You remember in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol how Ebeneezer Scrooge was able to go with the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future into a real life scene and hear and see everything that went on…but be totally unheard and unseen? What if we could do that? Wouldn’t that be amazing?!

What if we could walk with Jesus on the Via Dolorosa- the Way of Sorrows, down the street he carried the cross upon? What if we could walk the Jesus Way, and along the way stop ten different times, and crouch down, and watch and listen to everything that went on. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

It’s what we are trying to do this Lent. Take six weeks to walk a journey that was just a few days in length. The Way of Jesus. And watch and listen and pay attention. We started last Sunday. We hunkered down in a Garden at night, and saw Jesus praying.

The garden was a good place to start such an important journey. Jesus’ friends were having a hard time staying awake, but not Jesus. He was engaged in deep conversation with God, understanding the cup he was being given to drink, knowing the costs of bearing the pain and sin of all humanity…and saying yes. The garden was a good place to start. And praying was a good way to start. It was quiet, dark, solitary.

Tonight we find ourselves at a second station, watching. It is entirely different. It is loud, intrusive, filled with people and voices. Jesus was arrested in the garden, and brought before a kind of religious tribunal. I want you to join me at this trial. I think, I hope, we’ll leave with more questions than answers. Like Scrooge, we’ll be neither seen nor heard. But let’s pay attention. If you are able, stand for the reading of the gospel.

Reading: Matthew 26:57-68

On May 11, 1970 a 23-year old African American army veteran named Henry Marrow walked into a dumpy store owned by a white man named Robert Teel in Oxford, North Carolina. A few minutes later Marrow was running out of the store, chased by Teel and his two sons who would claim that Marrow had insulted their wife and mother. They chased Marrow, caught him, beat him to a pulp and then shot him dead, in front of a number of people.

When the trial came, potential jurors were selected from two neighboring counties. Despite the fact that one county was 2/3 African American, and the other 1/3…Out of 100 prospective jurors, only 9 were black. When the final selection was made, the 12 member jury was all white. And when their decision came, it was unanimously not guilty…on all counts, from manslaughter to murder. The prosecuting attorney was so incredulous that he insisted on polling the jury, forcing each one to publically pronounce the words “not guilty.” Which each one of them did.

You can read this story in Blood Done Sign My Name, a riveting book by Timothy Tyson, written in 2004. It’s about faith, about Christianity, racism and injustice. Is that what is going on here in our scripture, another blatant example of gut-wrenching injustice in a courtroom?

Because it is a courtroom. Yes, they are at the house of Caiaphas the High Priest, the highest religious authority in Jerusalem. But it is clearly a courtroom and a trial. The jurors are the members of the Sanhedrin, a ruling body of 70…though only 23 were needed to be there for a quorum. I thought only Presbyterians had to deal with quorums. The Sanhedrin was made up of three kinds of people, all men: the chief priests, the scribes and the elders.

The Bible scholar Dale Bruner uncomfortably re-names these characters as: senior pastors, bible teachers and lay leaders. And only partially tongue in cheek equates them to Episcopals, Baptists and Presbyterians!

And the trial is something of a mockery, because we are told that they had already made up their minds long before. They were, in fact, “looking for false testimony against Jesus so that they might put him to death.”

We may need to take a little of the Hollywood image we may have of this scene out of our heads for a moment. Movies have been made full of flowing robes, dramatic speeches of the Sanhedrin, backroom whispering and the satanic character of this jury. The reality is, these were leaders in the community, men of faith and tradition anxious to protect their community. We might do better to imagine that jury in North Carolina, full of ordinary people who worked and had families and cared about their community. Something went terribly wrong…with ordinary people.

The trial wasn’t going well, because the false testimonies weren’t lining up. Finally two agreed that Jesus had said “I can destroy God’s temple and build it up again in three days.” The High Priest jumped at the chance and asked Jesus to answer the “charges.” Jesus says nothing. He is silent. Falsely accused…and silent. Why silent? What possible purpose could there be for his silence? His dignity? Or does Jesus know they won’t understand? Or is a ball now rolling that won’t (even shouldn’t) stop?

