Don’t Tear It

John 19:23-27

March 3, 2024 • Mount Pleasant UMC

“If your house suddenly caught on fire, what would you grab as you fled out the door?” Blogger Foster Huntington was wondering about that question one day, so he gathered the things that were important to him, took a picture of them and posted it online. Then he asked a few friends to do the same, and soon after that, that simple question became a website called “The Burning House.” Huntington then began to gather answers to that question from strangers across a wide cross-section of humanity. What he collected included submissions from people across six continents. Their answers to the question was as diverse as they were, but one thing Huntington noticed is that people largely focused on things that could not be replaced. Not entirely, and he was surprised how much a person’s personality was captured in a simple photograph that answered his question. Here’s just a sampling of the things people said they would grab if their house was on fire: a piggy bank, "the shoes I can’t live without,” grandmother’s watch, passport, photo of my grandparents, “my favorite underwear,” my dog, my great aunt’s violin, “the belt my dad had when he was in the army,” and on the list goes. The best submission though? “Everything is recoverable, except my daughter” (https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/07/19/the-burning-house-foster-huntington/).

It is an interesting question. How would you answer it? Aside from my loved ones and Barnabas, there are honestly very few things I would run back for. The things that come to mind connect me to a prior generation, like the clock I have from my parents or the cross I have that hung in the church I was baptized in. If this church were on fire, I would try to grab the New Testament my grandfather had with him when he served during World War I or even the 1884 Book of Discipline given to me by my Great Uncle Charlie when I was ordained. What makes those items precious to me is not the item itself; it’s who it connects me to. Those are things that are literally irreplaceable, but more than that, the connections are without compare.

Jesus’ house wasn’t on fire, of course, but his life was near its end. And as he hangs there on the cross, he must have noticed that on the ground, probably at the very foot of his own cross, there were soldiers who had the only things he owned. Soldiers who had done their grisly duty were now passing the time gambling over the things Jesus had owned. And do you suppose he heard them arguing over one item in particular? Did their voices raise as they cried out, “Don’t tear it”?

Twelve men would have been elected that morning for the ugly job of crucifixion—four for each condemned man (cf. Kalas, Seven Words to the Cross, pg. 26). To do such a job, they would have basically had to turn off any humanity they had inside themselves. Otherwise, they would not be able to deal psychologically with the screams of the men they nailed to the wooden beams, nor would they have been able to deal with the fact that they were brutal murderers. It was just a job, that’s all. They were just doing what they were commanded to do. They were just following orders. One of the few benefits they got for doing this job was being given the clothes of the victims. Now, you have to imagine that for most condemned criminals, the clothing they owned was nothing to be too excited about. Especially if they had been in prison for any length of time before being executed. It wasn’t like you were going to get any of the latest fashions. But it was something, one small benefit for the horror of their job.

But Jesus was not your typical criminal, not your normal crucifixion victim. His clothing, his possessions, were probably at least a bit more valuable than the those of the others. The typical outfit for a Jewish man in those days would have consisted of five pieces: sandals, a turban or headdress of some kind, a girdle or sash (the folds of which provided pockets), an outer robe and a long tunic that was worn as an undergarment (cf. Tenney, “The Gospel of John,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 9, pg. 181). So dividing up Jesus’ clothes was easy to begin with: four soldiers, four items, everyone gets one: shoes, turban, sash and robe. And then there’s the tunic. Who gets that? Well, it could be cut into four pieces and each soldier would go home with a rag. But one of them notices that it’s a nicer garment than they usually see in these situations. It is woven as one piece from top to bottom, seamless, an unusual and beautiful garment. What to do with it? One of them comes up with a solution that, apparently, is agreeable to all of them: “Let’s not tear it. Let’s decide by lot who will get it” (19:24).

It’s an agreeable solution because, for one thing, the tunic would be useless if they cut it up. In one piece, it might be valuable, maybe worth several days’ wages (cf. Kalas 28). And for another thing, the gambling game, however they chose to do it, would help pass the time. And so they sit there, maybe just below where Jesus hung, and they throw dice or gamble in some other way to see who would gain possession of this tunic. They don’t even wait for Jesus’ death. They gamble in his presence for this thing that may have been one of his most precious possessions.

