Which Side Are You On?
There is an old story about a couple of gentlemen who were going to a masquerade party. The one decided to go as the devil himself, and he had the whole nine yards. He had a red suit, a long tail, a pitch fork and horns. His friend went as a little imp. The party wasn’t far away so they decided to walk. But as they were walking to the party, a huge storm came up, lightning and thunder and all kinds of rain. The only place they could find shelter was a church. Now this church had a service going on. They were singing and having a good time and preaching and all that kind of stuff but when the storm came up it got a little quiet. They wondered what was going on. It was a big storm. And just as they lightning flashed and the thunder cracked the door opens and in walks, the devil. Well you should have seen it. Everybody got out as fast as they could; even the preacher went out the window, except one poor soul who was up at the front who had gotten his belt loop caught in a nail. He tried as he might, he just couldn’t get away. As this man in the devil suit approached him, he said, “Sir, please don’t hurt me. I have been on your side the whole time.”
I have been waiting for years to tell that story. I love that story. It is a great story. Today’s passage is about choices. We have been studying the Bible over the last several months in the Gospel of John and I had reached Chapter 8. Now we are reaching the Easter season so I am going to skip up to Chapters 18, 19 and 20. So if you are reading along, that is where we will be for the next few weeks. We have hit Chapter 18, and in this chapter, one of the things it is about is about choices. I want to talk to you about three characters in the story, Peter and Judas and Pilate, and the choices they make. I have chosen some selected verses. We will come back next week and deal with the rest of them. But here is God’s word from Chapter 18 of John:
1When he (Jesus) had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was an olive grove, and he and his disciples went into it.
2Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. 3So Judas came to the grove, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons.
4Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”
5“Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.
”I am he,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) 6When Jesus said, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.
7Again he asked them, “Who is it you want?”
And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.”
8“I told you that I am he,” Jesus answered. “If you are looking for me, then let these men go.” 9This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.”
10Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.)
11Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”
12….They bound him 13and brought him first to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. 14Caiaphas was the one who had advised the following.
15….Because this disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard, 16but Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple, who was known to the high priest, came back, spoke to the girl on duty there and brought Peter in.
17“You are not one of his disciples, are you?” the girl at the door asked Peter.
He replied, “I am not.”
18It was cold, and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to keep warm. Peter also was standing with them, warming himself.
25As Simon Peter stood warming himself, he was asked, “You are not one of his disciples, are you?”
He denied it, saying, “I am not.”
26One of the high priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him, “Didn’t I see you with him in the olive grove?” 27Again Peter denied it, and at that moment a rooster began to crow.
33Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
34“Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”
35“Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”
36Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
37“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
38“What is truth?” Pilate asked. With this he went out again to the Jews and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.
This is about choices. There are several made along the way. I am reminded of another story about a down-and-out man who was seen on the side of a busy city street and someone came up to him and noticed that he had a sign that said, “I am keeping my options open, thank you.” Choices sometimes have options, but sometimes, not. With Jesus, our choices are very real.
Well the first person we meet making choices is Judas, himself. With him, I believe that he made choices, small choices, along the way that led him to make a huge choice against Jesus. Why did Judas come to Jesus in the first place? Well, we don’t know. He just did. I believe he was very sincere. He knew, or had heard, that Jesus might be the Messiah and he was very attracted to Jesus at first. But along the way Jesus began to say some things that troubled him; things like: “If you want to be my follower, you have to take up your cross” or “I am going to Jerusalem and I am going to die.” Things like that. Judas must have said, “Well, I am not sure about this guy.” So along the way he made some very, very troubling choices, inch by inch, step-by-step. His faith didn’t die all at once but died slowly. In the end, he decided that Jesus was not what he wanted or expected. And here is the thing. You know, Judas not only betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, in this scene he is leading the enemy. He has gone fully over to the other side where he is leading the detachment of soldiers themselves. In a sense, spiritually, he has made a choice not only to betray Jesus but to lead the enemy into the garden after Christ.
