Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 6, 2003

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Today is the fifth Sunday in Lent. We usually think of Lent as the time leading up to Easter, and so it is. Before it leads up to Easter, however, it leads us to Good Friday, that is, it leads us to the cross, to the brutal execution of the One we proclaim to be the incarnation of the only begotten Son of God. We don’t have to pretend that we don’t know that Christ triumphs in the end. We must not forget, however, that before the triumph that we will celebrate two weeks from today on Easter comes disaster-arrest, humiliation, torture, and crucifixion. One of the truly central features of our faith is that profound contrast between Jesus’ utter failure in the world’s terms and his utter triumph in God’s terms. Far too often Christians skip over the tragedy and go straight to the glory, ignore Good Friday and go straight from Palm Sunday to Easter.

I am convinced that when we do that we lose some of the central meaning of our faith. We lose the fact, which seems to me to be undeniable, that the story of our faith shows us as one of its two central teachings that if you are truly faithful to God, the world crucifies you. The other central teaching is that with God the world’s crucifixion is not the end of the story, that with God the last word is life not death. That’s the story of Easter. We’ll get there, but today I want to look at what it means for us to take seriously that other central teaching, that if you are truly faithful the world crucifies you.

There seems to me to be no doubt that Jesus was crucified precisely because he remained faithful to God to the end. In some Christian circles it is common to say that Jesus was crucified because that is the reason for which he came to earth. The Gospel of John in particular, from which this morning’s Gospel reading came, can be read this way. Indeed, it is difficult to read parts of it any other way. There are, however, so many theological problems with that understanding that I hardly know where to start. Today I want to focus on just one of them: This understanding of the crucifixion makes the crucifixion irrelevant to us because Christ’s execution becomes merely part of the divine plan for Jesus. It says nothing about we are to live our lives. It says nothing about the way the world works for us. And yet I believe that the story of crucifixion in fact speaks volumes about the way the world works for us.

Because you see, from their worldly perspective, the authorities of Jesus’ day, both Roman and Jewish, were quite right to execute him. From their worldly perspective, he was in fact guilty. He was guilty of the one sin that the world cannot forgive, namely, speaking God’s truth. Jesus spoke the truth to the powers, the truth of God’s love and care especially for those whom the powers exploited and suppressed and upon whose exploitation and suppression their power depended (and still depends). By preaching the truth about God’s Kingdom of peace, justice, and equality for all people with purity and passion, Jesus de-legitimized the powers of the world. He told the dispossessed, the excluded, the marginalized that they, most especially they, are the people of God. The powers couldn’t stand that truth then, and they can’t stand it now. Preaching Christ’s Gospel of peace and justice cost Jesus his life. Doing so has cost a lot of other people their lives too-in modern times think of Gandhi, King, the Jesuits massacred in El Salvador, and so many, many others.

Now, I’m not saying we all need to be martyrs. The world has not killed everyone who as been truly faithful. It did not kill Mother Theresa, for example. Yet I think the lesson of the cross is at least this: If our proclamation and living out of the Gospel is not to some extent attracting the displeasure of the world, or if it is not calling us to make what the world sees as significant sacrifices for Christ’s sake, then we need to examine very carefully how faithful we are truly being. We need to ask: Are we compromising the Gospel for the world’s sake and for the sake of our place in it? We all do it. I know I do it every day. Being truly faithful to Christ’s call to be people of the Kingdom is just so infernally hard! It demands so infernally much! It demands nothing less than our entire lives.

Now, I know that Jesus did once say: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." Mt. 11:30. There is truth there, for Christ is always waiting to wrap us in the arms of God’s love. That statement is, however, only part of the Gospel. The fact remains that Jesus was crucified for preaching God’s truth, and the cross is part of the Gospel too. That is a fact we Christians cannot ignore. We are not all called to be martyrs, but let me suggest at least this much: If we are finding our life in the world, as opposed to our life in the arms of God’s love, too easy, then I think we need to ask: Are we taking the crucifixion seriously? Are we, who claim to serve Christ, doing enough to follow him, to be where he is, as our Gospel lesson this morning says we must? And where was he when he said that? On the road to the cross. Today is the fifth Sunday of Lent, and Lent is a time of confession. I confess that I am not doing enough to follow Jesus and to be where he is, on the road to the cross. For that, all I can do is pray for God’s mercy, and I do.