“Tell us,” the High Priest says, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of God?” In the end, it’s a question of identity. Interestingly, the last time Jesus was asked about his identity as the Son of God so clearly was back in Matthew 4, when the devil tempted him: “IF you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread. IF you are the Son of God, throw yourself from the temple and live.” Here Jesus answers yes. “You have said so,” is an affirmative if slightly ambiguous answer. It’s almost as if Jesus is saying “Yes, but not in the way you think of it.” In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus simply answers “I am.”

Then he draws on a picture from the Old Testament book of Daniel. “From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

If he had kept going down that passage, which the jury knew well…Jesus would have filled out the picture of this Son of Man being given by God, “dominion and glory and kingship, that the whole world might serve him, and his kingdom would never pass away.”

It is a breathtaking claim Jesus lays out. Full of images, images of power and might that contrast mightily from his current circumstances. Is Jesus pointing towards his crucifixion? His resurrection? Is he redefining what power actually is?

And the High Priest triumphantly wraps up his case: Guilty. Blasphemy. Claiming for himself status that belongs properly to the God of Israel alone.

Injustice? Of course. But we can’t just leave it at that. It is very important to sit with this question of identity a little further. Because IF Jesus is only a man, even a wise man, even a wandering sage, even a gifted teacher…IF Jesus is only that…then they are right. Blasphemy. Because the claims that Jesus has made, implicitly and explicitly, the claims he makes as he stands before them are staggering:

• spoke with authority that people had never heard.
• criticized the ancient customs.
• claimed to fulfill the Law
• claimed the power to forgive sins.
• performed amazing deeds and healings.
• said people would be judged according to their response to him
• had a power that was somehow clear, and yet clearly NOT the kind of military and political power that was expected of God’s Son.
• he dared to call God “Abba,” Father, daddy, an intimacy uneheard of, and referred to himself as the son of man.

If Jesus was only a man, a sage, a teacher and made those kind of claims…he was indeed a blasphemer. He was guilty.

What they needed to consider- what we need to consider- is what if it was true? What if Jesus was who he said he was? What would happen to their lives, their religion, their community…or to our lives, religion or community…if we believed that Jesus was Son of God, Messiah, Holy One? If Jesus was who he said he was: prophet/priest/king, forgiver, healer, Christ, then all of human history is moving in a direction and God is not nearly so far off as he might appear to be sometimes and our ability to trust goes much deeper. Everything would be different.

But the jurors can’t see it. And so we crouch there, seeing and hearing all that is going on, feeling the injustice welling up inside of us, knowing we can do nothing. And we could stop here and walk away and say “gee, those terrible leaders. those people back there, they blew it, they missed it. Their sin, their smallness got the best of them and they sentenced the Son of God to death. It’s a shame.”

But if we are paying attention, there’s one detail we’ve missed. As we watch it all unfolding, out of the corner of our eye, we see movement. A shadow. We peer into the dark. And we find that one of Jesus’ friends has come with Jesus on the way to Caiaphas’ house. Peter, it says “followed at a distance” to see what would happen.

A distance is a safe place. Could that shadowy movement be a picture of us? Do we follow Jesus cautiously, putting enough distance between us that we might choose at any time to go a different direction? Like if we had to do something sacrificial? Or uncomfortable? Do we keep a safe distance so that we might not be identified too readily by those who dislike Jesus…or dislike his followers? Do we walk the walk and talk the talk up to some safety line and then back off? Where is the place of risk that we won’t go to?

The history of Christianity is full of people who want to go to church on Sunday, and who want to fit in with the people and world around them, who are willing to be identified with Jesus- to a point. Who follow- to a point. At a distance. Peter loved Jesus, and followed him. But Peter was also scared, so he followed at a distance.

My question to you tonight- and I’ll ask it a few ways- is: is there something keeping you at a distance? Some risk you can’t take? Something that has happened which now stands squarely between you and Jesus? Or something you are afraid you will lose if you walk closely with Jesus?

I think the claim of the gospel is, in the end…either we walk closely with Jesus.

Or we don’t walk at all.

Let’s take a moment of silence before we close.