Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Real redemption begins...
When we are at our Worst
Sermon by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Good Friday, March 29, 2002
Grace Church, Allentown"They shall look on him whom they have pierced."
Or how about a slashing? On Tuesday in Denver, a 17-year old girl was slashed with razors and an ugly word was carved into her flesh. All because she loved another woman. It goes on and on. That's why Good Friday sermons can't be short, facile, and leave us feeling clever together. When we read the papers, ancient or modern, God's Friday presents us with a question -- perhaps a puzzle.
I mean, as we stare in disbelief at the horror of crucifixion, in that unsightly mess, how can we say that "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself?" By any normal standard, the cross looks like the defeat of everything that Jesus was preaching.
If we look at the one who was pierced with modern eyes that measure everything by the bottom line, Jesus did not have a successful career, did not even have a successful life. Jesus looks like something quite a bit worse than a failure; he looks like a fool, a fool who was clueless when it came to survival in the "real world."
There really were many occasions when he could have taken steps to avoid all this. The taunt of the crowd, "How can he save others, when he cannot save himself?" is not just a cruel joke; it is the echo of the culture's judgment on Jesus then and now.
But we gather here to say that it is precisely because Jesus represented different values, it is because he consistently and expensively loved those around him, that his death is a victory over sin -- sin and evil are revealed for what they are when they attack Jesus.
Evil thinks it is winning, when in fact it is shown up as cruel, dishonest, and. empty. This is why it is dangerously misleading to argue about whether the Jews or the Romans bear the blame for the death of Jesus. When I read the accounts of Jesus' passion, I know who kills him; I know who killed him yesterday and I know who kills him today.
This story cannot begin to help us until we see that to a large degree Jesus' crucifixion was not a miscarriage of justice. It was business as usual in the politics and religion of any time and place -- of every time and every place.
I say this because when I look on the one who was pierced, I do not see Caiaphas or Herod or Pilate, or even Judas or Peter as themselves. I see me, I see you, I see us.
It is not necessary to imagine that all the religious leaders who condemned Jesus had anything personal against him: they were quite arguably seeing themselves as just doing their job -- preserving the life of the community at the expense of a sincere but troubled non-conformist.
Some may have been glad to get rid of him, and others of those religious leaders may even have felt a moment's regret at the loss of a young man of such promise.
Another snapshot of the passion shows us Pilate. Pilate's devotion to his career sounds very familiar. Who does not wish to appear to be "Caesar's friend" and to have a good reputation at work, in the community, even in parishes and wider church structures?
There are so many Caesars. So we don't object to an employer's unethical practices: after all, promotion or partnership is coming up, and we tell ourselves how much more good we can do in that new job. Or we don't always object to racist or sexist jokes at work or with friends because we don't want to be considered weird or God forbid, religious.
King Herod's story cuts closer to the church bone. The patron saint of sacristy rats, Herod likes to feel religious, has an interest in religion's flashy and exotic aspects. However, when religion in the person of Jesus will not stoop to entertain or be otherwise controlled by him, and when religion threatens to get close to his heart, he keeps Jesus at arm's length. Jesus is a great disappointment to him.
The tragic stories of Judas' betrayal and Peter's denial of Jesus confront us with the times when our need to survive, or our need to be comfortable, or our need to be liked, the times when those needs shouldered aside loyalty to faith, friends, or loved ones.
Then there are the crowds, the noisy and fickle crowds who still live in every lynch mob of the left or the right, in every jerking knee, on every occasion when the people who consider themselves decent allow the herd instinct to replace compassion, or reason, or both.
These biblical characters lived long ago and far away, but the limits of sex, race, religion, culture, and time are crossed when we tell this story and look at the one who is pierced.
When I see the characters in this story acting so normally, I see Jesus in the most realistic sense imaginable, bearing the sins of the world.
He died again this week in Denver -- he dies many times each day because what happened to Jesus is what happens every day. We don't begin to understand Christianity until we erase that line between then and now, between symbol and reality. What Jesus died of is a condition your doctor calls "how we treat each other."
When we understand that, two things can happen.
When I see my sins exposed on the cross, when I see the cycle of evil and corruption which energizes our society, I am "convicted," as the old-time preachers used to say. My sin is before me.
When I stand at the foot of the cross and consider how my own modest and boring sins play out every day in the destruction of the world and its people, I must say, "This must stop here. I will no longer participate in the cycle of evil, of greed, of blindness to human need, the cycle that brought and brings Jesus to this horrible moment."
That conviction and that repentance are the starting point to being saved, but there is more.
It makes all the sense in the world for the soldier at the foot of the cross in the other three gospel accounts to figure it out. Watching the manner of Jesus' death, he says, "This was the Son of God." This was God present for and with us when we are at our very worst. God present for us and God with us when we are at our very worst.
I have often been struck by the fact that in this awful story, and on the Easter day that will follow it, Jesus never asks for an apology. Think about that -- we're killing him and he doesn't hold a grudge. No, he rather generously prays for us. In that prayer he makes excuses for us, as though we do not know what we are doing when we reject truth and love, when we kill him and so many others, often for what we think is a good cause, often for what we know is a bad one. Let's hope he was right, and that we don't really know what we're doing.
To realize that we are loved when we are at our worst, our most destructive, is where the real redemption begins. To let that truth sink in is to be changed, to be restored, to know that we never have to go back to business as usual in order to make sense of our lives.
Despised, rejected, marred beyond human semblance, Jesus has his arms nailed to the cross because we want to do away with him, or won't risk saving him. But we find that those arms form an eternal embrace, and when we are embraced by them, we can return to the love for which we were created.
This is what our epistle means when it talks about having confidence to enter the sanctuary confidence to stand up straight in God's presence, confidence to look God in the eye. In consistently and unremittingly loving us, in doing the Father's will without fail, Jesus made the sacrifice that our metastasized self-preservation instinct does not let us make: total giving of his will to God.
But the epistle will not let me off, it will not let me go home today saying, "Thank God. I'm loved, I'm accepted, I'm free of my sin... I'm ready for a late dinner and a DVD." No, after recounting the story of redemption in terms of the offering of the great High Priest, Hebrews concludes, "Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope." Well, that's fine, but then it adds, "And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another."
These last phrases seem so out of place, almost intrusive, upon this solemn occasion, as though the telecast of Mother Theresa's funeral had been interrupted by commercials for personal hygiene products. That, however, is to misunderstand.
If you want to be saved, Hebrews says, see your sin, see the overwhelming love of Christ, and let it change you on every level, even the mundane. Where you used to compete with people, provoking them to ulcers, now encourage them, provoke them to do good. There is indeed a way to use your anti-authority self, your rebellious self, the part that says, "I gotta be me"-- don't provoke people to outrage, go provoke somebody to do good. It's a win-win, but it's counter-intuitive, and it always takes strength to swim upstream.
Don't kid yourself, the epistle goes on: our showing up when Christians gather to worship is important testimony to the one who bore our sin and loves us still. Important testimony that can be given no other way than by showing up.
Understand, Hebrews urges, that we have not only been saved from the way of death, we have been saved so that we can join God in embracing the world.
Perhaps when we share the Peace at the Great Vigil tomorrow we might try talking less and really embracing each other more -- it might take longer, but it is a chance to feel just whose punctured arms are also embracing you, and in you embracing the whole world.
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