Hello my friend Dr. Brad Miller here with the Daily Bible Refresh.

This is your daily reading of the Bible from a progressive point of view.

In a bit I will read the New Testament lessons selected from the Revised Common Lectionary for this very day.

The reading is understandable.

I use the message version relatable.

Please listen to the points to ponder and applicable with action steps you can take.

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Here's today's reading.

We're reading today from Matthew 27, 11:54 from the Message Pilate Jesus was placed before the governor, who questioned him, Are you the King of the Jews?

Jesus said, if you say so.

When the accusations rained down hot and heavy from the high priest and religious leaders, he said nothing.

Pilate asked him, do you hear that long list of accusations?

Aren't you going to say something?

Jesus kept silence.

Not a word from his mouth.

The governor was impressed, really impressed.

It was an old custom during the feast for the governor to pardon a single prisoner named by the crowd.

At the time they had the infamous Jesus Barabbas in prison with the crowd before him.

Pilate said, which prisoner do you want me to pardon, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus the so called Christ?

And he knew that it was through sheer spite that they had turned Jesus called Christ over to him.

And while court was still in session, Pilate's wife sent him a message, don't get mixed up in judging this noble man.

I've just been through a long and troubled night because of a dream about him.

Meanwhile, the high priests and religious leaders had talked to the crowd into asking for the pardon of Barabbas and the execution of Jesus.

The governor asked, which one of the two do you want me to pardon?

And they said, barabbas.

Then what do you want me to do with Jesus, the so called Christ?

And they all shouted, nail him to the cross.

And he objected, but for what crime?

But they yelled all the louder, nail.

Him to the cross.

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere and that a riot was imminent, he took a basin of water and washed his hand in full sight of the crowd, saying, I'm washing my hands of Responsibility for this man's death.

And from now on, he's on your hands.

You're the judge and jury.

And the crowd answered, we'll take the blame, we and our children after us.

Then he pardoned Barabbas, but he had Jesus whipped and then handed over for crucifixion.

The crucifixion.

The soldiers assigned to the governor took Jesus into the governor's palace and got the entire brigade together for some fun.

And they stripped him and dressed him in a red robe.

They plaited a crown from branches of a thorn bush and set it on his head.

They put a stick in his right hand for a scepter.

And they knelt before him in mocking reverence.

Bravo, King of the Jews, they said.

Bravo.

Then they spit on him and they hit him in the head with a stick.

When they had their fun, they took off the robe and put his own clothes back on him.

And then they proceeded out to the crucifixion.

On the way they came on a man from Cyrene named Simon and made him carry Jesus's cross.

And arriving at Golgotha the the place they call Skull Hill, they offered him a mild painkiller, a mixture of wine and myrrh.

When he tasted, he wouldn't drink it.

After they had finished nailing him to the cross and were waiting for him to die, they killed time by throwing dice for his clothes above his head.

They had posted the criminal charge against him.

This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.

Along with him, they also crucified two criminals, one to his right and the other to his left.

And people passing along the road jeered, shaking their heads in mock lament.

You bragged that you could tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days.

So show us your stuff.

Save yourself.

If you're really God's son, come down for that cross.

The high priest, along with the religious scholars and leaders right there, mixing it up with the rest of them, having a great time, poking fun at him.

He saved others.

He can't save himself.

King of Israel, is he?

Then let him get down for that cross.

We'll all become believers then.

He was so sure of God.

Well, let him rescue his son now.

If he wants him.

He did claim to be God's son, didn't he?

Even the two criminals crucified next to him joined in the mockery.

From noon to 3, the whole earth was dark.

Around mid afternoon, Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying, eli Eli lama saperakatini, which means my God, my God, why have you Abandoned me.

Some bystanders are heard and heard him, said, he's calling on Elijah.

One of them ran and got a sponge soaked with sour wine and lifted on a stick so he could drink.

And the others joked, don't be in such a hurry.

Let's see if Elijah comes and saves him.

But Jesus, again crying out loudly, breathed his last.

At that moment, the temple curtain was ripped in two, top to bottom.

There was an earthquake, and rocks were split into pieces.

And what's more, tombs were opened up, and many bodies of believers asleep in their graves were raised.

After Jesus resurrection, they left the tombs, entered the holy city, and appeared to many the captain of the guard.

Those with them, when they saw the earthquake and everything else that was happening, were scared to death.

And they said, this has to be the Son of God.

That ends the powerful reading.

Friends, this is the Palm Sunday reading, and this is a very heavy passage of Scripture.

This is the Passion narrative from Matthew.

This begins the Passion Week, the trial, the crucifixion, the death of Jesus.

