Text: Mark 15:1-39                                                                Palmarum (6^th Sunday in Lent)

The World Turned Upside Down

            In the name of him who loved us and gave himself for us, dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

            It happened at the conclusion of our War for Independence, when General Cornwallis surrendered the last bastion of British power in the colonies:  the fortifications at Yorktown, Virginia.  From the General’s perspective, and that of the rest of his countrymen, the unthinkable was happening.  The highly trained and believed to be “invincible” armies of Great Britain, the mightiest and furthest reaching empire on earth, were being forced to surrender to American General George Washington, and his rag-tag rabble of motley, ill equipped, poorly trained, colonials.  To Cornwallis, the combination of humiliation and sheer bewilderment was unbearable.  And so, perhaps as a way of expressing his bitterness – and maybe even to take a final shot at the Americans, at the formal ceremony in which he was to march forward and surrender both his colors and his sword, he directed the British Army band to play not a defiant patriotic song declaring the indomitable spirit of his country, nor a stirring martial tune to encourage his demoralized troops, nor even a sad dirge to express their feelings at the moment, but rather a popular ditty then going around the dance halls entitled The World Turned Upside Down.  It was his way of saying, “Things simply aren’t supposed to be this way.”

            To a certain extent, if you’ve been watching the news this past week, you’ve seen something similar. Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, all throughout the Muslim and Arab world, from Pakistan to Morocco and all places in between, we’ve been seeing angry crowds on the march, vigorously protesting American imperialism in the Middle East.  Arabs are furious; and for a large part it’s because of the things they’ve been watching on the Arab news network, al Jezeera.  And basically, they’ve been seeing only the things the Iraqi Government wanted them to see:  the heroic Saddam Hussein meeting with his staff in defiance of the “Yanqui”-dogs, who despite their vast technological superiority are incapable of defeating him; ardent supporters of the Iraqi President, brandishing weapons and pledging to lay down their lives for Allah, Saddam Hussein, and country; the black-bereted so-called “Information Minister” (now a.k.a. “Baghdad Bob” or “Minister Magoo”), claiming confidently how on all fronts coalition forces are being defeated and dying in droves in the desert far, far from Baghdad; and, of course, scene upon scene of wounded women and children, belying coalition claims that they do not target noncombatants.  No wonder Arabs are angry.  If you saw only what they did, you’d hate the “ugly Americans” too.

But then, suddenly, unexpectedly, these same folks watching al Jezeera are seeing American tanks and armored personnel carriers parked all over the Iraqi capital.  And far from being embroiled in bitter combat, they are surrounded by cheering crowds who are welcoming the soldiers, handing them flowers, and enlisting their aid to tear down the statues of Saddam Hussein that seem to be located at every street corner.  Now people all over the Arab world are astonished and confused.  How did the Americans get there if they’re all dying in the desert?  And why aren’t they engaged in the fight of their lives?  What happened to the unconquerable ranks of the Republican Guard blessed by Allah himself?  And why are all these Iraqi people cheering American soldiers?  Why are they desecrating their beloved leader’s image with their sandals?  What’s going on here?  This is all wrong!  This is not the way it’s supposed to be.  Suddenly, everything they thought they understood is shown to be wrong.  These baffling images are turning the world upside down for these people.

            And perhaps there’s been a time in your own life when you experienced something similar:  when things began to unfold in a way that was totally unexpected and in some way opposite to what you would have considered the way things ought to be – and your world was turned upside down.  Do you remember what that felt like?  The shock and amazement?  Well, let me suggest that today’s Gospel reading about the trial and passion of our Lord should evoke the same feelings in us; because if ever the world has been turned completely on its head, it happened here—and in an infinitely more powerful and astonishing way.  I suppose, though, that since we’ve heard the story so many times before, for us it’s lost some of its “shock and awe”.  And so what I’d like to do this morning is spend a few moments reviewing a few of the upside-down facts of the story in the hopes of recovering some of it.

            Just for example, the Lord has blessed each of us with an innate sense of justice.  We know the difference between right and wrong, and we know that those who break the rules deserve to be punished.  But one thing we hate to see is an innocent person condemned.  In fact our whole legal system is layered with safeguards to prevent such a thing from happening – it’s built on the philosophy that it’s better to let a thousand guilty people go free than to jail one innocent person.

And then we come to the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate.  We know the history of the accused: he’s been going around healing thousands of people of terrible diseases, and restoring sight, hearing, the ability to walk, and even life itself to others.  And he’s been teaching.  He’s been opening the Scriptures in a wonderful way that no one ever has before, and proclaiming a message of God’s love and forgiveness for lost mankind.  His only crime, if you can call it that, is that he’s revealed the long-standing misconceptions of the people and the spiritual blindness of the religious authorities.  Never has there been a man more innocent.  And yet, the Jewish religious authorities – the holy men steeped in God’s Word – have already condemned him to death before even taking him to Pilate. They need the Roman Governor’s approval to carry out the death sentence – but even they know that Jesus is not guilty of a capital crime under Roman law.  So they trump up a charge of treason:  that he claims to be a king over and against Caesar.

So having been brought to trial, Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  It’s the only charge he answers in the whole trial, and he agrees to it:  “Yes, it is as you say.”  The interesting thing is that Pilate takes the answer at face value, and thereafter refers to Jesus as the King of the Jews.  But still, he doesn’t think that Jesus is guilty of crimes against the state.    Even on the placard that he will later direct to be placed over Jesus’ head on the cross so that passersby will know what crimes brought the condemned person to this horrible fate, it will say only, “The King of the Jews” rather than “Guilty of treason for claiming to be King of the Jews.”

