where I first saw the light..."
--Gospel song
Pause with me and look at this second station: Jesus takes
the cross. Pilate kept sarcastically saying to the crowd: “This is your King.”
In mocking fashion they put a purple robe on this man with the blood-streaked
face. The robe stuck to the bloody lashes on his back, arms and legs. The crowd wanted
blood as crowds often do. Pilate asks a last time: “Shall I crucify your king?”
And the Chief Priests answered for the crowd: “We have no king but Caesar.” Y Tube would have a field day with this scene.
Where does the power really lie? In the pageantry and might
of the great Roman Empire? Or could is possibly rest in this one who talks of
another kingdom. There really are two kingdoms. A kingdom of power and might
and there is a kingdom of power and glory.
Have you ever said, maybe not out loud but somewhere deep in
your heart: “We have no king but Caesar.” Maybe you never said it but you have
lived like it. Take away the economic uncertainty and all the talk and all the
fear and there would hardly be any news to report. Money really does make our
world go round. We have just come through another ugly election. We voted for
power from either one candidate or the other. We want to get things done. And
even after the election everything is in disarray because of what? Power. One
of the movies up for Best Picture in the Academy Awards is a film about
torture. It raises the question could we ever win this war of terror or
whatever without torture. We gain so much this way, we are told. It is power
over another. Ask those at Guantanamo Bay behind those guarded fences about
power and torture. Our major discussion is how many troops do we leave in
Afghanistan and how many drones do we send into Pakistan just to show who’s in
charge. We could even mention the football fans that yell, “Number 1...Number
1.” Who wants to be Number 2? What
about guns—that’s a whole discussion itself. On the personal level some of us
opt for success and others of us have given ourselves over a smorgasbord of
addictions. The tail really does wag the dog, doesn’t it? “We have no king but
Caesar.” Was that then or is that now?
We know, don’t we? We know. But standing here before Jesus
seemingly powerless, forced to take a cross we have to face a disturbing
question. This Kingdom Jesus talks about what does it mean for you and me and
us and the whole world?
So Jesus takes up the cross. And after all these years we
still keep coming back to this Second station of the Cross. What does it mean
to stand here and look, really look at the One who carried the cross? Where is
the power? Where is our power? And we too must answer who is our king? Not an
easy answer is it.
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