So two points to ponder for the day.

First, pay attention to Pilate's hands.

He washes them.

He literally performs innocence while handing an innocent man over to be killed.

And I think this is one of the really most relevant, irrelevant images and all the scripture for our time.

See, Pilate wasn't a monster frothing with hatred.

He was a politician managing a situation.

And he knew Jesus was innocent.

That text makes that clear.

But the crowd was loud and the pressure was intense, and the cost of doing the right thing was higher than he was willing to pay.

So he washed his hands and called it someone else's problem.

Progressive faith names this for what it is.

Complicity dressed up as neutrality.

You cannot wash your hands of injustice and call yourself clean.

Every time I see a system crushing a vulnerable person and we say something like, that's not my issue.

That's someone else's problem.

We're standing at Pilate's basin, and every time we stay silent because speaking up is costly.

We're reaching for the water.

After 34 years of marriage, I've learned that the hardest conversations aren't the ones where you're clearly wrong.

They're the ones where you stay quiet, which would be so much easier, you think, but your conscience won't let you.

Pilate's conscience spoke to him literally through his wife's dream, and he ignored it anyway.

The question for us is whether we'll do the same.

Second point to ponder.

Jesus says, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

Jesus, in his final moments, doesn't quote a victory hymn.

He doesn't, you know, exalt victory.

He quotes a lament from Psalm 22, a cry of abandonment.

And the fact that Matthew preserves this in Aramaic, which was the language that all could know, the mother tongue of anguish, as it were, tells us something profound about what kind of God we're dealing with.

This is a God who enters fully into the human experience of feeling utterly forsaken.

Not a God who hovers above suffering and explains it, a God who drowns in it.

Every week on my cancer podcast, I sit with people who are kind of living out that Psalm 22 space.

God, where are you?

Why does this feel so empty?

And I never want to rush past that cry to get to Sunday morning, because you can't get to Sunday morning without the crucifixion on Friday, because the cross says that God doesn't skip the darkness.

God goes all the way through it.

So if you're in a season right now where God feels absent, then this passage says that you're not in the exact.

That you are in the exact same place that Jesus was.

That's not a failure of faith.

That's the deepest kind of faith that there is crying out even while the sky is silent.

And then the curtain rips top to bottom, not from human hands, as in from bottom to top, but God tearing downward.

So that means every barrier between God and humanity is shredded.

There's no gatekeeper here.

It's not the religious leaders who recognize what happened.

It's a religious centurion, the ultimate outsider, who looks at this broken, crucified man and says, this has to be the son of God.

You see, the insiders missed it.

The outsider got it.

And that pattern should make us all feel comfortable in our faith and sit up a little straighter.

My wife and I often take hikes in wooded areas.

I remember one time we hiked in the Redwood forest in Oregon, actually, and the sun was blocked out completely.

It was getting near dusk.

We kept walking and trusting the trail, and then suddenly the trees opened up and the light hit you, and it was almost disoriented because it went from almost total darkness to total light.

The cross here is the darkest part of the forest.

And.

But the curtain tearing, that's the first break in the canopy.

Here's your action step for today.

Before the day is over, I want you to start performing innocence about something.

You know what it is situation.

You've been washing your hands of the injustice.

You've been calling.

Not my problem or that person you've been staying silent about because speaking up is inconvenient.

So today, put the basin down.

You don't have to fix everything, but you do have to stop pretending your hands are clean.

Name it, claim it, even just to yourself.

That's where courage begins over prayer.

Here in just a minute.

I want you to know that we have a a resource for you called the ABC 1, 2, 3 Bible study method free to you at our website voiceofgoddaily.com let's pray God, this story hurts.

It's supposed to hurt.

We read about the mocking and the nails and the darkness.

We want to look away, but you don't let us.

Because you didn't look away either.

You walked straight into the worst humanity had to offer and you absorbed it.

So today we bring to you our own dark days.

The places where we feel abandoned, the silences that scare us, the suffering we can't explain.

We're not going to pretend those away.

And God forgive us for the times when we've been piloting, washing our hands, choosing comfort over courage, performing innocence while injustice happens on our watch.

Give us the guts to put the basin down, tear our curtains to God, rip it down.

Whatever walls we've built between ourselves and the people we've shut out and help us trust that even the darkness part of the forest, you are there.

Not above it or not beyond it, but in it.

Crying out with us, breathing your last with us, and somehow and possibly making it through.

We are here in the darkness today.

God we trust the trail.

Amen.

My friend, I am delighted you chose to join me for today's reading.

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My name is Dr. Brad Miller and I'll be right here tomorrow with your Daily Bible Refresh.

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