Those who had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas the high priest, in whose house the scribes and the elders had gathered.

Matthew 26:57

It's a wonderful question. We use the word a lot, don't we? It's said of some of today's best books and movies that they are centered around the theme of redemption.

But what does that mean, exactly?

I realized in that class, when someone asked that very question - what does redemption mean, exactly - that on some level I'd been pondering the answer to that for much of my adult life. And so I was pleased right then, right there in that class, to have what felt like one of those light bulb moments.

Redemption is transformation fueled by love.

Redemption is transformation fueled by love. I'm not sure my seminary professors would sign off on that definition - I'm not sure they would agree on anything, frankly - but it works for me. And I may need a little redemption today, for the last time I preached here did not go so well.

The five PC(USA) churches here in the Swannanoa valley had organized a pulpit exchange, and it was my honor to preach here at Black Mountain Presbyterian. I was excited to preach in such a venerable church. And nervous, too, to preach in front of approximately 68 retired Presbyterian ministers. So I worked hard on the sermon.

And I gave it my very best. I built the tension of the sermon as carefully and steadily as I knew how to do. And just when I reached the climactic moment, the pivot point of the entire sermon . . . I paused for dramatic effect.

And in that exact moment, a young little girl, clearly bored out of her mind, let out a yawn of such volume it could be heard in the narthex. (Turns out the preachers in the room weren't the ones to be afraid of!)

So I could use a little redemption today. I suspect we all could. After all, redemption is why we're here. It's what this week is, finally, about - transformation fueled by love.

The transformation of the world. The transformation of communities and families. And the transformation of the individual; individual you and individual me.

Right now, today, in this passage, the arc of Holy Week takes a turn, from the "Hosannas!" of Palm Sunday toward the week's dramatic conclusion.

Here, an insurgency of love has run up against the hard rock of empire. It seems Jesus, the most revolutionary figure in the history of the world, was simply too much for the system to tolerate.

Too much for the hard-nosed religious leaders of his era to understand his boundary-breaking teaching and activism. And certainly too much for the keepers of the Roman empire to sit idly by and let him get away with subverting the imperial theology that said Caesar was Lord and that kept them in business.

Not surprisingly, the collective powers that be found a way to do him in. And so a cloud gathered over this scene, dark and menacing.

On this particular day, I am compelled to say that there's a cloud hanging over our world that may be relevant to this text.

As you will know if you read the paper this morning or have seen the news, today is the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. It would be nice, by which I mean it would be easier and safer and more polite, to just leave that giant bit of world news untouched.

But I believe that would be unfaithful to the preacher's task. If Christian folk, and Christian leaders in particular, are unwilling to comment on issues like war and poverty and hunger, the issues on which Jesus focused so much of his teaching; the issues on which he spent so much energy during his ministry - breaking bread, feeding the multitudes, enjoining his disciples to make peace and love their enemies - if we're unwilling to comment on such things out loud and in public, aren't we pulling a Peter?

Today, the focus of our "Encounters with Christ" series is on Caiaphas, the High Priest. But I was also struck by Peter's role in this story. He sat with the guards in order to see how this would end , the text says.

It's easy to do that, isn't it? To run from the hard realities of our world, and just wait to see how it all turns out.

As followers of Jesus, I think we have to do better than that. Terrorism is a menacing problem to be sure. But I find it impossible to reconcile Jesus' clear, explicit command to love my enemies with a policy focused expressly on killing them.

Now before you crucify me, let me be clear about this: I don't mean that in partisan terms. A little over five years ago what was it, 98 of our Senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq. So nobody has room to brag here.

And I also don't mean this in policy terms. I don't know what the answer to terrorism is. And I don't know what the answer is to the question of how and when to bring our troops home.

But as a minister, I do know this. I would desperately love for all those church going members of Congress, and the church-going occupant of the White House, to behave a little more like Jesus and little less like Caesar.

But that's a very hard thing to do, a tall order in a world as complex and dangerous as ours is.

Still, it can be done. I was reading recently about some of those famous Renaissance paintings of the crucifixion. And I was struck by how the painters would often paint themselves into the picture.

Critics understand that gesture to mean that the artists understood their role in that saving death, that they somehow needed Christ to die for them.

But maybe there's another way to read that gesture. Maybe on some level those artists were saying something else. Not just that it was for them that Christ died, but that it was they who sent him to the cross.

So maybe just one day out of every year, and maybe that day is today, we might spend a moment identifying with Caiaphas. Instead of identifying with the sinners for whom Christ died, we spend just a moment identifying with the ones who sent him to the cross to die.

Those who had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas the high priest, in whose house the scribes and the elders had gathered.

It's a terribly hard thing to say, which is why I think once a year is a gracious plenty, but that language sounds an awful lot like the leadership of our churches. And indeed, sometimes I think even the most well-intentioned among us do attempt, as a friend once put it, to nail God down.

We somehow encounter that same boundary-breaking spirit that was alive in Jesus and we suddenly get in touch with our inner Caiaphas. We want to control that Spirit; to put it in a box, or a tomb. We're ready to go to war when someone suggests we change the hymnal we've used every Sunday for the last 20 years. We're ready to crucify the person who suggests we update the chancel to make it more welcoming.

And God help the pastor or the chair of the worship committee who suggests that, you know, maybe there's something to this business about contemporary worship, something that might be helpful to our congregation.

Now I know that's all hard news. The Good News is that the story moves on from here. Tomorrow night, Maundy Thursday, we will be reminded that Jesus took the bread, blessed it and broke it and give it to them. To all of them. To Peter who would deny him. To Thomas who would doubt him. To Judas who would be betray him.

And I'll bet you dollars to donuts we would have given this living bread to Caiaphas too, had he come asking to be fed.

And he'll be there, at that Table, waiting to give that bread to you and to me. To feed us, and to forgive us.

And to redeem us, to continue that work of transformation fueled by a love that will not let us go.

Thanks be to God!