Now why do I say that? What’s so special about a garment worn as underwear? Granted, one person in our very unscientific survey of what you’d rescue from a burning house said “my favorite underwear,” but for most people, that’s something you can easily replace at Walmart. But for Jesus, this item was likely a very special gift. Certainly it was made well, and there was a custom at the time that mothers would make such a garment to be presented as a gift to their sons when they left home to pursue their calling, or what we’d call their career. So it is possible, and at least one legend says it is true, that Mary gave this tunic to Jesus just three short years before this. We don’t know, of course, but it’s also interesting that Mary appears in the next verse, and she is with John who eventually writes this story down (19:25-27). So try to imagine, if you can, Mary watching her son die on the cross, hearing him tell John to take care of her, and at the same time watching these gruff Roman soldiers gamble to see who will take possession of a gift she gave to Jesus. I don’t know if the soldiers were aware of the custom or not, or even if they knew that this woman standing there was Jesus’ mother, but either way, they had no regard for anyone but themselves. They simply wanted to make sure each man got his fair share (cf. Kalas 28; Card, John: The Gospel of Wisdom, pg. 198).

You learn a lot about people when you watch the way they act and react when someone is dying. We may look down on these soldiers for their actions, but I’ve known some families who didn’t act much better. Maybe you have, too. Families who argue over who gets what even while their loved one is dying in the next room. People talking about a patient in the hospital as if that person is already gone when in fact they are still fighting for their life. I’ve known families who pledged at the time of the funeral, in a public setting, to stick together, to support one another, and to love each other “as mom would have wanted.” And then I’ve watched as the next day they are fighting over the details of the will, or over who has the right to the “stuff” that was left behind. Sometimes we picture the soldiers as uncaring, even evil people. But in reality they are just doing what people do when faced with death. If they did anything else, they would have to deal with the reality of their own mortality, that someday it will be their things that are being fought over. No, it’s not evil that drives these soldiers any more than it drives arguing families in the parking lot of the funeral home. More often, it’s simple thoughtlessness. These soldiers, throwing dice at the foot of the cross, apparently never stopped to think that a man was dying above them (it was just a job, after all) or that his mother might be heartbroken somewhere nearby, maybe even close enough to hear and see what they were doing with a gift she gave her son.

More than anything, I think these soldiers remind us what it looks like when we get close to the cross and yet fail to see what is really happening. Dr. Sandra Richter tells of the time she took her 5-year-old daughter (who she refers to as the “tornado toddler”) to the Holy Land. Dr. Richter was teaching a group of students throughout the holy sites and her daughter was along for the learning experience. Every time she took students to Jerusalem, she says, she dreaded the visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the church I told you about a couple of weeks ago. Dr. Richter says she hated the church, mainly because for her it represented everything that Christians fight over. Six Christian traditions control the church together and spend a lot of time fighting with each other over the smallest of details. Mainly they are fighting for control. I didn’t tell you two weeks ago that because the six can’t get along, a Muslim family in Jerusalem actually holds the keys to the holiest site in Jerusalem, and they have for centuries. But, anyway, back to Dr. Richter and her daughter. With dread in her heart, Dr. Richter and her daughter approached the massive wooden doors to the church, and when they stepped through, something happened. Something holy happened. The tornado toddler made a beeline for the anointing stone, where tradition says Jesus’ body was laid after he was taken down from the cross. She approached with awe, knelt alongside the others, and actually laid down on the stone. She gazed with wonder in her eyes at the cathedral ceilings and touched everything. She knelt and prayed at the rock of crucifixion and insisted on lighting candles in one of the chapels. When they finally left the church (after visiting every nook and cranny the girl could find), this five-year-old turned to her mom and said, “That was the holiest place I’ve ever been” (The Epic of Eden: Psalms, pgs. 39-40). Here is a toddler, a generally distracted and impatient child, who gets it, who could sense the presence of God in a sacred place.

We need a childlike heart to see what is actually happening here at the cross, to know that this is sacred space and not a place for a dice game. These soldiers, hardened as they are by too many battles and too many executions, can’t see it. It’s just another job. He’s just another Jew. The mourners are just the typical grieving family members; they will be replaced by others tomorrow. They are right there in the shadow of the cross, beneath the cross of Jesus as the hymn says, and instead of paying attention they are throwing dice, hoping to win a somewhat valuable garment. And how often are we like them?

