DAY 45

LIKE A RUNAWAY TRAIN

Leviticus 15 & 16 and Matthew 27: 1-26

It is like a runaway train that cannot be stopped; the Chief Priest’s, the crowds, it all leads to the Crucifixion. No matter how many times I read it, there is Jesus, mostly silent, and it continues to roll forward. The readings from both the Old and New are merging for me today. The Old with it desire for me to be clean, for its proscription of the Day of Atonement, and the New with Jesus before Pilate...it is all merging and moving ahead.

Pilate could not stop it either…"he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream.”” Even after his wife told him to stop it, he could not.

I know it won’t stop. I know Pilate cannot stop it. I know they won’t choose Barabbas. I know that if I were in the crowd I would be yelling “Crucify Him.” The point of this story is not to judge those who were there that day. The point is that we must own our sin. The sacrifices in the Tabernacle that we have been reading about are very personal. Each person brings their own sacrifice. Each person must own it.

Every year we practice a discipline called the Stations of the Cross. We walk the path that Jesus walked to his death. At the Cathedral we do it on Wednesdays and then on Fridays I go to the Roman Catholic Cathedral. The priest in charge of the other Cathedral and I try to be at both each week. In many ways it is the process by which I own my part in this necessary sacrifice. It also a way for two different denominations to show our unity, our solidarity around this unifying act of our High Priest Jesus.

Listen again, not to our New Testament reading, but to our Old Testament Lesson. “And the priest who is anointed and consecrated as priest in his father's place shall make atonement, wearing the holy linen garments He shall make atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly. And this shall be a statute forever for you, that atonement may be made for the people of Israel once in the year because of all their sins." (Leviticus 16:32-34)

Jesus is High Priest; Priest of His Father. He is also the sacrifice, the scapegoat, upon whom the sins of the world have been laid. God is not interested in us dying in our “uncleanness” ("Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst." Lev. 15:31) He has been telling the Israelites, His People, that we are to be separate, holy, for Him. God is interested in making us “clean”.

Of course history has shown that not only do we fail at it, the method by which God chose to keep us connected to him itself became corrupt. Jesus comes to get us back not only on the right path, but to make all other sacrifices unnecessary. Jesus comes as the “one, full, perfect, sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world” so that all who come and receive him shall have life everlasting.

In reality this runaway train is right on course with God at the throttle.