Risk and Knowledge: Good Friday

Holy Week is a journey. We walk with Jesus this week, from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, to his Last Supper on Thursday, to his cross on Good Friday, to the empty tomb in the darkness of Saturday night, and finally to the glorious light of Sunday morning. To walk with Jesus on the way to Sunday, and beyond, is to share in the risks he took for us.

But what does Jesus risk on this Friday? To risk is to trust. To risk is to take something precious to you and offer it for some greater purpose, knowing that in the risk you may lose it. But you trust that you won’t lose what is precious to you. To risk, therefore, is to embrace uncertainty. To risk something is to not know whether you will keep what you have or whether you will lose what is precious and valuable to you.

So, what does Jesus risk on this day? To read John’s version of Jesus’s trial and death, you might not think he is risking anything. There seems to be no uncertainty in Jesus throughout this story. Today he is utterly calm before his accusers. In John’s telling of the story, there is no anguished plea from Jesus that he might be spared the bitter cup, as we hear in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Nailed to the cross, there is no cry of apparent despair, “My God, my God, why have you left me.” Last night, we heard John say, “Jesus knew that he had come from God and was returning to God.”

And yet, could any of the Gospel writers have known the depth of Jesus’ knowledge. Could any human being walking with Jesus, even those inspired by the Spirit to write down the Good News, have known all that was in the mind and heart of this man who is also God? This man, Jesus Christ, is like a large diamond. You walk around it. And at every different angle, the light shines on it, and you see a different aspect of its beauty. You will never be able to see the full beauty of that diamond. You will only see aspects of its beauty. But the more you walk around it, the more you see.

That is more true of the Passion than any other event in Jesus’ life. Here is the collision of divinity and humanity. He who is God dies today. He who is God fully embraces the human condition of uncertainty, fear, and death. He who is God embraces the risk that comes with being human.

But what exactly was he risking? He had come from God and knew that he was returning to God. He knew that on the other side of that dark veil was eternal life. And that’s more than we can claim to “know.” But our definition of “knowledge” is different from how the children of Israel understood knowledge. The King James Bible is not easy to understand. But in this year, the 400th anniversary of its publication, there are still insights in that translation that no modern version can equal.

For instance, only the King James gets it right that when we have sexual intercourse, we “know” each other. That’s how the Israelites understood what happened in that most intimate act of human beings. We moderns have increased our powers of observation so much that we equate knowledge with an object which we can observe and study and make intellectual statements about. Our ancestors in the faith understood that true knowledge also means a shared experience that we come to know, not just in our brains, but in depth of our hearts right down the bowels that tremble inside us. To “know” something is to share in the experience of that something.

For Jesus to have been truly human, he had to have known the human experience of having to walk in trust that the reward would be worth the risk. So when he came to this day, this hour, did he “know” that there would be something on the other side? Since none of us has shared that experience, none of us can say that we “know” the answer. But as Jesus knew what it is to be human, I believe that knowledge included our experience of death. I believe that Jesus risked his life in trust that there would be a light on the other side of the dark tunnel.

But then, how could Jesus have known that he was God? To quote one of my favorite biblical scholars, N.T. Wright, “His ‘knowledge’ was of a more risky, but perhaps more significant sort: like knowing one is loved. One cannot ‘prove’ it except by living it.” Throughout his public ministry, Jesus did things, which his fellow Jews understood, only God could do. Commanding the sea to be still; feeding thousands with just a few loaves of bread and some fish; pronouncing forgiveness of sins.

And today in John’s Gospel, as the Jewish people prepare to celebrate the Passover, Jesus makes himself the lamb. On Passover, a lamb was slaughtered as a reminder of those first lambs who were slaughtered on that first Passover in Egypt. On that night, the Spirit of the Lord passed over the houses of the Israelites who painted their doors with the blood of their lambs. In John’s Gospel, Jesus is crucified and dies as the Passover lambs are being slaughtered in the Temple. He is the one Passover lamb whose blood saves us from eternal death.

But Jesus doesn’t pass over death. He chooses to pass through death, trusting as he passes through death, he is blazing the trail by which we will pass through death. Jesus “knew” what he was doing, and that only God could do it. Only God could die and yet live. But that knowledge was much more than a cold fact lodging in his brain. The knowledge of resurrection and eternal life could only be experienced. It could only be known in the doing.

What human being, save the insane, would dare to claim such “knowledge.” And what human being would actually dare to live out such “knowledge.” Only a human being who “knew” that he had come from God and “knew” that he would return to God. No human being has ever risked so much as did Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God. And there is nothing that we human beings risk, day after day, that will not be rewarded a hundred times over. We just need to give whatever it is we risk to Jesus Christ in prayer. And he will take it with him to the other side. There is no death that we die, day after day, through which we will not pass to the other side.

In our risks, and in our deaths, Jesus Christ is with us in the midst of them. And he is also waiting for us on the other side.

The image is of a painting by Barnett Newman: 13th Station of the Cross: Jesus Dies