But at this point in the trial, all the chief priests rush forward at once, each one shouting out a long list of terrible offenses they say Jesus has committed.  None of the charges is true.  They only reveal what a pack of vicious and deceitful wolves the shepherds of God’s people really are.  But though they believe that they are engaged in a conspiracy of lies to get rid of Jesus, the truth is that unbeknown to them, they are performing their priestly duties.  You see, as the priests it was their job to offer sacrifices for the sins of the people. But two things had to happen before a sacrifice was offered.  First it had to be judged to be an acceptable sacrifice.  For example, a lamb for Passover had to be a one-year old male without any spot or blemish.  The victim had to be perfect.  Then, once its suitability was established, the second thing the priests had to do was to confess the sins for which the animal was to be the substitutionary sacrifice of atonement.  They had to declare the sins, and place them on the head of the victim.

That’s precisely what’s going on here at the trial of Jesus.  First the court legally determines Jesus to be an acceptable sacrifice – that he’s without “spot or blemish” – as Pilate readily agrees, “I find no fault in him”.  At the same time, he is also determined to be the Jewish people’s King – and from the Scriptures we know that there can only be one true King of the Jews, and that is God himself.  And just as soon as the court establishes these two facts, the priests begin to confess the sins that the victim must die for:  the people’s sins, their own sins, … my sins and yours.  “And like a sheep before its shearers is dumb, he opened not his mouth.”   Jesus makes no reply to the charges.  Instead, like the innocent sacrificial lamb he was, he received the guilt of all the sins the priests named.  And lest we think it was only the priests involved, the whole crowd gives its assent to this.  When Pilate brings Jesus before them, he asks, “What shall I do with the one you call the King of the Jews?”  —That is, the one you recognize as your King.  The crowd replies, “Crucify him!”  Pilate asks, “Why?  What crime is he guilty of?”  And the crowd cannot name a single thing.  “Just kill him.”  And so, in this world turned upside down, the One true innocent, who is called King, is condemned.

Meanwhile, one who is truly guilty is set free.  We’re told that there was a notorious criminal named Barabbas in prison awaiting execution.  It was probably his cross that Jesus ended up taking to Golgotha.  This Barabbas, whose name just happens to mean “son of the father”, was a lawless man; both a rebel and a murderer – and everybody knew it. But this is the essence of the Jewish religion and ours:  sacrifices are offered to God precisely so that the guilty can go free.  And here, the only begotten Son of the Father must die so that every other “son of the father” can live.

There are of course, many other things that are wrong in the upside down world the evangelist Mark presents to us today.  There’s the mock coronation ceremony in the Praetorium, where the King is “crowned”, not with a jewel-encrusted diadem representing regal glory; but rather a wreath of twisted thorns representing the curse and penalty of man’s rebellion against God.  He’s given a reed instead of a scepter; and instead of offering him their acclaim and their hands to serve him as subjects ought, they spit their contempt and strike him with their fists.  Rather than robe him in glory, they strip him naked and flog the skin from his back. And finally, in this negative image of the way the world should be, on this – what should be the day of his exultation – the King is indeed “raised up” before the people, not on their shoulders but on a cross.

Still more is upside down; and even those who mock Jesus see it.  “He saved others, but he cannot save himself”, they remark in scornful jest.  It seems so comically wrong to them that the one they readily admitted had helped so many others with miraculous power and divine authority is now powerless to help himself.  But the real irony is that they do not see what’s truly backward about it:  that by not saving himself, he is saving them.  They cannot see it because their minds and spirits are like everything else on this upside down day: totally dark at high noon when the daylight should be the brightest and everything should be the most clear.

And what’s most upside down of all is the shocking end of the matter, when God who is the author and source and meaning of all life, dies for the crimes of his rebellious creatures.  At that moment it suddenly becomes clear even to a pagan guard standing by:  “Surely, this man was the Son of God.”  “God is dead on the cross – and I have had a hand in killing him.”  And now we see it too: that we, in our rebellion – by turning everything upside down – by wanting to be gods ourselves, have killed him. 

            Which is exactly the point:  it was mankind’s rebellion against the Lord God that originally turned the whole world upside down and plunged it into darkness and death. And we too, each of us, have continued to pursue the same rebellious and contrary course:  rejecting his rule and wanting to be the lords of our lives, mocking our King with false praise, crowning him with our sin and shame, and clamoring for his innocent blood to cover us every time we sin planning in advance to come back later and ask for his pardon.  We turn the light to darkness.  We are the ones who are completely upside down.

            And the reason that the things in this reading look so wrong and backward and upside down to us is that here our gracious Lord is reaching into the upside down world we created for ourselves and to which we are so accustomed in order to set it back upright again.  Here he places himself at the bottom of what’s upside down so that when he turns it right side up, he’ll be back on top where he belongs.  And here too he models for us the true love and friendship, and humility, and helpful service, and self-denial he would have us strive for.  These are the virtues which we currently hold so low and despise that rank highest in his right side up Kingdom.

            And that’s precisely what St. Paul is telling us in this morning’s Epistle: “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:  Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” … Who is even now turning us upright again through faith in his Son; to whom be our praise and thanks for ever.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!