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"Why Jesus Died"

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on Luke 20:9-19
given Sunday, April 1, 2007

As we embark on Holy Week, we recognize today as both Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. Palm Sunday reminds us that when Jesus entered Jerusalem, he was welcomed by an adoring crowd waving palm branches and shouting “Hosannas!” Passion Sunday derives its name from the Latin word “passus” which means to suffer. This is the week we remember the suffering and death of Jesus. The palm crosses we have this morning connect the Hosanna parade with the downward spiral of events that led to Jesus’ demise.

Some churches eliminate the sermon on this Sunday and instead, read the entire passion narrative that begins with the triumphant entry and then moves through the cleansing of the temple, the final teachings of Jesus, the last supper, the agony in Gethsemane, the betrayal, the mocking, the trial, the denial and finally, the crucifixion. In a few days we will have the opportunity to experience that grand sweep of events when several of our members present the Passion of our Lord during our Maundy Thursday service.

However, this morning, we step back from the details of the final week and focus on where it all led: the death of Jesus. Jesus captures the heart of the matter in a parable he told early in the final week. It is an allegory in which God sends a prophet to the people of faith, in hopes of reforming them so that they may once again pursue justice and mercy. However, the people reject the prophet and continue down their misguided path. God sends another prophet and then another, each time hoping to refocus the chosen people so that they may once again be a blessing to the nations. But prophet after prophet is rejected. Finally, God sends his son, thinking “Surely they will come to their senses and heed his word.” However, instead of welcoming him and believing him and following him, they kill him.

Jesus predicted it would happen. How did he know? I don’t think it was because Jesus peered into a crystal ball and saw the future; neither do I think it was because he believed that God demanded a human sacrifice. Rather, I think he knew his death was inevitable because he was determined to remain faithful to God and such faithfulness led him into a deadly confrontation with the religious and political leaders of his day.

Remember that during the time of Jesus, Israel was occupied by a foreign army: the Romans. The Romans allowed the Jews to continue practicing their religious faith, but with two stipulations. First, they could not stir up any resistance or rebellion, things had to remain calm. And, second, they had to pay taxes to Caesar.

The Romans did not rule Jerusalem directly. Instead, they appointed Jews to rule on Rome’s behalf. From the time Jesus was about ten years old, the Jewish religious leaders became the minions of the occupying force. They were given the responsibility of collecting the tax to pay Rome, and that tax was keeping the majority of people desperately poor. (1)

Since the time of Moses, God instructed the Hebrew people to care for the poor. Time after time the prophets chastised the people for their neglect of the widows and orphans. Jesus saw that the religious leaders, in their collaboration with Rome, were exacerbating the people’s poverty. That is why he marched into the Temple, caused a commotion and said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer...but you have made it a den of robbers.” The priests were robbing the people through the taxes they were collecting for Rome.

Then, within a day of his Temple tantrum, the religious leaders sent several Pharisees and Herodians to try to trap Jesus with a question. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” They knew that if they could get Jesus to state publicly that he was opposed to paying taxes to Rome, the political authorities could seize him on the spot. However, Jesus found a clever way to reply to their question that neither opened the door to his arrest nor endorsed the Roman tax.

Throughout much of his ministry, Jesus criticized the ruling religious parties. Then, in the final week of his life, he delivered a strong indictment against the chief priests for failing to serve the welfare of the people.

Why did Jesus do this? He knew it would put his life in jeopardy. Why didn’t he stay outside of Jerusalem and undermine their authority from a safe distance?

Recently I read a poem by Mary Oliver entitled, “The Journey,” and I think it might be the answer.

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting their bad advice —
though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug at your ankles.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do. (2)

There are times in our lives when we feel restlessness within ourselves. When that restless feeling inside is coupled with the feeling that we are being pulled by something beyond us, it could be God urging us to take up a cause or to head in a new direction. It could be God encouraging us to do what we need to do.

Jesus became convinced of what he had to do. To remain faithful to God, he had to stand firm for justice and mercy for God’s people, and that meant he had to march into Jerusalem and confront the religious and political authorities of his day. He could not wait passively and simply hope that things would get better. The people were suffering, so he had to take action.

Last fall, James Kim and his wife Kati, along with their daughters - four-year-old Penelope and seven-month-old Sabine - were driving home to San Francisco after spending Thanksgiving in Seattle. As they drove on, a heavy snow began to fall and they accidentally turned down a logging road. The logging road should have been blocked off by a gate because it could become hazardous in winter. However, vandals apparently had cut the lock and the gate was open. The Kims did not realize that they had driven down the wrong road so they kept driving. The weather grew worse and eventually their car became stuck in the deep snow.

They were stranded in their car for a full week. They huddled together in the cold; they ate berries, baby food and crackers. After a few days, they burned their tires to keep warm and in hopes of catching someone’s attention. When they ran out of food, Kati, who was still nursing their baby, began to breast-feed their four-year-old.

We can try to imagine the cold, the pain and the hunger the family must have felt. But it is difficult to imagine their fear that intensified with each passing day; they might not be found in time. It must have been excruciating for James and Kati to watch their children suffer.

So after a week stuck in the wilderness, and no sign of rescue, James Kim decided that a father has to do whatever he can to save his family - or to die trying. He ventured out to try to find help. Hungry, weak, and wearing only street clothes, James Kim, a city boy from San Francisco, walked and crawled for ten miles over sharp ledges and through bristling forests; he even swam through freezing creek waters. Two days after he left, his wife and daughters were found. They were in decent shape and they survived. But two days after that, James Kim was found in a ravine, dead from exposure to the harsh elements. (3)

When I heard the story of James Kim, the story of Jesus trekking to Jerusalem in his final days flashed through my mind. I thought of how Jesus was faced with a dire situation, how he showed fierce determination despite the odds, how he set aside his personal safety to help others, how he refused to turn back despite the obstacles he encountered, how his loyalty and his love for others ended up getting him killed. When Jesus marched into Jerusalem and confronted the leaders who were oppressing the people, he was declaring to the world, “Whatever the cost, I will remain faithful to the end.”

A few days after entering the city, his enemies appeared. They seized him and led him away to the house of the high priest. He was given opportunities to save himself by renouncing his Messiahship, but Jesus knew what he had to do. He was carted off to the Roman authorities who sentenced him to die. After shredding his skin with a brutal whipping, they nailed him to a cross. He hung on the cross for several hours, and then breathed his last - but not before doing something remarkable. He forgave. He forgave those who did not understand him; he forgave those who abandoned him; he even forgave the very ones who were killing him. And in doing so, he demonstrated that God’s love has no boundaries.

Why did Jesus die? To reveal God’s love for us. The cross announces that God will go to any length for us, that God will never abandon us and that God will love us to the very end.

The cross is a symbol of human cruelty and immense suffering, but more importantly, it is a monument to God’s everlasting love for us.

NOTES

Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), p.18.
John Buchanan quoting “The Journey,” from Roger Housden’s “Ten Poems to Change Your Life.”
Scott Simon, “The Heroism of James Kim” on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition, Saturday, December 9, 2006.

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