Well, what do we do with this? I think we must never think that this kind of thing can’t happen to us. You know, we live in a culture that is one big thrill ride. Think about it. One hundred years ago the airplane had barely been invented; not many cars on the road, certainly no T.V., hardly any radio, all kinds of things didn’t exist. Today we have all kinds of movies which are trying to outdo each other. There is just excitement after excitement, in fact, the last one, Avatar, is just one big thrill ride, I understand. Or on T.V. you have 24. I like 24 but I have a hard time watching it because it is like every minute something is going to happen. But that is the way they design it. When does Jack Bauer sleep anyway, that’s what I want to know. But every second in 24 hours, every minute, something is going on and that is to keep us engaged, to keep us thrilled. Even in the Church, the movement in our day is the mega church, bigger and bigger and bigger. Not all are bad; but it is just more excitement, better music, better this, better that, better programs, more excitement. I sometimes wonder if Judas wasn’t quite like that. At first he was very excited to be in the presence of the one he thought was the Messiah, but then this Messiah began talking about things like commitment, total commitment. For faith to be real, we must all choose sides, continually. And it could happen to us. But of course not all choices are that stark where one person gets to the place where he choices literally to be on the side of the enemy and leads the charge.
The next person I want to talk about is Pilate. There is a wonderful story about an old preacher who had a teenage son. He wondered what his son was going to do with his life so he decided to do an experiment. He went into his son’s room and he put on the son’s desk a bible, a silver dollar and a bottle of whiskey. What he thought he would do was he would hide in the closet and see what his son did when he came home from school. So that is what was happening. The son came in and looked at the three items. He picked up the bible and he put it under his arm; then he picked up the silver dollar and put it in his pocket; then he opened the bottle of whiskey and took a big swig. His father in the closet whispered, “Oh my Lord, he is going to be a politician.”
Pilate was a politician. A lot of people approach Pilate as a philosopher and he asked this seemingly deep question about the meaning of life, “What is truth?” And he may have been. I tend to think of Pilate as being sarcastic in this moment. “What’s the truth?” You see for Pilate, truth for him was to do what was good for him. If he ruled Palestine well, this area, the emperor would reward him. If he didn’t he would wind up in the modern equivalent of northern Alaska in his assignment. He was motivated to do very well, and we can see the politician in him in a brilliant kind of way because he offers “Barabbas or Jesus”. What happened there? If anyone said, “Why did you put Jesus to death?” He said, “I didn’t do it. They made the choice.” The emperor would say, “Well, that was great thinking on your part. No one can blame Rome for this now.” And he could pickup Barabbas a week later if he wanted to. It didn’t matter. But you see Pilate was very much like people today. Many people for them their truth is what makes them comfortable, what makes them profit, what makes them a success. It has very little to do with principles or what truth is. It is just what is good for them and it becomes an excuse.
When I was in Afghanistan, one of the first soldiers I saw in a counseling situation was a young man, he was no more than twenty or twenty-two who had been in Iraq and he had suffered and been through some horrendous things. He told me about them and I won’t trouble you with them; but for a young man to experience this, it was just horrible. He had come home and literally stayed drunk because he couldn’t take it, he couldn’t sleep, he was having a hard time. He came to me saying, in a good way, saying “I don’t want to be like that when I get back.” But as we talked, at the end of our conversation he says, “Now Chaplain, I don’t want to hear about this God stuff and I don’t want to hear about any of that.” Then we parted company after a while. I never really saw him in a counseling situation again and I thought maybe he had a bad experience in church or something bad had happened to him. But, I found out later in talking with him, it was probably something else. He had been assigned to travel around and he went to many places and he talked about his conquests of some of the female soldiers. Now I won’t go into the details. He was a party guy among other things. It dawned on me why he didn’t want to have any thing to do with God was that if he did, he would have to change his ways. So the sad part about it is that he couldn’t get the help he needed because he didn’t want to have God telling him what to do.
A lot of people are like that. They don’t want to accept the truth because they don’t want God telling them what to do. Pilate was kind of like that. Life is about making these choices. If God is our God, and yeah we might have to choose some different ways of doing business, we might have to choose some different kinds of lifestyles; we might have to make some different moral choices, as the video showed us. There are lots of places where we need to worship and be out there; it isn’t just about showing up at church and being churchy and being Christian. That’s a great place, as a matter of fact, we need to come here. Sometimes, as a preacher, I am sort of paid to say “You need to come to church.” I think a lot of people go, “Yeah, you’re a preacher and you are supposed to say that.” But you know church is one of the places where we get fed. It is one of places where we enter into community where people can help us. It is a place where we can be educated and when we go out in the world and live our lives. A great writer named Malcolm Muggeridge compared the church to like a base, like an Army base, if you will, and the world is like the field. What Army people do is they train in the church, or in the base, and then they go out. That is what the church is for, to be the place where you get strength, where you can make the choices. That is even more important as we come to Peter, as we come to Peter.
