Pilate is the biggest bully in town, but there’s a bigger bully not so very far away. When a person chooses to live by force and violence, they become part of a hierarchy in which there is always someone else above them who might use force and violence against them. Jesus lives outside that hierarchy. He cannot be controlled using threats of violence. Jesus is the one being questioned, but Pilate is the one who is powerless.
As people waved palm branches to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, their behaviour was far from unprecedented. None of the people around Jesus would be old enough to remember Simon the Hammer who was welcomed in the same way, but they certainly would have heard the stories. And those stories told them that hope is powerful and, like all powerful things, it can be dangerous.
Rev Pam Hynd's sermon for Lent 5
We live in a world in which good and evil, hope and desperation, love and self-interest are mingled in ways that are never straightforward and are often confusing. Every simple solution is clouded by complexity.
In John 3, Nick comes to Jesus by night. He has questions and an inkling that Jesus might have answers, but he doesn’t want his peers to see him with Jesus. He doesn’t want to be accused of taking Jesus’s side. So, he meets Jesus under cover of night. Jesus tells him he must be born again from above, and Nick doesn’t understand. And who could blame him? He asked an honest question and Jesus replied with a riddle.
In today’s Gospel reading we find the devil pressing his elbow deep into the wounds of humanity – wounds carried in Jesus’ mind and body just as much as in any of our minds and bodies, because he was just as human as we are. Wounds that we all share – wounds around being denied what we need, being misunderstood, and being limited and frustrated in the good we wish to do.
Rev Pam Hynd's sermon for The Transfiguration
In a world that is headed in the direction of corruption and decay… in a world where people with wealth and power are accumulating more and more wealth and power, without scrutiny, at the expense of people who have little and are in danger is losing what they have… in a world where some people – like the Herod dynasty for example - are using religion to justify their tyranny… Jesus calls his followers to be a bubble of healthy hope where people act with integrity and respect, even when it costs them.
We live in an upside-down world, in broken systems where expediency, politics and competition are the order of the day. How sad for those who embrace those things! Wouldn’t it be awful to be someone who benefits from systems that dehumanise, deceive, defame, and distort! What a blessing it is to be someone who cannot succeed in such systems but who works for beautiful alternatives that foster life, hope, and peace!
In a sermon on Loving Your Enemies, Martin Luther King preached these words: "Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies—or else? The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."