We are several Sundays into the season of Lent right now, the 6 weeks leading into Good Friday and Easter, the weeks where we follow the journey of Jesus toward the cross. This year our Lent worship themes and Scriptures have been guided by the worship materials given to us in the Leader Magazine – a resource for congregations published by Menno Media. We often use these resources during Lent and Advent, as do other Mennonite congregations across North America. Some years we use much of what has been given to us, and other years we have to make lots of ‘creative adaptations’, or we abandon them all together and create our own worship series. This year, the worship resources have been excellent. This is where most of the Call to Worships and Confessions and scripts come from. As I talk around with other local pastors, it sounds like almost every other Mennonite church is using them too, and finding them both meaningful and relevant to the world situations we are living in right now. There is a buzz about Lent this year! It hits the spot! The resources were created by a team of pastors from the Atlantic Coast Conference on the East Coast of the United States, from congregations in Maryland, Massachusetts and Maine. I found it neat that the group included one of the students I taught last winter in my on-line AMBS class.
The Scriptures follow the Narrative Lectionary, and the stories in the gospel of John that lead us to the events of Passion Week. We have covered some of the major large stories in the latter half of John – the death and raising of Lazarus, the anointing of Jesus by Mary, the Footwashing scene with Peter and the disciples, and this Sunday both the denial of Jesus by Peter and the trial scene with Pilate. The overall theme of Dwelling in Dissonance speaks into these Scriptures, but also captures what so many of us are feeling about our world right now. There is so much dissonance, discord, incongruity, dissension, polarization and conflict in our world. Each Sunday in worship a form of dissonance is named, that emerges from the story, but is also the lens from which to hear the story. Belief and Uncertainty, Known and Unknown, and today, Integrity and Frailty. I think about integrity. It is an elusive thing in our world. It has to do with honesty, principles, fairness, consistency, keeping promises, character. We talk about a certain business person having integrity in their business – they are trustworthy. I have often used the word integrity in funerals to describe the character of someone who has died. There is a phrase, sometimes used when lots has really gone wrong in life for someone – ‘at least I have my integrity.’ The origins or etymology of the word integrity in Latin and French have to do with being whole, intact, undivided, complete – like an integer in math – a whole number – and over time integrity came to mean soundness of moral principle and character. It is interesting to think of integrity as having undivided attention – all of your decisions heading in one direction, and to ponder what happens when that intention gets scattered or distracted. Now you would think the opposite of integrity, the dissonance, would be dishonesty or duplicity or hypocrisy or deceit, but here it is named as frailty. Frailty has to do with weakness, shortcoming, imperfections, fragility, not measuring up or being able to do what one once could do. Really, it has to do with being human. I have some sympathy for frailty. Let’s see how this dissonance of Integrity and Frailty play out in our Scriptures.
This morning we have listened to two stories and two characters from John 18 that we don’t usually put together, even as they follow right after each other and the stories intertwine. We see Peter denying Jesus three times as he waits in the courtyard trying to find out what might happen to Jesus, and Pilate struggling to know what to do with Jesus after he is handed to him from the religious leaders. Peter and Pilate come from very different backgrounds and personalities, and each have a very different relationship to Jesus. But in reading them together, I started to wonder about the parallels between both characters, and if they are caught in this same dissonance of integrity and frailty.
Peter we know well from the gospel stories. He is the passionate follower of Jesus – impulsive, dramatic, loyal, curious, and prone to spontaneous actions. A few days before this scene he reacts strongly to Jesus trying to wash his feet, but then wants not only his feet but his hands and head too. Then in the garden, at the arrest of Jesus, he draws his sword and cuts off the right ear of the high priest’s slave. Emotions run high with Peter. So we find him now inside the courtyard, standing around a charcoal fire with the slaves and the guards, trying to melt anonymously into the crowd, but trying to hear everything going on as the high priest questions Jesus – eventually sending him to Pilate. I can only imagine the fear that dominated his heart. This was life or death. He could easily have been arrested – by association with this rebel Jesus, or for pulling out his sword in the garden. Three times he gets recognized, he loses his cover, of all his bad luck, there is even a relative of Malchus whose ear was cut off. Can we really blame Peter for denying Jesus, for that white lie of saying he doesn’t know him? Isn’t that just being human? But what about his integrity, his commitment to Jesus? He has spent 3 years learning to trust Jesus, learning to speak for peace and justice and love. Jesus has been preparing the disciples for this day, warning them, praying for them, giving them a long farewell speech we hear in chapters 13-17 of John. But it is not enough. In that moment of fear and panic and self preservation, Peter denies Jesus – he is weak, fragile, falls short – he shows his human frailty. Peter dwells in this dissonance between integrity and frailty – and I find myself with much sympathy toward Peter.
