Our Sins Hold Him There

Evan D Garner

Apr 3

April 3, 2026 • Good Friday
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 • Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 • John 18:1-19:42

When you stand at the foot of the cross, what do you see? Today, we return to Golgotha, and we dare to look upon the one who was crucified for our sake. In looking upon him, we risk seeing the consequences of our failure, the exposition of our vulnerability, the magnitude of our faithlessness, the depths of our powerlessness. And yet we come to look.

What do you see reflected back at you when you gaze upon Jesus, who was crucified for your sake? What part of you do you see holding him there? What failure within do you need to see embodied by the one who was hanged on the cross, painful though it is to see it?

All our failures—indeed, all the brokenness of the whole world—is bound up in the body of the crucified Christ. He is nailed to the cross because his kingdom—the kingdom of God—is not of this world. The cross is the world’s rejection of God’s reign that comes to us in Jesus Christ, and we return here every year on Good Friday to remember that, as followers of Jesus—as citizens of God’s reign—our kingdom is not of this world.

In the passion narrative, we encounter two distinct forces that combine in a way that leads to Jesus’ death. Over the years, it has been fashionable among preachers and theologians to prioritize one over the other. Either we interpret Jesus’ death as the product of a Jewish plot to have him killed as an enemy of God and God’s people, or we describe his death as the outcome of a Roman imperial judicial process that led to his execution as an enemy of the state.

At times, both rationales have served the unspoken needs of the church. As Christians, we have a long history of using the death of Jesus as a justification for anti-Semitism, which in every instance is a sin against God and God’s people. More recently, in an attempt to exonerate ourselves from past sins, we have shoved the pendulum in the other direction, attributing the labels used in the gospel accounts to the purely anti-Judaic motives of the gospel writers and their mostly Gentile communities.

What if, instead, we encounter the death of Jesus, called for by the Jewish leaders and carried out by the Roman authorities, not as a moment for a singular historical reckoning but as a bifocal diagnosis of our own spiritual malady? What if we return to the cross of Christ not to understand why Jesus was killed but to see in him the embodiment of our own two-pronged failure to grasp both the religious and political implications of that reign which he brings to the earth?

“We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.” Those are the words the religious leaders used when they finally revealed to Pilate the reason they wanted to have Jesus killed. Aren’t they the same words we use every time we reject Jesus and his spiritual authority? Like those religious leaders, we are threatened by a God who prefers the poor and the outcast, who loves our enemies, and who forgives those who have hurt us. Like the chief priests and the Pharisees, we get angry when Jesus sides with our opponents. Like them, we are eager to reject anyone who says that they belong to God yet spend all their time and effort celebrating those who distort our faith and throw away our traditions.

We might not fuss over sabbath regulations and dietary restrictions, but, whenever Jesus blesses those who represent the things our faith stands against, we, too, are ready to call for his execution. Whenever we condemn a Christian who uses the Bible to justify their narrowminded approach to the world, we are condemning Christ. Thus, whenever we look upon the cross, we see our own religious failures—every instance of our refusal to accept the difficult teachings of Jesus—holding him there in agony.

But we also see hanged upon the cross our refusal to accept Jesus as the one in whom true power is manifest. His death may have been called for by the religious leaders, but it was also sanctioned and carried out by the political authorities. And it’s hard to know which of the two radical claims we find more threatening—his love for our enemies or his example of self-sacrifice.

When Jesus was brought to Pilate, the Roman governor saw nothing but weakness and failure standing before him. “What accusation do you bring against this man?” Pilate asked, struggling to recognize the threat to Roman rule that Jesus represented. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Pilate asked his prisoner, seeing nothing at all majestic in him. Don’t we ask the same thing whenever the crucified one tells us to take up our cross and follow him? Don’t we prefer the version of Christ’s kingship that doesn’t involve our own sacrifice and death? Are we really supposed to believe that following Jesus means accepting the way of rejection and suffering? Aren’t we more like Pilate—motivated by strength, power, and might, and fundamentally repulsed by the thought of our own weakness, poverty, and vulnerability?

In that way, we prefer a shallow encounter with the cross of Christ—one that allows us to assume that Jesus’ death is only a temporary setback—that his real victory will come on the third day—that we are allowed to follow him from the comfort of Easter’s glory. But Good Friday is about more than taking a passing glance upon the one who was crucified for our sake. This day, we are required to look deeply upon the savior of the world—the King of kings—whose death upon the cross is not only a sign of all the ways that we have rejected God’s reign but is itself the very encapsulation of divine power and might. True power, Jesus reveals to us, is the cross upon which he dies, and, every time we choose earthly power, we, along with Pilate, hand Jesus over to be crucified.

The religious leaders want Jesus to be executed because they believe his claim to be God’s Son will collapse under the weight of his death as a failed messiah. Pilate gives into their demand for Jesus’ death because crucifixion gives him the opportunity to demonstrate Jesus’ failure as a would-be king. And, only when we see upon the cross our own rejection of Jesus and his way of love and self-sacrifice, can we discover the path that leads us into the heart of God and God’s reign.

“My kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus says. “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…But, as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Because we belong to Jesus, we belong to a kingdom that is not from this world. Because we belong to Jesus, we do not draw our sword to fight. Instead, like Christ, we yield our lives for the sake of others—even for our enemies and those who hate us.

As long as we expect Jesus to tell us only those things that we want to hear, we will join with those religious leaders who call for his death upon the cross. And, as long as we believe that power and strength are the signs of true authority, we will join with Pilate in condemning Jesus to death. Once we learn to gaze upon the cross and recognize our own propensity to drive the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet, we can be set free from our own narrowmindedness and relieved of our own need for security. After all, that is why we come here today—not to hide from our failures and vulnerabilities but to glory in the Cross of Jesus, upon which all our sins are forgiven and through which all our infirmities are healed. To him, the Crucified One, be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.