We could be forgiven if we come here today completely confused about what kind of a God we really have. Who would have expected, one year ago, that we would now be looking back on a year of wars that are called holy, a year of suicide bombings and murder in the name of religion, a year when our church itself has proven, if it needed proving, that it is not the holder of all truth and good judgment. So much suffering. So little reason for it. No clear way to end it. So many people thinking God is on their side. We think that God must have turned away,…

We know this story so well, that it has a life of its own, event follows event with a sense of inevitability, we know what’s coming next at every point. Over time, it seems to us that it couldn’t have been any other way. But Jesus’s death was the most avoidable death imaginable. At every turning point in this story, there’s an opportunity for Jesus to escape his crucifixion. He could have avoided Jerusalem entirely. He could have snuck through one of the legal loopholes that Pilate seemed, at some level, to want to offer him. He could have laid low for a year or two until things settled down.…