Scripture: John 19:1–16
Before working in chaplaincy and ministry, I worked in state and federal government settings.
My wife Grace and I met at the Rhode Island Statehouse where we both worked for a time. We joke with each other that we’re a Rhode Island “East Bay–West Bay” romance because I grew up in East Providence on the east side of the bay, and she grew up in North Kingstown on the west side, and we knew very little about the city where the other was from, even though it’s only about a 25-minute drive from one place to the other.
The Rhode Island Statehouse is a place of symbolism. If you have not been, or if it has been a while since you have been, I recommend that you take the time to go — you can go to share your thoughts on proposed legislation, or meet with your representatives, or just go to walk around and see the sights. As they say, it is the people’s house.
Much of the statehouse is dedicated to celebrating the high ideal of religious liberty, civic justice, community service, and freedom of conscience. But there’s a lot memorializing war too.
The sights at the RI Statehouse include flags that were carried by Rhode Islanders at the Battle of Yorktown in the Revolutionary War;
You can see a canon used by Rhode Islanders at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863;
You can see the bell from a battleship called the USS Rhode Island that sailed around the world from 1907 to 1909 during the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt as a demonstration of American power to the world;
You can see six life-size Italian marble statues depicting heroic statues of military servicemen to commemorate all the Americans who fought in World War II.
These artifacts of wars are preserved as commonplace reminders at that we have deep histories with war.
These symbols celebrate service and sacrifice — which are essential elements of any good society — AND we could also do better to memorialize our wars in ways that would help us change.
The story that we read in John’s Gospel today is a kind of war narrative of sorts as the power of a state begins to operate against Jesus.
Crucifixion in the Roman Empire was a harsh and public event of execution. It was a practice used as a deterrent and humiliation tool, especially reserved for rebels and non-citizens of the Empire. It is what awaits Jesus in this story.
But pain and suffering are not what Jesus’s story is about. Jesus doesn’t let his fate become a source of more pain and fighting. Through his non-violence and focus on God’s power beyond earthly powers, the cross — a symbol of torture — becomes a symbol of transformation, for him and for us.
Next Sunday we will flash back in the Gospel story a week for Palm Sunday to remember Jesus’s joyful entry into Jerusalem, and experience the excitement of the people, and remind ourselves that it is only a small subset of the local people who are calling on Pilate to bring Jesus to trial and execution in today’s reading.
Today, there is a crown of thorns. And a mocking purple robe. Pilate gives Jesus an opportunity to deny the charges against him and end this scene, but Jesus does not end it — and because of Jesus’s faith-in-God and persistence in the face of humiliation and pain, the scene that follows will become a story that we are still talking about today.
Twenty-one centuries later, many of us wear a cross around our necks or tattoo them onto our bodies or build them in our churches to remember this story. The meaning of the cross doesn’t belong to one person or one group of people, even if they might try to claim Jesus as their champion. Jesus resists being defined in small ways. The cross is a symbol that points to the fullness of Jesus.
In our church, we have a cross that is significant for what you don’t see when you look at it. You don’t see Jesus, because death and suffering does not have the last word. The cross reminds us that Jesus lives, transformed, and cannot be constrained by the cruel creations of humans to harm and destroy.
Sometimes it is important to look at what is missing.
In the fourteen years since I worked in the Rhode Island Statehouse, I’ve learned many things — one essential lesson is something that I was reminded of this past Thursday at our Church as a group gathered to discuss how to appeal to the federal government to designate the territory of the Pokanoket tribe, called Sowams, as a region with special status in order to help teach people about its history.
Thursday was a reminder to me that there is at least one Rhode Island war that, as far as I can tell, is nowhere memorialized in the Rhode Island Statehouse. And that’s King Philips War of 1675.
And it’s a problem that we don’t go to lengths to remember it because per capita, it is the most destructive recorded war in American history.
I said at the beginning of this sermon that growing up in East Providence I hardly knew a place like North Kingstown existed on the other side of the Narragansett Bay — which represents a kind of historical blindness because it means I didn’t understand a key moment in King Philip’s War in 1675.
During the first year of the war, the minister here at this church was Noah Newman, son of the founding minister Samuel Newman.
In a letter on December 16 1675, Noah Newman wrote in a letter to a colleague, quote “all the forces of Massachusetts and Plymouth arrived to us & billeted amongst us.”1 The letter goes on to say that after leaving Noach Newman and the Newman church community, the next day the troops crossed into Providence on their way to Wickford, which is today a village of North Kingstown, where they prepared for a raid on Pokanoket and Narragansett people that goes down in history as the Great Swamp Massacre to the Great Swamp Fight.
This means that troops traveled from the church that I grew up in, to the historic house where Grace worked in high school in North Kingstown, to one of the most gruesome days of one of our most gruesome wars — you can’t learn about this at the Rhode Island State House. But you should be able to.
Part of the Good News of the Gospel is that Jesus invites us into his story, which attempts through Jesus’s non-violence to show us a way to avoid cycles of violence. The fact that we read this Gospel story every year helps us to internalize its wisdom — that you are called to resist the powers of evil that might cause you to lash out in your anger and your pain, and instead to be part of Jesus’s long-view resistance to empire and execution.
Jesus is not on the cross. We remember him for making a new way forward for all of us. May we continue to make new ways forward to peace as well.
May it be so. Amen.
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