With Good Friday, Passover, the nightly news, and the morning papers we are deep in the crucible of the human struggle. I think of the choice given to those who assembled before the power of Pontius Pilate. What kind of choice were they given? Already a people whose land was occupied by the Romans, already a people marginalized in their own country, they were offered at festival time a crumb of flawed justice–freedom for one of the many who had been convicted. Mark reminds us that Barabbas was "among the rebels in prison," recalling the reality of the occupation, with dire consequences for any who resisted-- public death of the most horrible kind, crucifixion.

"Who shall it be," bid Pilot, "Jesus or Barabbas?" Resistance against such cunning oppression takes more than courage. Norbert Capek, minister of the great Unitarian Church in Prague, resisted the Nazis and paid with his life. Michael Servetus resisted the theological totalitarianism of Calvin and paid with his life. I could go on. The choice for Capek and Servetus and so many others was to resist and face the likelihood of whatever execution was decreed by the power politic or to succumb and be complicit in the executions of others or to flounder in the ensnaring ambiguity that waits covertly between these extremes. Oppression breeds choices that never come easy.

Who shall live and who shall die? Was this the choice of those gathered before Pilate, or was it a choice of resistance or complicity? Good Friday is ill-named unless it invites us to face forthrightly these gnarled questions that offer no quick exits.

He found the dream of prophets past,
of justice crowning every head,
now shattered:
by the truth of caste,
by children lost, by lack of bread.

—(SLT, 263, verse 2)

In the profound simplicity of paying attention, Jesus saw the truth of caste, of people oppressed and marginalized and homeless and hungry. And he dared to speak of it. Of course he was a danger to any who couldn’t summon the wherewithal from a place who knows how deep to join him in his resistance to such unbidden truths. Of course the savvy powers of his day nourished untenable choices for those on whom they were dependent for their power. I wonder, indeed, if Good Friday is less about the execution of a man of love than about the choices visited upon the people to whom he preached the good news of love in the face of overwhelming odds that they could do something about it.

That which is authentic in the history of faith
arises only out of the crucible of human struggle.

wrote feminist theologian Beverly Wildung Harrison.

How untenable choices live on as we are again drawn into the crucible of human struggle with the tangled net that is the Middle East, the war on terrorism, the freshly proclaimed death penalty for one convicted of being that "20^th terrorist." A Barabbas finally going to his execution? I have no idea. An execution? Most likely.

It seems that the most dangerous position to take on a Good Friday rife with the hard and untenable choices between a Jesus and a Barabbas is that either one is preferred. There is no justice in such a choice. There wasn’t then. There isn’t now.

As Israel and so many in the world celebrate a people’s freedom from political oppression, let’s not forget that haunting angel of death who indicated who should live and who should die. As Christians worldwide observe the crucifixion as redemptive, let’s question how redemptive any consequence of an untenable choice might be. As Unitarian Universalists committed to the worth of every person–every Barabbas? Every Zacarias Moussaoui?–and affirming the interconnected web of all existence, let’s be mindfully present in the crucible of human struggle with those untenable choices and draw all the strength of people of faith everywhere to resist, lest Golgotha go on and on and on.

What can we do? There is so much. We can pay attention. We can mindfully see through the trickery of power. We can resist and protest power plays as strategic means to undermine compassionate justice. We can be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves by knowing we are both serpent and dove.

We can take to heart what Jesus taught and engage the powers with attentiveness, compassion, and firm resolve to not court one nation for the purpose of vilifying others, to not court an alliance of nations for the purpose of vilifying one or two others. We can resist ensnarement in untenable options and work actively toward reconciliation of the seemingly unreconcilable.

Did we hear what Jesus said? Did we hear anything he said? Or will we be entrapped through fixation on the horror of an execution that didn’t have to be because two thousand years ago others on the margins of power couldn’t find the strength to resist.

God knows we live in interesting times, and if Good Friday is good at all, it will teach us something about what to do because we are children of God and citizens of the world.

We ask tonight and hope tonight for faith that peace is possible, for trust that the Spirit of Life and Love is forever alive and loving within us and among us, for spirit to love even those whom we are being taught daily not to look upon with compassion, for wisdom to restrain but not to annihilate, for buoyancy to fly over all the houses and bless every one. Amen.

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