For Want of Justice

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?

...

I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
    it has melted within me.  My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
    you lay me in the dust of death.16 Dogs surround me,
    a pack of villains encircles me;
    they pierce my hands and my feet.17  All my bones are on display;
    people stare and gloat over me.  They divide my clothes among them
    and cast lots for my garment.
(Psalm 22:1-18)

As a lawyer, I have a cynical veiw of what justice means. The hope of what were once young ambitions for social justice erode overtime as we witness the icy reality of this world. People we look up to as role models sometimes manifest morally dubious behaviours and at worse, unsettling judgements of human iniquity, bringing into question basic ethics in those who are purportedly the guardians of the justice system and admitted under oath before the court into the legal profession. 

When 2 Thessalonians looked at the man of lawlessness as an antichrist who will oppose Christ and substitute himself in Christ's place beofre the Second Coming, the man of sin is described as "The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved." (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10). Perhaps the man of lawlessness embodies the satan within all of us as no one on earth is righteous except for Christ. Yet in the lead up to Christ's passion and crucifixtion on Good Friday, Jesus went through four trials and three declarations of innocence as the man-made system of justice sought to judge a man of God unjustly. In the gospel narratives, Jesus was taken to the private residence of Caiaphas (the sadducee high priest) after his arrest then presented before Pontious Pilot who found no basis for a charge against him and dispensed him to Herod who then sent Christ back to Pilate for an ultimate charge of crucifiction. 

The Sanhedrin is meant to be an established court based in Jerusalem with strict guidelines on how to function, including a prohibition against trials after dark, and a requirement that they occur in a public venue. The gospel accounts paint a picture of the Sanhedrin violating all these and the Torah during the trial of Christ. Matthew 26:57 states that Jesus was taken to the house of Caiaphas the High Priest of Israel, where the scribes and the elders were gathered together. Matthew 27:1 adds that, the next morning, the priests held another meeting. Luke 22:54 states that Jesus was taken to "the high priest's house", where he was mocked and beaten that night. It is added that as soon as it was day, the chief priests and scribes gathered together and led Christ away into their council. John 18:12-14 described that Jesus was first taken to Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was the high priest at the time so it appears that Caiaphas sought Annas' confirmation of Caiaphas' actions. So John's gospel has the added scene where Jesus was sent from Annas to Caiaphas the high priest, and Pontius Pilate in the Praetorium.

By the time Jesus was before Pilate, we witnessed a series of weak and cowardly attempt by the Pontious Pilate to be fair but who ultimately succumbed to the damning demand of Jesus' own people. When Pilate said "take him yourselves and judge him by your own law (John 18: 30), he was met by the response of "But we have no right to execute anyone" as the Jews objected and condemned Christ to death. As the religions professed by the Jews and the Romans were different and since at the time Jerusalem was part of Roman Judea, the charges of the Sanhedrin against Jesus held no power before Pilate and only the Roman court had the jurisdiction to crucify a defendant. From the three charges brought by the Jewish leaders (perverting the nation, forbidding the payment of tribute, and sedition against the Roman Empire), Pilate picked up on the third one, asking: "Are you the King of the Jews?" to which Jesus replied with "You have said so" (Matthew 27:11, Mark 15:2, Luke 23:3). Then the hearing continued and Pilate finally asked Jesus "What is truth?". This was said after learning that Jesus did not wish to claim any terrestrial kingdom. He was therefore not a political threat and could be seen as innocent of such a charge. Stepping back outside, Pilate publicly declared that he found no basis to charge Jesus, asking them if the Jews wanted Jesus freed, which they declined, preferring the freedom of Barabbas the criminal. This meant capital punishment for Jesus. The universal rule of the Roman Empire limited capital punishment strictly to the tribunal of the Roman governor and Pilate decided to publicly wash his hands as not being privy to Jesus' death through his declaration of Christ's innocence. Nevertheless, since only the Roman authority could order crucifixion and since the penalty was carried out by Roman soldiers, Pilate (in reflecting the demands of the Jews) was responsible for Jesus' death, a judgment imposed on the innocent lamb through a clear miscarriage of justice.

The trial of Jesus at Pilate's court (according to Luke also briefly at the court of Herod Antipas) showed the wavering of Pilate and his consideration of the crowd's opinion to give Barabbas amnesty and condemn Jesus to death. The abduction of Jesus by Roman soldiers and the mocking mistreatment of Jesus unmistakably point to the sins of Christ's own people who brought about his death as prophesied by Isaiah. Israel's problem was also humanity's problem yet abandoned and alienated by his own people and later by his own Father, “it is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.” (Psalm130).  Despite the farcical trial of injustice, God forgave us as Christ pleaded and made intercessions for us to reconcile with God who judges rightly to "forgive them for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). As Isaiah 53 accounts:

Surely he took up our pain
    yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
⁸ By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
    Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
    for the transgression of my people he was punished

So Christ, trialed, humiliated, flogged twice, carried the cross literally and figuratively to his own death for God's atonemnet of humanity's sin. Through the lense of Psalm 69, we are provided with a fleeting glimpse into this moment endured by messianic son of man: "Insults have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." So Christ, poured out like water,  went to the cross for our sake yet sinners like Barabbas walked free. The resounding constrast highlights a divine injustice and love from the Father for us as he sent Christ who was stripped naked to hang on the Cross in utter humiliation whilst other sinners like us divide Christ's clothes among them to cast lots for his garment in caupable ignorance. Yet, the cry of direliection due to the unfathonable abandment by God to let his Son of Man die physcally and spiritually on the Cross in Psalm 22 is followed by an unwavering faith and prayer: "But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen...  I will declare your name to my people."

So when there is no faith in any justice of this world, we can have faith in a world that will be and in the righteous judgement of God the Father. For He nailed the only Son of the man on the cross as atonement for our sins so that we can reconcile with God in the Holy Spirit out of an abundance of love we do not deserve. And in this we have faith, Amen. 

With acknowledgement of copyrights subsisting in the St Marks Good Friday service and the sermons by The Rev Dr David Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2EbDtkfJ0