Give Us Barabbas

I start most days with a cup of coffee and the daily reading from Scripture Union's Encounter with God.  The text for yesterday, March 28, was Luke 23:13-25. 

Pontius Pilate, governor of the province of Judea,  says he doesn't think Jesus has done anything wrong and should be released. The crowd shouts that they want Barabbas released instead. It's a passage I've heard read at least once a year since I was able to read. The crowd wins. Barabbas is released. Jesus is taken to Golgotha.

The notes that accompany the daily reading are written by pastors and teachers around the globe. My husband, Whitney, is a regular writer, and met last week on Zoom with others from that team. Few of them are Americans. Most bring perspectives to the scripture that catch me off guard, or show unfamiliar angles to long-familiar texts. The notes on Luke 23 were written by Kar Yong Lim, an Anglican priest and teacher in Malaysia, far from the turmoil of the American Christian church.  

For years now I've been grieving the allegiance many US Christians have given to former President Donald Trump. I wrote of my concern before the 2016 election, and again several month later. Many in my extended family voted for Trump, in 2016 and in 2020. Some are still furious that I did not. I have friends who have left church completely because they refuse to agree with former pro-Trump friends, and others convinced all Christians are white nationalists intent on civil war.  I'm not angry, just sad, and mystified that people who have read the same texts as me somehow see in them rationale to support a man like Donald Trump. 

In part I stopped blogging in 2021 because it felt like anything I said would make someone angry. There's too much anger in this world. I'd do anything to change that. If this post is making you angry, please stop reading. That's not my goal. 

Here's the part of yesterday's note that set me thinking: 

It is strange that the religious leaders and the crowd preferred to have Barabbas released instead of Jesus. Barabbas, also known as Jesus Barabbas, was a notorious prisoner who had taken part in insurrections and had committed murder (v. 19).2 He believed that God saved through violence and war, and he was prepared to fight and die for that belief. In this respect, the Roman authorities found him to be dangerous and imprisoned him. However, Jesus believed that God saves through self-sacrificing love and that he himself was the embodiment of that love. Because of this, the Jewish religious authorities found him dangerous and wanted to have him killed. In contrasting these two characters of Barabbas and Jesus, we could reflect on how we respond to the circumstances surrounding us today. In a world of heightened terrorist attacks, rising religious intolerance, and increasing repression of religious freedom, how could followers of Christ become agents of transformation?

I had never quite seen that the people choosing Barabbas believed he was the best route toward the kingdom God promised. No matter that he was violent. The violence was an essential part of the package. Barabbas was the way to push back on Rome, on the invading kingdoms of this world. The intent was good, a political manifestation of a narrow reading of earlier scriptures. 

Seeing that, I can see how that choice translates to today. People desperate to DO something have put their trust in the latest Barabbas. No matter that he is the exact opposite of the Christ they claim to follow. 

Yesterday's note ended:

Sometimes we hear the clamor, ‘Give us Barabbas,’ denoting a preference for a revolutionary option of political powers, military strength, and economic sanctions. The ethic that Jesus teaches is to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, turn the other cheek, and to go the extra mile.

Whatever the earthly power we fear, the answer isn't hate, anger, or violence. Jesus told us that in every way he could, then showed it in his life and death. The answer to culture wars, immigration wars, whatever wars my loved ones fear, is not a blustering strongman, but the self-sacrificial love Jesus embodied on the cross. 

I meant to share the song below on Palm Sunday. Listening again, I think it makes more sense as a Good Friday mediation. It ends abruptly, in that dark, quiet space between "It is done" and Sunday morning, a good place for reflection, repentance and prayer. 

Lenten Pause

In January I was asked to write an article about Lent for our church's quarterly magazine. I was happy to put into words my own plans for a season of quiet. I was hoping for time to reflect and pray. I'd been thinking about how much confidence we often put in our own narrow perspectives. I'd been lamenting the ways we so often jump to conclusions about the people we meet, the ideas we hear. My goal for the new year was to spend more time in review. Lent seemed like the ideal time.

But my Lent turned out much busier than I planned. My hope of a blog post every Sunday was buried under unreturned emails and unexpected challenges. I had my own idea of what a Lenten pause might look like. Instead, it felt more like spinning my wheels, or struggling to catch my breath. It occurs to me, as I write this, that I was planning Lent around myself. So I pause now to repent. Below is what I wrote.

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We move fast, speak quickly, scroll past anything that doesn’t instantly grab our attention. We answer without fully hearing the question. We argue without acknowledging any value in alternate points of view. We want what we want as quickly as possible and object when lines are long or wait times infringe on our overly-full schedules. The world is a fast-paced drama with us always at the center. 

Lent invites us to hit the pause button. 

To stop and listen. 

To set down our agendas, our expectations, and simply wait. 

Lent invites us to be still, and remember: we are not God. 

