Transcript
The Crucified Messiah
Richmond’s First Baptist
March 29, 2026 Palm/Passion Sunday
John 19:16b-22
So they took Jesus, and carrying the cross by himself he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.
Usually, on the Sunday before Easter, I preach about Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We call it Palm Sunday, and I stop while the crowds are still shouting “Hosanna!” But the Narrative Lectionary we’ve been following takes a different approach. In these past few weeks I’ve preached about Jesus washing feet, Peter’s denial of Jesus, Jesus before Pilate, and Jesus condemned. The title of today’s sermon is “The Crucified Messiah,” and if I preach only the suggested text we will skip over Palm Sunday altogether. I don’t want to do that. So, I’m looking at the full sweep of this drama, from the moment Jesus rides into the city to the moment he is nailed to the cross. I’m calling it Palm/Passion Sunday. And maybe it’s only because a number of our members were in Greece recently, but I’ve been thinking of it as a kind of Greek tragedy.i
I’ve already asked you to imagine that you were there, not in the comfortable sanctuary of Richmond’s First Baptist Church, but in one of those ancient stone theaters, watching this drama unfold. Imagine that you had bought tickets for it, and stamped on the tickets was the title: “The Crucified Messiah.” Why would you buy tickets for such a thing? Why would anyone? Why did those ancient Greeks pack themselves into those theatres to watch plays about everything falling apart, about people suffering and dying? The answer, according to Aristotle, is catharsis.
It comes from a Greek verb that means, “to cleanse.” Catharsis is not a “happy ending,” it’s not even “resolution,” but something more like emotional cleansing—through truth. When those people went to the theatre they saw something true about the human condition: they saw how fear drives decisions, how power corrupts judgment, and how good people can still make disastrous choices. At some point during the play they might have said, “Ah, that’s us,” or even, “Ah, that’s me!”
Aristotle claimed that they were allowed to feel grief, pity, and fear, but in a contained, communal setting, and according to the experts it is strangely satisfying to feel deeply in a place where it’s safe to do so. I think about those people who like to watch horror movies. I don’t, but some people do, and one of the things they seem to appreciate is the ability to face their fears in a safe environment. Their bodies react in all the ways you would expect: their hearts beat faster, adrenaline floods the system, but when it’s over they leave the theater thinking, “I did it! I faced something terrifying, and I survived!”
Tragedy is different; you don’t face fear so much as truth. You find yourself afraid, not because there’s a killer hiding in the basement, but because you recognize yourself in the characters on the stage. You sit there thinking, “That could be me. I might make that same choice. I see my own fear, my own compromise, in this person.” You leave the theatre thinking, “That was terrible, but it was also terribly important.”
And that’s why the drama of Holy Week, even though it contains some terrifying moments, is not horror, but tragedy. In this story the danger is not out there—it’s in here (tapping the chest). It’s the fear that makes a crowd turn. It’s the pressure that makes a governor compromise. It’s the instinct in every one of us to save ourselves even if it costs someone else everything. And that brings us to the next big word in Greek tragedy: catastrophe.
It comes from the preposition kata, meaning “down,” and the verb strepho, meaning “to turn.” Literally, catastrophe means, “a downward turn.” Which is not the way we typically use it. We say, “Last night’s play was a catastrophe!” meaning that it was a disaster. But a catastrophe is not when everything ends, it’s when everything turns and there’s no going back. For example:
§ Somewhere in the cockpit of a plane, there is a moment—not when the plane hits the ground— but when the pilot realizes it’s going down. The alarms are sounding. The instruments don’t make sense. And in that instant…he knows. Everything that follows is just the unfolding of that moment. That’s catastrophe.
§ Or imagine a luxury cruise ship crossing the Atlantic—music playing, lights shining, people laughing over dinner—and then, in the dark of night, a glancing blow against something unseen. At first, it doesn’t seem like much. But below the surface, compartments are filling. And somewhere deep in the ship, an engineer realizes: this ship will not stay afloat. The catastrophe is not when it sinks—but when it becomes clear that it will.
§ Or a doctor sitting across from a patient, holding test results in her hand. There is a moment—before the words are spoken— when she already knows what they will mean. And once those words are said, life will never be the same again.
§ Or two people sitting across from each other at a table, a conversation like any other, until something is said, or something is finally admitted, and in that moment they both know. The relationship has turned. They may sit there a while
longer. They may try to talk their way back. But something has shifted, and from that moment on everything moves toward a different ending. If we’re honest, most of us have lived through moments like that.
So, here’s today’s challenge: can you spot that catastrophic moment in this drama, in this tragedy we call the passion of the Christ?
