"... which of the two do you want me to release to you?..."
God has given us a certain Risky Authority to bind or release - to withhold or set free - life or death in our life.
The sway of the crowd, the rub of the culture - if we would choose to succumb to it's hypnotic chant - tells us to choose death, to release the Barabbas into the thing. Yet back there, almost hidden in the roaring culture, there is One who silently beckons. He's been there all the time, loving, wooing you to release him. Deep inside you know he is the only One who can breath Life into your heart. He is not slick. There is nothing flashy about him. His Divinity remains fully cloaked in the hellish momentum of the crowd.
It's easy to do. Indeed, easier then picking up your Cross and following him into Obedience - to succumb to the world, that is; to use the certain Risky Authority for the binding of death, and not Life, as it was meant to be used for. Soon you, too, find yourself shouting, "Give me Barabbas! Release to me more death, more bondage, into my life!"
And, because of the Image, the Authority, that unique Rule that God has gifted you with to make things "be" at the mere utterance or your word, our Pilate washes his hands from the thing and pronounces his Blood upon us forever. Death is released. In a caustic juxtapositioning, God has actually honored what we have done with his Gift, in spite of out mismanagement of the thing. In a single moment our lifelong focus has shifted from worshipping our Maker to weaving fig leaves. The thing has been released and we are forever left dealing with the sticky residue of the Forbidden Choice.
Why has God even given us such authority? Doesn't he know we'd misuse it? No wonder he calls it a "Risky Authority!"
The authority to choose Life or death - to release this or that in our life - seems to be as binding whether it be used for Barabbas or Jesus. The riskiness of it - of course - is that we'd abuse the privilege and get into trouble. We can, for example shout with the world, "Give us Barabbas!" And Barabbas will be released. We all know that. Conversely, the releasing of Jesus into our Life comes with that same finality. The power to bless, the force to change and rearrange future blood-lines comes in the Ecstatic Sigh, "Holy Spirit, Come. Into my tomb, I now do choose, to release my Jesus!"
Choose ye this day whom you will serve.
The beautiful thing is - in spite of our misguided decisions, which have the capacity to change the course of following generations (such is the power of the Gift) - the very Life denied self-resurrects and redeems us through, of all things, our adamant misuse of that same Gift.
Jesus doesn't flinch when we shout "Barabbas." Oh, still he hears us, he still feels the betrayal, he still turns the other cheek and wonders why God and all Creation (including us) has forsaken him. But, through the power of the resurrection, his insistence to redeem, restore, and fill us with his absolute Unconditional Love remains a Force that the gates of hell themselves cannot curtail. He is resolute to stand in the Echoes of the Fall, be risen up for all to see, and rescue us from the deadly vines, wrapped tight 'round our feet, by the power of another Tree.
Though denied, he still offers. Tho killed, he still lives. Though hated, he still loves.
And - his goal? To hear us beckoning against the crowds - "No - Give us Jesus!"
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