Jesus once told a parable about a farmer going out to sow seed, and rather than planting seed in orderly rows like we do today, he scattered the seed over a large area (cf. Matthew 13:3-9). The seed, he later told his disciples, is the message he came to bring about the kingdom of heaven (cf. Matthew 3:19). And as the farmer sows it, it falls on all different types of soil, just as the message ends up in different kinds of hearts. Some of it falls among thorns, Jesus says (13:7), and the thorns grow up and choke the good plants. The thorns kill the crop. And when Jesus explains the parable to his disciples, he says this part “refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful” (13:22). And that’s what we see in these soldiers. The “cares of this world,” their own wealth and their own possessions, are so important and so prominent in their lives that they can’t see or hear anything else. And there are still people like these soldiers today. “It isn’t that they never hear what is right, but rather that the right is smothered by the mass of other things that demand attention” (Kalas 30).

I have a friend named Jack who told me this was him many years ago. He was a long time part of the church, served in various capacities in the leadership of the church, sang songs about Jesus on Sunday mornings, but the message never really penetrated his heart. And then he went through a crisis in his life, a life-shaking crisis, and he suddenly had no where to turn. He didn’t know what he believed, and so he began to read the Bible. That’s where he discovered a savior who truly loved him and wanted the best for him. But for all those years, as he would often tell me, he was right there, close to the cross, and yet not seeing what it was all about. He was nearby and yet focused on other things.

It’s easy to do that. We get busy building a career rather than asking or wondering what it’s all for. We plan a dinner gathering for people we know while an older woman down the street is dying for friends. Our child comes into the kitchen but we’re too busy with the details of preparation and we say we don’t have time to listen. We know all about the latest movies and what’s popular in music but know so little about the Bible or the life of the Spirit. And God, again and again, tries to break into our lives, and again and again we shut him out. We’re more focused on the value of a tunic than we are with the man who had first worn it.

We live in a world of severely mixed-up values (cf. Kalas 30-31). In a fairly recent report from Pew Research, people were asked what the things were that are most important to them. What things bring the most meaning in life? The top three things people named were “family and children,” “occupation and career” and “material well-being.” Now, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with any of those, though we could debate what people in our culture mean by “material well-being” because we tend to want much more than we need while others go without. But what struck me, really, about this report is that “spirituality, faith and religion” was next-to-last on the list, above only “pets” (https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/11/18/what-makes-life-meaningful-views-from-17-advanced-economies/). What are we focused on? The institutions of our society even ranked higher than faith, saying that somehow government brings more meaning than faith. We have seriously mixed-up values. We’re gambling at the foot of the cross, focused on things that ultimately won’t last. We need a refocusing, a remembering of what matters.

Sometimes that’s as simple as showing up. I may have told this story before, but whenever I think of focus, I think of a young lady whose name I don’t know and will never know. We were in a chapel at a place called Emmaus-Nicopolis in Israel, and we were doing the typical tourist thing, taking pictures and talking about the beauty of the place. And as we turned to go, I noticed a woman to the side of the chapel. She was praying, and she had no idea we were anywhere around. She was so intent and focused on her savior, she didn’t care about the tourists. Ever since then, I have wanted to have that kind of focus on Jesus, on the cross. I’m not there yet. And some mornings, when I have my time of prayer, I get so frustrated with myself because my mind wanders and goes places I don’t want it to go. I get preoccupied, and so I could get angry and say to myself, “Well, obviously, I’m not cut out to pray. So I just won’t.” But instead, I keep showing up. I keep praying. And even though I don’t get it right a lot of the time, I believe my simply showing up pleases God. And I keep seeking to gaze at the cross rather than worry about the tunic I might or might not win in the game. I don’t want to be a soldier at the cross; I want to be a worshipper of the one on the cross.

The night before he went to that cross, the one who is up there gave his disciples a practice that would help them focus as well. I know this act does that for me; it reminds me, as I say often, who I am and whose I am. Jesus gathered his friends together in a room for a typical Passover meal, but then he changed the script. The bread, common item on the table, became his body. And the wine, also very common, became his blood. Not literally, but by using that language, Jesus guaranteed that every time from that moment on when they saw bread or wine they would remember this moment. They would remember. They would be focused. And he hopes that we will be, too. The bread, the cup, remember what he has done for you. Stop worrying about what you will get and start focusing on the one who gives you his very life. May the one this sacrament points to save us from ourselves so that we can be used by him.

Will you pray with me as we come to be refocused at the table?