Let’s take a closer look, beginning with John 12:12. In this Gospel Jesus has already made a name for himself by raising Lazarus from the dead. When the “great crowd” that had come to Jerusalem for the Passover festival heard that he was coming they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is one who comes in the name of the Lord—the king of Israel!” And Jesus, rather than discouraging them, found a young donkey and sat on it, as if to fulfill that verse from Zechariah that says, “Do not be afraid, Daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!”
John tells us that Jesus’s disciples didn’t understand these things at first, “but when Jesus was glorified,” then they remembered. It’s a hint of what’s coming, but it’s not the turn, not yet. “The crowd that had been with him when Lazarus was raised continued to testify,” John writes. “It was because the crowd had heard he performed this sign that they went out to meet him,” he adds. And then the Pharisees said to one another, “You see, you can do nothing. Look the world has gone after him.” And that sounds like a turn. It sounds like that moment when something becomes inevitable. But this feels like a turn upward, not downward, and the religious authorities will have none of that.
In the remainder of chapter 12 some Greeks come to see Jesus and that’s when he says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He knows the end is coming before anyone else does. He speaks about his death. He summarizes his
teaching. People still refuse to believe in him and so he finds an upper room where he can be alone with his disciples. He spends the next five chapters with them: sharing a meal, washing their feet, teaching them, comforting them, and praying for them. And then they sing a hymn and go out to the Garden where Judas will betray him, the soldiers will arrest him, and he will be taken to the home of the high priest.
Is that it? Is that the downward turn from which there can be no recovery? Maybe. The religious authorities accuse Jesus of blasphemy. Peter denies him, not once but three times. And early the next morning the chief priests take him to the home of the Roman governor, where they will accuse him of insurrection. But do you remember a few weeks ago, when I was telling you about the difference between dreams and reality? In Jesus’s trial before Pilate there are seven scenes, with Pilate shuttling back and forth between the religious authorities standing outside his headquarters and Jesus standing on the inside—and those are two different realities. Outside is the Roman Empire, where the Jewish religious leaders present Jesus as a threat to Caesar and demand his execution; inside is the Kingdom of God, because the king himself is standing there, and wherever Jesus is, there is the kingdom.
You get that hopeful feeling again, that the turn could come at any moment, that Pilate could recognize Jesus for who he really is, that he could refuse to condemn him and set him free. But then, at the beginning of chapter 19, he has Jesus flogged, and in that moment you feel the power beginning to shift, you see Pilate beginning to give in to the demands of the crowd. And when he brings Jesus out a little later, dressed in a purple robe with a crown of thorns on his head, the crowd shouts, “Crucify him!” They say, “This man deserves to die, because he has claimed to be the Son of God!” And you feel one last flicker of hope. Maybe Pilate will release him after all! But Pilate, after talking with Jesus and in some ways being absolved of his guilt (vs. 11), brings Jesus out
one last time and offers him to the crowd, saying, “Here is your king!” But the chief priests shout, “We have no king but Caesar.”
It’s blasphemy, but perhaps also the moment when the balance shifts, and you realize that this is not going to end well. John writes, “Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus, and carrying the cross by himself he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”
I think he had become convinced.
I wish we had time for questions and answers. I wish I could ask you, “When do you think the catastrophe occurs in this drama? Where does the plot turn downward and begin to move toward the inevitable? Is it when Jesus is betrayed? When he is arrested? When Peter denies him? When Pilate has him flogged? When the chief priests say, ‘We have no king but Caesar’”? Maybe it’s that moment we talked about last week, back in chapter 11, when the chief priests and the Pharisees say, “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation” (11:48).
I’d love to hear your thoughts on that, but before I bring this sermon to a close I’d like to talk about a related catastrophe—about the turn that comes when the crowd stops shouting “Hosanna!” and begins to shout, “Crucify!” We often imagine it was the
same crowd that did both things. I think I’ve said that from the pulpit: “The crowd that shouted ‘Hosanna!’ on Palm Sunday was the same crowd that shouted ‘Crucify!’ on Good Friday.” It’s a powerful piece of rhetoric, and a way of pointing out our fickle human nature. It’s also possible, maybe even likely, that it’s true. But John doesn’t say that, and the Gospel doesn’t require that, because what it shows us is something even more true: that within the same city, within the same week, within the same human story, there are voices ready to praise and voices ready to condemn.
And if we’re honest, those voices are not just out there. They are in here (tapping the chest)—the part of us that longs for a Savior, and the part of us that turns away when he refuses to be the Savior we expected. The tragedy is not that one crowd changed its mind. The tragedy is that both cries—“Hosanna!” and “Crucify!” can rise from the same place (tapping the chest). And so the story turns—not just on that long ago day in Jerusalem, but in the human heart on any given day. A catastrophe: the moment when everything becomes inevitable, and the story begins its slow, staggering movement toward the cross.
And yet, even here, even now, there is something about this story that feels unfinished…
—Jim Somerville © 2026