Now I want to defend Peter just a little bit. A lot of times Peter and Judas are compared. People will say, “Well they did the same thing and yet Peter was forgiven and Judas was not. What is the difference?” Well the difference is huge, the difference is huge. Now, just think about the situation. All these people, lots of people, came into the garden and took Jesus away and all of his disciples except Peter and probably John (we are not told his name because John doesn’t mention himself), all of them turned tail and ran, every one of them. In a sense they denied Jesus with their feet if not with their mouth. Now, Peter put himself in a position to fail by being brave. It took a lot of courage to follow Jesus into the courtyard of the temple where all the soldiers were and all those different things. Now he failed and if he were here today he would say he did a horrible thing, and he did. But the only reason he failed is because he had courage to follow, and that is the difference. He had made a choice to follow Jesus and to love Jesus. We have seen this kind of thing out of Peter before. Remember when Jesus was walking on the water and Peter says, “Can I come out, can I come out?” It took a lot of courage to step out into the raging storm onto the water. He didn’t last very long; a couple seconds in he goes, “O my gosh!” But he did have the courage to get out of the boat. He had the courage to follow Jesus. Now I am not making excuses for him but he had made a choice. He loved Jesus and he had chosen to follow Jesus; and I think for us, I think we ought to have the attitude that we would rather try than not try. We would rather walk into the lion’s den if not walk at all. At the same time realizing how Peter had failed, he failed by being presumptuous. He thought he could do it by himself. He thought he could make it on his own, that he had the power in and of himself to obey. He didn’t, and we don’t. Anyone can fail, and we do.
There is a great story about Billy Graham. In his first few years of his ministry it was just amazing, going gang busters. People were coming, thousands and thousands and thousands, and Billy got a little of the big-head. He started wearing this fur cap. It was very fashionable. He looked cool. His colleagues around him began to notice this sort of change of attitude and they did something to him. They put shaving cream in his cap. So that one day, Billy Graham picks up the cap and goes, plop. He never wore the cap again. But he got the message, too. He was just Billy. God had given him a great gift, but he was just Billy. And that is one of the reasons I respect him so much is that through his long years, he never lost his sense of humility about who he was. It can happen to anyone and we must never think that we can do it by ourselves. That is, again, why we need church, why we need others.
A few years ago I had to go to a bible study every Thursday morning, maybe on Wednesday, but it was at five o’clock in the morning. It kind of felt like this morning, a little bit. I am not a morning person. But I got up and went. These were great guys. But it had happened that my mother had a stroke and they called me that morning and she had passed away. About four o’clock in the morning they called me. I said, “You know, I am going to go because these are the guys, these are my friends. They will support me.” And that is what it is all about for us. Christianity, being a Christian, requires us to make choices; but it is not a Lone Ranger thing, we need one another.
Last but not least, I am jumping a little bit into the rest of the story, like Paul Harvey. One of the most remarkable things about their story is that when it is all over with and Jesus has been raised from the dead and they spend time with him after this, they become totally different. James and John stood in the same place that Jesus did with the same group, the same Sanhedrin group, a little later; and they challenged them. They basically say “we could do nothing else but witness for Christ and we don’t care what you do to us.” Contrast that to just a little while before. I think it is one of the greatest proofs of the Resurrection. They have seen Jesus. Now, what changed them? Well they certainly had spent three years with Jesus and that counted for something, but they got changed because they experienced Christ in a new way. It all came together.
You know, I think for many people in church if you were ask them, “Are you a Christian?” They would say, “Of course, I was born was into Church.” Or “I go to church,” or this or that or the other. “Of course I am a Christian.” But unfortunately there are a lot of “of course” Christians out there who have not really had an experience of Christ. You know, the disciples lived with Christ, they were with Christ, and yes, they were Christians, if you will; but it wasn’t powerful to them. It wasn’t real to them until they had an experience with the risen Christ. They had been with Jesus, and I love that. They were astonished and took note that these men had been with Jesus. Would anyone knowing you, could they tell that Jesus was with you, or me? I don’t say that in a condemning way. I am just asking a question. What is your relationship like? Well let me encourage you. Lent is a great time to think about your relationship with Christ and where it is. Leading up to Easter, think about it. Is it real to you? Is it powerful to you? Would anyone be able to tell? Ask that question and go to the Lord and say, “Lord, make it real if it isn’t. And if it is, make it even more real and people can tell that I am yours and you are mine.”
Would you pray with me?
Lord God, thank you for Jesus. Thank you for this story which is so powerful, which has so much to say to us. We ask you Lord to make yourself real to us. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.