The First Station: Jesus is Condemned to Die

Note: Saturday Ramblings is taking a two-week hiatus in order to present the Stations of the Cross. You will be able to read a Station each morning through Good Friday. Your Rambler will be back, I promise.

The Christian’s life is, in actuality, one long pilgrimage. We are pilgrims walking a road that leads through death into resurrection life through Jesus. From the earliest days of this new faith, followers of Jesus sought to walk the actual road Jesus walked in his passion, death and resurrection. The Via Dolorosa, or the Way of Suffering, is an actual street you can walk in Jerusalem, tracing the path Jesus walked laden with the cross that would be the instrument of his death. Today this path is marked with nine Stations of the Cross, with five additional Stations inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Not everyone can make the trip to Jerusalem to walk the Way of Suffering. But we can all still walk out the Stations. There are fourteen in all. We will present one Station each morning starting today and concluding on Good Friday. We have made these to be interactive, with Scripture, a meditation, an action for you to take, and a prayer. Take your time with these. Use your imagination to enter in to the suffering experienced by our Messiah.

One reason we want to present the Stations of the Cross is so that our entire iMonk community can walk these steps together. As you are reading and acting and praying, you will be joined by thousands (yes, thousands) of others in our community walking the same path. We were never meant to do faith by ourselves, you know.

Lisa Dye and I will alternate days in presenting the Stations. It is our prayer that each day you can be drawn into the heart of the Father, the One who loves us so dearly he sent his only Son to walk this path when no one else was walking with him, and to die the death no one else could die. As you walk this path, seek to know our Lord as he knows himself to be. Welcome, fellow pilgrim. Let’s begin a two week journey into the grace of our loving Lord.  JD

Scripture

At daybreak the council of the elders of the people, both the chief priests and teachers of the law, met together, and Jesus was led before them … They all asked, “Are you then the Son of God?”

He replied, “You are right in saying I am …”

Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. And they began to accuse him … with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand. He released the man [Barrabas] who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will (Luke 22:66, 70; 23:1, 2, 23-25 with references in Meditation to Exodus 3:13-15, Matthew 27:1-26, Mark 15:1-15, Luke 22:66-23:25, John 18:28-40).

Meditation

Jewish leaders have held Jesus all night, waiting until morning when it’s legal to convene a council. At daybreak, he stands before the chief priests and elders, purchased with thirty pieces of silver. Judas, his betrayer is now dead by his own hands, remorseful and wise to their intent to kill the one he followed for three years and called teacher.

In a strange irony the priests refuse to put the blood money back in the treasury for fear of tainting the temple – a temple that is God’s metaphor for his son’s body. They protect the symbol, but want to murder the truth.

They ask Jesus, “Are you the son of God?”

“Yes, I am.”

Jesus is echoing what God said when giving Moses his mission. “This is what you are to say to the Israelites; ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

“Are you the son of God?”

“I am.” Bold, blasphemous words declaring he is uniquely God’s son. He alone IS.

Enraged, they whisk him off to Pilate, Judea’s governor and Tiberius Caesar’s arm of Roman law among the subjugated Jews. Pilate is the one who collects their taxes and decides their legal disputes, the one who keeps a fragile peace in occupied land and who holds the power of life and death in Caesar’s name.

Again, Jesus is questioned – this time in Pilate’s courtyard. His accusers refuse to make themselves ceremonially unclean in the house of a Gentile. They are sticklers for law, but ignore the spirit of it. Their accusations to Pilate are not based on the blasphemy that offends them, but rather what they hope will offend Rome – subverting the nation, opposing taxation and claiming a kingdom other than Caesar’s – whatever it takes to rid themselves of this radical threat to their carefully ordered religious world.

Pilate listens and tells them they should judge Jesus by their own laws. “I find no basis for a charge against this man.”

But this will not do. Only Rome can administer capital punishment. They press him, but Pilate deliberates. He’s considering several issues, including a prophetic warning by his wife to have nothing to do with this man. Even his own sense of justice tells him to not condemn Jesus. Furthermore, he doesn’t want it said of him in Rome that he has offended Jewish customs and not kept order in this part of the empire.

Thinking to outwit the Jewish leaders, Pilate appeals to the crowd. It’s their feast time, Passover, and he has the right to release to them a prisoner of their choosing. A notorious political prisoner, Barabbas, is being held and condemned to death. “Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?”

But the priests and elders have already been circulating, working the crowd into frenzies against Jesus.

“Barabbas!”

“What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?”

“Crucify him!” They shouted louder. “Crucify him!”

Pilate is getting nowhere. Taking a basin of water he washes his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood. It is your responsibility.”

The crowds answer, “Let his blood be on us and on our children.”

Indeed, it would, but not in they way they suppose. They believe Jesus’ death will cleanse their community of blasphemy, but it is their own blasphemy that requires cleansing and Christ’s blood would be the means. His death would atone for a world of blasphemers.

Don’t we all desire to be our own gods? That is the meaning of sin. It is the rejection of the truth that Jesus is I AM in every choosing of our own way.

Action

I want to have my eyes opened to the ways I am like the chief priests and Pharisees. When do I strictly adhere to rules that make me feel righteous while at the same time grieve God with a heart full of judgment and condemnation? Do I protect my pet religious symbols only to murder what God says is the truth?

I want to see every motive that springs from a desire to be I AM and submit it to God’s transforming power through Christ’s life and the presence of his Spirit in me.

Prayer

Father I ask your forgiveness not only for what I do, but for who “i” am, each arising from thinking I am my own god – or at least from wanting to be. Whether I lust for my own goodness by striving to behave or lust for pleasure through reckless misbehavior, I try to take your place. In the former, I look for my own righteousness rather than receive yours. In the latter, I cling to control and forsake your sovereignty.

Jesus, the condemnation pronounced over you should have been mine. You willingly stood in my place and I thank you.

Spirit, you are the one who is the revealer of this mystery and also the one who manifests the power of it in my life. I am free from the condemnation and sentence of death I deserve, yet united with Christ in his bearing of them for me.

Chorus

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.

Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.