Good Friday 2025

Good evening. My name is Mark. I'm one of the pastors, and I am so glad that we are together tonight on this most special of days, the epicenter of our faith. And during the scripture readings, you might have caught something really fascinating, because while Jesus is standing before Pilate, Pilate offers to release a prisoner, and he's going to let the crowd choose, choose between Jesus and a man named Barabbas.

You know, Barabbas is actually a last name. In Aramaic, "bar" means "son," and "aba" means "father." So Barabbas literally means "son of the father." Just a little ironic, don't you think? If you consider the other prisoner is the son of the father. But it gets even more intriguing, because Barabbas' first name, at least according to some ancient manuscripts, was Jesus, as in Jesus Barabbas. And if you were listening carefully during the scripture reading, you recall what Pilate says when he says, "Which one do you want me to release to you? Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?"

And this is the way it reads in some of our most prominent English translations, like the New International Version, which we typically use, and the New Revised Standard Version, which is a favorite among scholars and Presbyterians. It's true. So let's just go with this for a moment, shall we? Two men, both named Jesus, are presented to the crowd. One is going to be set free, the other crucified. Which Jesus do you choose? Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah? And in a very real way, that same choice exists all the way up to this day.

Since the very first Good Friday, people have either followed Jesus the Messiah, or some other Jesus. A distortion. A Jesus who never confronts or challenges, but simply endorses their agenda. And we all do this to one degree or another, but allow me to give you a rather glaring example. One day, a national leader who publicly referred to Jesus as his Lord and Savior said this, "I pledge that I will never tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press. In short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture." The man who said this? Adolf Hitler.

And however Hitler chose to see Jesus, the Jesus he chose looked nothing like Jesus the Messiah. Because everything hangs on the Jesus you choose. Everything. And it's no accident that all four Gospels tell this story. And to put this into perspective, take all of Jesus' miracles recorded in the Gospels, and there's only one miracle that's recorded in all four of them. It's the feeding of the 5,000. So the fact that this choice is told between Jesus and Barabbas, the fact that it appears in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, this is the Bible's way of calling for the question, "Who's your Jesus? Which Jesus do you choose?"

And before we answer too quickly, we would be wise to ask, "Why in the world would anyone choose Jesus Barabbas over Jesus the Messiah?" Where was Barabbas' appeal? The Gospels tell us that he was imprisoned for insurrection. The Romans had a very specific way of handling rebels. They crucified them. Mark and Luke say Barabbas was also a murderer, but in the eyes of the crowd, he was a hero, a patriot, a fighter. Barabbas was like their version of Jack Reacher, right? He's tough. He gets things done. Never mind, you've got to break some bones and crack some skulls to do it.

And listen, I get this, but there is something deeply alluring about taking things into our own hands, whether it's to settle a score or to strike back or to come out on top or to possess our hearts' desire, whatever it takes. This is the way of Barabbas. And you know what? It all goes back to our primordial past because originally everything in creation was good. And there was even a place where heaven and earth somehow overlapped Eden, where God wanted to dwell with his image bearers.

That was until, until the day they decided to reach out and grab something God had put beyond their reach. It was not enough to know only good. They wanted to also know evil. And they got all that and more. Ever since sin, death, evil has taken hold in the world, taken hold in people like Barabbas and Pilate, taken hold in the chief priests and the crowd, taken hold in me and in you.

I'll give you an analogy of this. Lewis Slotin, pictured here with the dark glasses, he was a key member of the Manhattan Project. And one day in May 1946 at Los Alamos, New Mexico, Slotin was showing his colleagues how to bring the exposed core of a nuclear weapon right up to the edge of going off. They called it tickling the dragon's tail. That little metal ball you see, that is the radioactive plutonium core. The larger ball around, or ball, it split into two hemispheres, was made of beryllium and it could contain the plutonium.

And if those beryllium hemispheres were brought together, the radiation would be trapped and it would trigger a nuclear reaction. Tickling the dragon's tail involved bringing these two hemispheres almost together, but then Slotin would use a screwdriver to keep them from coming totally together. It was just enough to trigger a weak nuclear reaction, if there is such a thing, from which they could gather data. And yes, they actually did this.

But on that day, just as the material became critical, the screwdriver slipped and the two hemispheres came together and the room was instantly filled with a dazzling bluish light and instinctively, Slotin tore the hemispheres apart with his bare hands, stopping the chain reaction and saving the lives of seven other men in the room. And then afterwards, while Slotin was waiting for a ride to the hospital, he turned to one of those men and he said, "You'll come through all right, but I don't have the faintest chance." And sure enough, as his injuries from the radiation increased day by day, in nine days, Lewis Slotin was dead.

Here's my point. We're all living in the fallout of what you might call a sin bomb. And I can't explain it all, but sin has created a breach in God's creation, a breach between heaven and earth. It has saturated everything on our planet. And because of this, Romans 8 says, "All creation groans and we groan with it, don't we?" Over war, famine, disease, division, disaster. And we groan not only over sin out in the world and pain and evil, we grieve over those same things in our very own hearts. We grieve over the death that it brings. Amen?

Well, here's the good news. Sin, death, pain, evil, they do not get the last word. Jesus does. And standing before Pilate, you know, Jesus could have shown all of them how much power he has, couldn't he? But instead, he shows us what kind of God we have, a God who became one of us so that he could save all of us. Pilate calls out, "Which one do you want me to release? Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Messiah?"

Barabbas. "What shall I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah? Crucify him. Crucify him." And after having Jesus flogged, they crucified him. You know, the gospels don't tell us what happened to Barabbas after his release. According to one tradition, he became a follower of Jesus. But according to another tradition, he died in yet another rebellion. One thing is for sure, Jesus Barabbas knew that Jesus called the Messiah died in his place. Perhaps on the very same cross that Barabbas himself would have been nailed to.

And I'd like to think that this completely changed Barabbas' life. And I pray that it changes yours because Jesus died in your place and in my place. Because here's the thing, sin is so much more than simply breaking the rules. God is not some cosmic referee who blows his whistle every time we commit a foul. It's much deeper than that. It's a much deeper disease and only Jesus can cure it. Only Jesus.

And, you know, Lewis Slotin, he really did do something heroic when he shut down a nuclear reaction with his bare hands. A tremendous sacrifice. But Jesus the Messiah did something infinitely more, infinitely greater when he absorbed all our sin, all our deaths, and took them to the grave. So, who's your Jesus? Is he the Jesus that fills you with love, joy, peace? Not to mention patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. And if not, or when not, go back to the source. Rediscover who your Jesus really is. In fact, no better time than now, is there?

So fix your eyes on Jesus the Messiah. Focus your mind and your imagination on him. You know, Scripture says that it was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross. The joy of redeeming us. The joy of giving us new life. That's our Jesus. Amen. Amen.

Let's pray. Dear Father, we thank you for giving us your son who willingly suffered and died on the cross. And Lord, we may not fully understand it, but we know this much. He did it for us. So Lord, as we remember the death of your son during communion, may we each be deeply grateful and humbled by his sacrifice. Nourish our souls, fill our hearts with your grace, your love. And we pray this in the name of our suffering servant, Jesus the Messiah. And all God's people said, amen.