Jesus, Say Something

As we “celebrate” Good Friday today, one of the more unsettling questions concerning the final hours of Jesus’ life is his refusal to respond to the false accusations made against him.

Mark 14:55-51

55 The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. 56 Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree.

57 Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: 58 “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.’” 59 Yet even then their testimony did not agree.

60 Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, “Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?” 61 But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer.

Why doesn’t Jesus say something?

It is this strange reluctance to give a response that is so confounding. On this, the darkest day of the Church Year, the day in which Jesus is brutally beaten and crucified, God remains silent. Is God a god too weak to speak? In this deafening silence we find ourselves caught up in the mystery of what Paul describes as the foolishness of the cross — the power of God demonstrated in and through weakness.

In what follows I’d like to reflect on the deeply emotive and masterfully melancholic song “Say Something” by A Great Big World . The song itself captures in it’s tone and melody an uneasy combination of anger, sadness and regret. The first lines of the chorus articulate so much of the undertone that perhaps we feel when it comes to a God who stays silent in the face of tragedy: 

“Say something, I’m giving up on you.”

Of course, the song on the surface is quite clearly a break-up song, but I’d like to read it through another kind of break-up: the one Judas instigates with a kiss, in which he turns from trusted disciple to jaded betrayer.

It is often assumed that Judas betrayed Jesus out of greed. That is what is heavily implied by John in his Gospel (John 12:4-6). But Matthew seems to paint a different picture. We are told Judas sells Jesus out for 30 silver coins, which is about a couple hundred dollars. In other words, it’s not all that much. What’s more, Matthew tells us that Judas was filled with so much remorse that he tried to give the money back and when the coins are thrown back in his face, he commits suicide. He is unable to live with what he did.

It is here we begin to see that Judas is much more complicated than we often give him credit for.

Some have suggested that perhaps what Judas was trying to do was force Jesus’ hand. Judas genuinely wanted God’s kingdom to come. That’s why he gave what he had and followed Jesus. He truly thought Jesus might be the one who could accomplish what so many before him had failed to do. But then Jesus kept going on about how he had to suffer many things and be rejected; how he had to be killed.

Judas, presumably thought just as Peter did. He wanted to set Jesus straight. Messiahs don’t suffer. They don’t get rejected. They don’t get killed. They inflict suffering. They do the rejecting. They go around and do the killing. So Judas, as the theory goes, made a strategic wager. He made the gamble to have Jesus arrested, to push Jesus into a corner, so that when push came to shove, Jesus would finally throw off his “lamb led to a slaughter” act and get to doing some real Messiah s#@t!

When that doesn’t happen, Judas’ is utterly broken. He bet the house and lost it all. Everything he had believed in and hoped for died on that hill.

Listen to this excerpt from writer and preacher Sarah Dylan Breuer that explores some of these themes. It takes the form of a journal entry written by Judas:

For months, I’d been traveling with him. I listened to him, comforted him, prayed with him, stood by him, shared my vision of how the world could be and how little and how much it would take to see things set right. I thought he understood, or was beginning to understand. “Do what you must,” I’d said to him, knowing that it would cost, but that either of us would give our life’s blood to see God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. This was the object of our prayers together each day, and of our silent prayers each night as we drifted to sleep beside the crackle of the fire and the steady sound of the other’s breathing, “Do what you must,” I’d said, and I thought that he was steeling himself to act.

As the time drew near, I told myself that I acted for the sake of a kingdom worth more than my life or his. I talked about resurrection as if that would cancel the cost. I talked about love, and told myself I acted in love for him and for the world we wanted to save from itself and from our enemies. And when, in the garden, he took my hand and turned the tables, I told myself that he finally understood what I had been trying to teach him. “Do what you must,” he said.

The kiss betrayed me.

In the moment I kissed him, my lies crumbled like the shell of a log burned to ash. He didn’t take up the sword, as I thought he would. He didn’t attack the soldiers and lead us to Jerusalem to destroy our enemies there. And suddenly it was all clear, stripped naked like the young man who had traveled with us and was now fleeing the soldiers. I had believed the lie that God’s rule could be purchased with violence. The lie that the big idea was bigger than our lives. The lie that I knew what love is, and the biggest lie of all—that it was my love of God that overrode my love for him. All dust.

With all this in mind, you can now hear the song as expressing the tortured memory of someone, of Judas, still coming to terms with the role he played in the death of his friend(ship).

Say something, I’m giving up on you

I’ll be the one, if you want me to

Anywhere, I would’ve followed you

Say something, I’m giving up on you

And I am feeling so small

It was over my head

I know nothing at all

And I will stumble and fall

I’m still learning to love

Just starting to crawl

Say something, I’m giving up on you

I’m sorry that I couldn’t get to you

Anywhere, I would’ve followed you

Say something, I’m giving up on you

And I will swallow my pride

You’re the one that I love

And I’m saying goodbye

Say something, I’m giving up on you

And I’m sorry that I couldn’t get to you

And anywhere, I would have followed you

Say something, I’m giving up on you

Say something, I’m giving up on you

Say something

This song, when heard this way, powerfully expresses the profound anguish that emerges as we hold in tension a God whose glory is somehow found in the pain and humiliation of a Roman cross. Surely God could have done it differently? And so we feel this anguish that holds within itself anger and lament, blame and humility, desperation and repentance. To enter into Good Friday is to recognize that deep within us is this poignant cry that is at once both a demand and a plea for forgiveness: “Say something, I’m giving up on you.”

As we have been through a year full of tragedy and trouble, Good Friday is a day we sit in the uncomfortable sound of God’s silence — all the meaningless pain and debilitating loss. We feel the anger that demands God to do more than to say nothing. And yet we also recognize on the cross God has said something. God has done something more than we can quite put into words.