The Last Word

Luke 23:44-49

by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones

Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church

18 April 2025

               Christian theology over the last century has taught us that “God and God’s will for humanity is best discerned from the authoritative standpoint of suffering, especially the suffering of those on the underside of history,” so writes the theologian Elizabeth Gandolfo.    It isn’t usually the rich, powerful, and in control who get us closer to the truth.  It is those on the underside, the outside, the oppressed, the victims of violence and injustice.  Their perspectives reveal the lessons we need to hear, learn, and understand.

She quotes the Spanish Jesuit Jon Sobrino, “The sign is always the historically crucified people.” 

Look to where crucifixions are happening, and there you will find Christ.

In the Gospel, even the centurion who has overseen the execution admits that Christ was innocent.  This story reminds us of all the innocent victims of state power, including the African-Americans unjustly shot by the police, the civilians bombed in their homes, the trans kids denied health care, the immigrants kidnapped and disappeared to a prison in another country.

We cannot read and listen to this story with faithfulness and integrity if we do not see the victims of crucifixion in our own time.

While we’ve been at this Good Friday service, the local organization Mothers and Others: Justice and Mercy for Immigrants has been standing in silent protest at the offices of our congressman and senators.  The explain, “we must make connections between Jesus crucified and the crucifixions that are taking place in our name.”   

Every day in the news now we see the innocent victims of state power.  We watched in horror as Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk was assaulted and kidnapped on the street by masked agents of our own government.  All for writing an op-ed.

This week we watched as a Guatemalan family in Massachusetts had their car windows shattered so they could be dragged violently from the automobile where they were sitting waiting on their attorney to arrive.

This week Mohsen Mahdawi showed up for his citizenship interview in Vermont and was disappeared.

And we’ve all been shocked at the continuing case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father, illegally abducted and sent to an El Salvadorian prison, exacerbated by the continuing violations of a unanimous Supreme Court order to return him.

And that’s what’s so horrifying about watching all of these and other atrocities occur.  It is our own government perpetrating this evil, inflicting unjust violence upon the innocent.

And what to me is most horrifying is the low level officers and functionaries cooperating to make all of this happen.  We are watching Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil play out in real time and livestream.

Watching all this horror is causing us moral injury.

Moral injury is a term that first appeared in treating the trauma of combat veterans.  The injury arises when we cannot integrate our experiences into our meaning-making systems.  The more empathetic, idealistic, service-oriented we are, the more vulnerable we are to moral injury.  Rita Nakashima Brock, who has done much work in this area, writes that “When chaos strikes and [people] cannot see how to do the right thing or doing the right thing is no longer possible, they can be devastated by relentless failure.”

Which, I’m certain, was the experience of those who witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus.  The Gospel also draws our attention to those eye-witnesses and their reactions.

               How do we witnesses respond to the crucifixions we see?

               We know from Hannah Arendt’s studies of totalitarianism, fascism, and evil, that such efforts only succeed because ordinary people cooperate.  She demonstrated how often active resistance wasn’t even what was called for, but simply refusing to cooperate.

               But how should the church respond to this state violence against the innocent, to which Good Friday calls us to pay attention?            

               The Luther seminary professor Cody Sanders had a good essay published this week entitled “Following Jesus Means Choosing Sides, Making Stands, and Taking Risks.”  So often, he writes, churches refrain from taking risks because they don’t want to make people uncomfortable, don’t want to upset anyone, think it’s more welcoming to be vague or indecisive. 

               “But,” he writes, “when you decide not to decide over a matter of justice, you’ve already taken the side of whoever is powerful enough to enact their will in the situation–usually the side of the oppressor.”

               This, however, is not what Jesus wants from us or expects of us.  Sanders writes:

actually following Jesus means choosing the side of the most vulnerable, taking a stand in the face of injustice, and being in solidarity with specific people facing particular risks. It means living with the possibility of rejection, and even division.

Discipleship—actually being a disciple of the crucified Jesus—means being invited deeper into risk and saying “yes” more often than shying away.

               If we truly learn the lesson of the crucifixion story, it is that we must take the risks and stand with the victims of oppression, violence, and injustice.  Sanders summarizes the point, “the church has had enough custodians of comfort. The faith of Jesus is a faith of risk that summons us into courageous solidarity with the vulnerable.”

               So, how will we respond to this last word of Jesus from the cross?  Will we see the crucified in our midst?  Will we stand with them and for them?  Will we take the risks of being faithful followers of Jesus Christ?