! Jesus, this one guy with twelve disciples is going to throw the Roman Empire out of Israel, sure!

And then begins a string of trials that defies explanation. First, Jesus is wheeled in front of the Chief Priest; they ask him, “Are you the Messiah?” He doesn’t answer them. So they beat him and spit of him and mock him. This is like, in a church you know, and that’s what they do to Him. And after that they take Him one peg up to the council, the Sanhedrin, which was the religious ruling body of the day. And they ask him “Are you the Messiah?” And He says “Yes”. And they think, “right, now we’ve got Him.”

Next they wheel him into Pontius Pilate. Now Pontius Pilate is the Roman governor of Judea at that point in time. And Pilate has the power to decide to crucify him, no one else did, the Roman governor did, and so Pilate could have decided to crucify him. And the religious leaders accuse him they say he’s against the Emperor and he doesn’t want you to pay taxes, He’s the King of the Jews. And shortly Pilate discovers that Jesus comes from Galilee, which is up to the North, so he duck shoves this off, (because he didn’t want to deal with it), to King Herod who is like the illegitimate Jewish King up there in Galilee.

And again the religious leaders prosecute Him and put forth all these things, anyway Herod says “I’m not going to decide this.” So he sends him back to Pontius Pilate, and Pilate (second trial by Pilate), finds nothing against Him. But there was a tradition, at the Passover and it was the Passover festival. There was a tradition where the Roman Governor would let the people choose one prisoner to go free.

Now the two candidates for this were Barabbas, who was a real crook, I mean he’d done some bad things, and Jesus. Remember no one could find anything against Jesus. And so Pilate gives the crowd, the mob, a choice, and they scream, “We want Barabbas, we want Barabbas!” “What about Jesus?” Said Pontius Pilate, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!”

Now the record shows that Pilate tried to change their minds, but their minds wouldn’t be changed. These are the same people who just a few days before had shouted with jubilation when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.

Amazing scene! So Pontius Pilate says, “I can find nothing wrong with this man, I wash my hands of it, I’ll have Him flogged and then I’ll hand him over to you and you do as you please.” And that’s exactly what happened. Just a few days before, Jesus was a superstar. Just a few days before the crowds said “This is the Messiah” and then with the Passover festival and the religious leaders who hated him, who’d been plotting to kill him, incited the mob and the violence, public opinion swung on Him.

These people had seen Him do miracles, these people had heard Him preach with power and authority and that ring of authenticity that only Jesus had. And yet they turned against Him. And the crook Barabbas was redeemed, he was released, he went free and Jesus, the Son of God, Jesus was crucified.

It’s ugly mob mentality. You know a few months ago, it was played in news, right around the world in the suburb of Cronulla in Sydney, where I live. There was rioting, this ugly stuff that was whipped up by some ring leaders. It’s the same sort of thing, only two thousand years ago, nothing new under the sun.

So they nailed Him to cross and at the six hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” Which means “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” When some of those standing near Him heard this they said “listen He’s calling for Elijah”, one man ran a filled a sponge with wine vinegar and put it on a stick and offered it to Jesus. And with a loud cry he breathed His last.

And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the Centurion, the Soldier who stood there in front of Jesus heard His cry and saw how He died he said “Surely this man was the Son of God.”

What terrible injustice, yet on the cross, Jesus took my burden of guilt and your burden of guilt and He cried out a cry of love, a cry from God, “don’t you realise how much I love you?’ And right at that point when He died, in the temple where the presence of God dwelt, in the Holiest of Holy places the thick curtain was torn in two. When our sin was paid for on the cross, the door was thrown open to the throne room of God, flung open, the first time in history, never ever would it be closed again. A door that you and I can only walk through when we believe what happened on that cross.

Was it a good Friday? Oh it was a great Friday because amongst the blood and the flesh of Jesus nailed to the cross there is a personal invitation of God, an invitation to you, an invitation to me to live our lives in God’s presence from this moment forth for ever and ever and ever.

Surely, surely this man was the Son of God!