What about Pilate? What do we know about him? Surely this is a much different character. Sandy gave a good explanation of the religious and political systems operated in Israel at the time. Israel was a vasal state of the Roman Empire. Locally, the Jewish religious leaders had much power with the people, but they were controlled by Rome, and Pilate was the appointed Governor, the go between – whose primary task was to keep peace, keep order. He is caught in between. He does have power and can bring the full force of law and violence as needed. He is strong. I suspect he thought of himself as fair and just, of playing his role with integrity within that system. He has to balance so many thing, and he knew how to do this… or thought he did. But now he has to deal with this Jesus, this rebel who is stirring up the people and potentially drawing unwanted attention to Pilate’s realm. The high priest hands Jesus over, wanting a death sentence. But Pilate insists on due process – on integrity. He keeps questioning Jesus and the questioning is all about whether Jesus is the King of the Jews. Jesus turns this around to talk about the Kingdom that does not belong to this world – the Kingdom of God. And Jesus says he came into the world to testify to the truth, to which Pilate asks a profound question, as timely then as it is today, ‘What is truth?’ Isn’t that a central question about integrity – honesty – truthfulness. The truth for Pilate, his integrity of due process, is that in the end he finds no case against Jesus, and he offers up the option of release, to which they shouted ‘Not this man but Barrabas,’
Next Sunday we will read the rest of the story of the trial with Pilate from John 19, with the theme and dissonance of Complicity and Innocence, focussing on the people and crowds and the religious leaders. We will find out that in the end, Pilate gives in, capitulates. The religious leaders keep putting on the pressure, and pull out their trump card – loyalty to Caesar, to the Emperor, to Rome – Pilate, if you release Jesus, you are no friend of the Emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the Emperor. It says that Pilate was more afraid than ever. If he doesn’t condemn Jesus, he risks the peace of his domain, he risks offending the religious leaders, he risks his job and his future. Pilate too is not enough. Here too we find fear and panic and self-preservation, and Pilate comes off week and falling short – he shows his human frailty. Pilate too is caught in this dissonance between integrity and frailty… and in the end, I find myself with a bit of sympathy too toward Pilate, as unsavory and political a character as he is.
In a few minutes you will hear Sandy read our Confession Poem, which contains the lines ‘We feel for Peter… We feel for Pilate.’ These are human characters who carry some of the same characteristics and dilemmas that we do too in our time. We too can dwell in this dissonance between integrity and frailty. Underneath both the story of Peter and Pilate is fear – fear of consequences, fear of being outed and made an example, fear of what others will think, fear for safety, fear of losing control of the situation, fear for the future. Fears are powerful! We spent some time at the Wednesday night Bible study just naming our own fears and realizing how deep they sit within each of us. When we are fearful, we don’t act in the ways we might have hoped we would act, we feel the frailty of our own human-ness, and can so easily compromise our integrity.
The Leader Materials offered a series of very relevant and timely questions to go with these two stories. They ask us to reflect on the times we are living in – a time right now when very powerful voices, especially south of the border, are creating and re-creating, or you could say perverting – the narratives and realities we are living with, a time when democracy and freedoms are under threat, a time when the foreigner and immigrant, anyone different or diverse is defined as other and enemy, a time when an unjustified war has been declared in Iran and the Middle East, a time when propaganda so often replaces truth, a time when we so often feel powerless to speak and act, a time when integrity and frailty hang in the balance. Let me just read some of the questions from the Leader, coming out of these stories:
- How might we be experiencing the dissonance between risk and comfort?
- In what ways to we feel torn between solidarity and self-protection these days, between the boldness of publicly standing up for our values and the impulse to hide?
- How might this passage invite us to revisit the dissonance between our pacifist ideas and our context as citizens of global military superpowers? (or in our case in Canada – next door to a superpower)
- In what ways might Jesus be calling us to revisit notions of ‘The upside-down kingdom’ today?
- The question from Pilate – What is truth?
- What rooster crows or wake up calls have we been hearing?
- How might our congregations build compassion for the sufferings of our world, for people near and far, who behave like Peter or Pilate, and for the Peter and Pilate within ourselves too?
These might be questions to pick up in our worship response time today?
These stories also speak into some of the recent conversations we have been having here at SJMC, initiated by the letter shared last month by Wolfgang Koehler. In his letter he shared his own fears of a changing world that feels so reminiscent of what his relatives experienced in Germany before World War II, and asking what response we have as a Mennonite Peace Church. We had some great conversations in Worship Response that Sunday. This past Thursday about 20 people gathered for a Peace Group Zoom call. It was powerful stuff. We shared some of our deep concerns and fears. We shared some of our feelings of hopelessness and how we are not sure how to respond, or what to do, or what will make a difference. We shared our frailty. But we also spoke words of integrity, and words of hope and words of potential action. We continued to brainstorm lots of ideas of what we could do as a congregation, and how we could partner with others to speak out – singing, protests, signs, podcasts, videos, letter writing, lawn signs, prayer, candle-lighting, talking to politicians, connecting to other churches and our conferences, a local SJMC Day of Peace, worship. Some of these may stick and others fall away. But it felt like collectively we could move out of some of the dissonance, and together find some ways of responding that have integrity to who we are as Christians, as followers of Jesus, and integrity to who we are as a congregation. I pray those conversations continue.
Dwelling in dissonance has always been a part of the human condition, as has fear, frailty, tough situations, difficult choices, political uncertainty and power, unknown futures. Peter is a part of who we are. Pilate is a part of who we are. I find myself with sympathy here, because in our own frailty, the God of all integrity reaches to us with compassion and kindness. As we will sing, Called or not Called, God is there. Fearless or scared, seen or unseen, named or unnamed, God is there, the hand of the Maker is everywhere. Amen.