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Easter Sunday. It’s 40 days if Sundays aren't counted. Sundays are little Easters, feast days, even in the midst of fasting. So Lent invites us to 40 days of fasting, prayer, and reflection, punctuated by the little Easters and ending with the greatest celebration of the Christian calendar, the day of resurrection.

40 is a number found often in scripture. The 40 days and 40 nights of Genesis 7:12). Moses' 40 years in the desert tending flocks (Acts 7:30). The 40 days and 40 nights Moses spent on the mountain waiting for God to speak (Exodus 24:18). The 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.

Lent nods at all of those, as well as others. If you want more, head to BibleGateway.com and search for “forty”. But the primary purpose of Lent is to remember Jesus’ own 40 days of preparation before the start of his public ministry. That time is described in Matthew 4. After fasting 40 days and forty nights, he was tempted in the wilderness.

Jesus had no doubt been preparing all of his life for the work he came to do. He told his mother as much when he was just a boy, lingering in the temple in Jerusalem when his family headed home without him. Yet, immediately after his baptism by his cousin John the Baptist,  he spent the next 40 days alone. No phone. No crowd. No agenda other than prayer. 

The liturgical calendar consistently invites us to live in a strange uncharted space, oriented toward events of the past, promises of the future, and a present that looks toward past and future but also outward, toward the work of God in the world, and inward, toward the work of God in the deepest, least explored parts of our own hearts.

In the Biblical wilderness experience, there are repeated strands of deprivation, testing, uncertainty, humility. And the one overarching question: will you set down your own plans, your own ideas, your own perceptions, and trust yourself to God?

Check Jesus’ answers in the face of temptation. Invited to demonstrate his own power, he refuses: 

• It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’
• It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.
• It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’

It’s curious. In many ways, in all the important ways, Jesus IS the center of the story of scripture, what TS Eliot called “the still point in the turning world.”  Yet when tempted to make that visible, he chose not to. He chose to fast, to pray, to wait, and then to set God the Father, and his word, in the center of the story. 

We fast during Lent to remind us: we do not live on bread alone, but on the word of God. Bread is a placeholder for whatever it is we rely on more than God, whatever it is we turn to for comfort, pleasure, that dopamine feeling that things are okay. How can we step back from that? How can we limit or eliminate it? How can we ask God to lessen its grip so we can find space to listen better?

We pray during Lent to rearrange our priorities. Our prayers are too often little tests for God. Can you heal me? Can you help me? Can you fix this mess I’m in? Those prayers are all valid, all needed, but Lent invites us to see ourselves on God’s eternal timeline instead of caught in the troubles of today. Where have we been so intent on our own solutions we’ve forgotten to ask for God’s? Where have we been so focused on our own problems we’ve forgotten to focus on God instead, and the love we’re called to share with others who grieve and doubt and suffer?'

We wait during Lent. We wait remembering all the times God moved and acted in the lives of his people throughout the sweep of scripture. We wait remembering God’s faithfulness across the many centuries since. We wait remembering all God has done in our own lives, and the lives of those we love. And we wait, remembering that Jesus died, rose again, and will return one day to dry our tears and establish a never-ending kingdom of grace and justice and joy. 

There’s a growing body of research exploring the value of uncertainty, wait times, and pauses. If we think we know exactly what comes next, we fall into something called cognitive entrenchment. We think we know the ending. We believe we control the outcome. We see exactly what we expect to see and discount what doesn’t fit the map already present in our minds. 

When we think we already know what’s next, we miss the new, the unexpected. Which may mean we also miss seeing God at work. We’re already so sure what God should be doing, we miss what’s unfolding right before our eyes.

The Pharisees knew their scriptures cold. They had studied, memorized, debated, analyzed. For most of them, Jesus simply didn’t fit. Their messiah would be a military leader, a warrior king full of strength and zeal, ready to judge sinners, conquer enemies, and reward the pious leaders.

Instead, Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners. Some who had been waiting for the Messiah saw and rejoiced. Some who had been waiting missed him entirely, so angry at his failure to meet their expectations that they plotted together to kill him. 

Lent reminds us: we are not God. And we are not the ones who set the course, solve the riddles, hold the answers. We are people on a journey, waiting for direction. There is joy in taking time to listen well. There is danger in expecting we know what’s next and hurrying forward too quickly.

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Easter is now just two weeks away. I'm still finding it hard to slow down, pause, listen, wait. But even so, I hold the good news closely. I am not God. I don't know what's next. I also don't know when the slow times will be. I know they'll come, but maybe when I least expect it. I rest when I can, run when I must, practice prayer along the way. I'm not the one writing this story. I'm invited to be part of it, to turn the next page and see where it leads. For that I'm thankful.

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The paintings on this page were commissioned as stations of the cross by our church, the Church of Good Samaritan, and painted by my daughter, Anna Kocher. They are on display at our church every Lent. This year they've also been the focus of a weekly evening of prayer, reflection, soup and bread, and were used as cover and back of a Lenten devotional, Journey through Lent 2024. I'm thankful for a church that does it's best to welcome and nurture a wide variety of gifts.