Every Gospel has a particular slant when it records the story of Jesus passion and crucifixion.  St John portrays these events in a strongly political context.  Indeed, the way he does so might open the Gospel to being used for anti-Semitic purposes.  John clearly lays the burden of responsibility for Jesus sentence and crucifixion on the religious leaders of the day – especially the High Priests.  So we have to exercise great care in our time with the history of how Christians and others have treated our Jewish friends over many centuries.

John sets out the story of how, through careful political manoeuvring,  Pilate is cornered into agreeing to sentence Jesus to death.  Pilate, for the sake of the maintenance of his power and because he did not think Jesus all that important,  gave Jesus over to crucifixion.  Thus, as John sees it, an injustice is perpetrated on Jesus.  But John believes that through this injustice the Son of God has been working the redemption of the world.

Politics, power, justice and redemption are all intertwined in a story in which John seeks to demonstrate the victory of the Son of God on the Cross over the evil and corruption of the world.  Thus, in this moment, God overturns the corrupt and tired systems of religion and politics with a new and living way brought to us in Jesus Christ.

Today the Middle East continues to be a context where great and terrible struggles over power persist at the cost of human life.  In Iraq “insurgents”, Ayatollahs and Mullahs, local politicians and the imperial power of Washington are locked in a struggle where there can be no winners and where many are the losers.  Justice and peace have been sacrificed in the heart of this struggle for power. 

Similarly, in the land of Jesus birth and ministry and in the city where he was sentenced and crucified the struggle goes on.  The strong forces of religion and politics lock themselves into conflicts leading to the suffering of the people.  The lethal mix of Hamas and militant Islam, Israel and Zionist and Messianic religion  spiced by the realities of American and international interests continue to manipulate a divided land seeking sectarian advantage one way or the other.  One wonders if Jesus earthly ministry had been conducted today whether these forces of mutual hatred might have combined as they did 2000 years ago to destroy him and preserve the status quo.  Surely, the message of the Kingdom of God brought by Jesus in word and deed healing division, confronting abuse and destroying the power and grip of evil in human life, would have been an unwelcome reality in the Holy Land of today. 

Jerusalem in the Gospel of John comes across much like Washington and Westminster – a world of its own political activity and shifting forces of power.  We call it the ‘Westminster Village’ with the implication that it lives to a measure in a world of its own.

Reading the Gospel of John it is easy to demonise the characters.  Some are most unpleasant.  Herod, for example, who does not appear in John was a particularly nasty piece of work – a Saddam Hussain with grandiose ideas of power beyond reality and a capacity for brutality.  Pilate, who could be brutal in his sentencing, was probably not too bad a governor of the land from the Roman point of view.  The High Priests were, no doubt, morally upright people caught up in the establishment world of power and influence.  Is this not the ‘Jerusalem Village’ a thousands miles away from the world of the hills of Galilee?  It all sounds depressingly familiar.  It contains deep warnings for us all when dealing with the machinery of power in our own time. 

Robert Fisk in his latest book on the Middle East ‘The Great War for Civilisation – the conquest of the Middle East’, makes the point in a different way.  He quotes political leaders in the 1920s when Britain had taken power in Mesopotamia – Iraq as we know it today – making the same sort of comments as made by our leaders today about Iraq.  Who is this for example?

‘Is it not for the benefit of the people of that country that it should be governed so as to enable them to develop this land which has been withered and shrivelled up by oppression.  What would happen if we withdrew?’ 

Who is that – Tony Blair?  It is David Lloyd George in 1919.  Who is this?

‘The people of England have been led in Iraq into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour.  They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete.  Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows…We are today not far from a disaster.’

2006 0r 1920?  T.H. Lawrence in 1920 – and I have changed but one word – Iraq for Mesopotamia.  It seems that the need to justify the mess runs from generation to generation. 

But John is not concerned to make political points.  He is focussed on Jesus as the Son of God.  He knows, as a disciple of Jesus who had seen the resurrection and believed in it, that the death of Jesus was the point of the victory of Christ over the forces of evil and corruption.  Far from destroying the truth as Jesus embodied it, his crucifixion released new life and gave the world a new opportunity for a transformed and liberated experience of the love of God.  Through the free obedience of Jesus to his Father’s will a final and total victory has been won.  The Cross becomes the throne from which the rule of God’s Kingdom flows out into human affairs.  It is death that is defeated on the Cross not the power of the Good News Jesus brought.  Pilate and the High Priests are not the victors of John’s understanding.  Jesus is the victor. 

This has encouragement for us in the heart of the messy business of public life.  The prison has been broken open and we do not have to succumb to a world in which human affairs are dominated by the expediency of the moment at the cost of justice and truth.  Those who seek to hold fast to truth and integrity are the one who work out the victory of the love of God in the midst of human life.  Norman Kimber was not wrong.  Truth and the possibility of forgiveness and peace do have to be demonstrated in the heart of corruption and conflict.  That is full of risk and may have heavy costs to it.  But a beacon of hope shines through all who in different ways hold on to the essential demands of truth and justice in public life. 

It would be easy for people to lose hope in the face of what goes on.  Confidence, even in our democracy, in political life and in the established modes of religious life is not strong.  It would be easy for despair to set in and then for undesirable solutions to be sought out of fear.  In the heart of Jerusalem Jesus is a powerful sign of hope for the world.  His clarity about what was happening, his holding fast to his personal integrity and refusal to compromise his convictions even at the cost of the abuses of power and his ultimate condemnation by the system of his day brings us hope.  God is not dead.  God is not overcome by the forces of corruption.  God carries the weight of it all and seeks to redeem it in his love. 

So we are called to persist in the task of opening up public life to the hopeful forces of truth, justice, peace and life.  We go on exposing the death dealing forces of expediency and the abuses of the people in the cause of holding on to power in the present. 

That struggle is key to the health of our society.  It is Jesus who offers us all hope.  It is Jesus who encourages and enables us to play our part in bringing hope to the world of public life.  It has a cost to it.  But it has a victory as well. 

So the struggle takes place:-

Truth as opposed to deceit
Justice as opposed to expediency
Life as opposed to corruption and death
Hope in the face of despair and defeat.

Truth, Justice, life and hope come through the suffering and crucifixion of the Son of God – that is John’s message.  Deceit, expediency, corruption and despair are killers. They crucify.  But the victory belongs with Jesus.  So ultimately death has to give way to the truth as we now see it in the risen one.  That gives believers energy to live out the struggle in our own time in our own public and political life.  Not to give in to the powerful forces of death which would in the end destroy us all as they tried to destroy Jesus of Nazareth.

Bishop John receives his 'fee' from Team Rector, Geoffrey Connor

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