Palm
Sunday/Passion Sunday Cycle A April 9, 2017
Is.45:21-25 Ps. 22:1-11
Phil. 2:5-11 Matthew 26:36-27:66
"Were you there when they crucified my Lord? O, sometimes, it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?"
Well, we weren't there, neither was St. Paul, but that did not stop him from making the cross of Jesus a mystical event in his life. St. Paul wrote, "I have been crucified with Christ, but I live, yet not I, for Christ lives within me." How can such a horrible event of capital punishment become a providential event of mystical transformation?
How long does it take to get to Providence? No, not Rhode Island. Providence in religious vocabulary means the discovery or the revelation that God was active and present within an event in life.
We might say that for people, providence does not seem to happen in real time. Providence only happens in 20/20 hindsight when subsequent events have re-defined the meaning and value of a previous event.
Let's use our imaginations for awhile and suspend the passing of a couple of thousand years and imagine that we were there with Jesus at the cross as his friend.
If we were there we would be fearful for our own lives. If we were there we would be horrified by the loss of our best friend and mentor. If we were there our lives would be up in the air. If we were there we would not be beating our chest proudly about this horrendous event of Roman capital punishment being the glorious plan of God to save the human race.
In real time, we could not declare the Cross of Jesus as God's divine will. We could only experience the oppression of the Roman authorities dealing with a religious and social movement which gained too much attention.
In real time when nice and wonderful things happen, we feel lucky and blessed and confident to say good things in real time are God's will for us. In non-religious vocabulary providential just means good luck or good fortune. When really bad things happen in real time, we are less likely to say, "Wow, this is God's will. Thank you God!" We would be really masochistic if we proclaimed events of our oppression as God's will. If bad things happen to us, in real time we feel unlucky or ill-fated, even picked on even though in our logical minds we know that in the conditions of freedom, we cannot be exempted from what might happen.
So how did the Cross of Jesus become providence? How did we get the point of singing songs about our sins being washed in the blood of Jesus, as though such a poetic image is somehow poetically pleasing? How did we come to render in gold miniature versions of a cruel instrument of torture and wearing them as beautiful jewelry around our necks? Can anyone imagine electric chairs or rope nooses rendered in golden charms being worn around our necks? How did wearing a cross around our neck escape from being a very macabre practice? The Christian theology and piety of the cross of Jesus illustrates the illogical alchemy of providence. How can a terrible event become a glorified event of God's holy will?
Why is the cross of Jesus Christ regarded to be providential for us? It is because a subsequent event in the life of Jesus brought about the re-writing of the meaning of the Cross of Jesus. Why has the Cross of Jesus been rehabilitated and declared to be in the providential plan of the salvation history of humanity? Because we revisit and re-view the Cross of Jesus through the event of the post-resurrection appearances of Christ. Not only did the Risen Christ, re-appear but his reappearances founded a movement among people. The movement did not die and finish. The movement continued to grow and snowball to massive proportions and it did so against all logic. The political reality within the Roman Empire meant that no great social or religious movement could arise. And a social or religious movement that was not sponsored by the Caesar for the benefit of the Caesar could not come into being.
But the Jesus Movement, came into being and resistance from the synagogue and suppression by the Roman political forces did not keep the Jesus Movement from becoming a guerilla force taking over in the private house churches in the cities of the Roman Empire.
In the first writings of the New Testament, Paul the Apostle, who did not see Jesus die on the Cross, took the event of the Cross and made it into a personal milestone of identification. Paul wrote that he was crucified with Christ. But Paul, you weren't there. Paul said, "No I wasn't there but the strong trace left-over from the dying of Christ is the power to subvert my ego into a submission which allows for another sublime personality to be experienced as the higher power and the higher personality of my life." "I have been crucified with Christ, and I live, yet not I, for Christ lives within me." This expresses the mysticism of the Cross for St. Paul and the early church. After the mysticism of the Cross, the early church was able to return to telling the story of death of Jesus as a milestone within God's plan for saving humanity from selfishness and the extreme effects of selfishness.
But when the mysticism of the cross as an event of personal transformation brings about a confession of the providence of the actual Cross, how does one tell the story of the cross?
It certainly was told with irony. If the cross of Jesus was a necessary event in human salvation, how could it still retain the fact that it was really a very evil and cruel event?
We have at least four different accounts of the cross of Jesus in the four Gospels. Matthew's account almost borrows verbatim, the account of Mark's. If the Cross is divine will, how can we assign guilt and blame for those who were the perpetrators of this event? The Romans were the one with the power to execute the crucifixion. The Jewish religious leaders are presented as those who conspired to convict him in the eyes of the Roman. Judas is the one who betrayed him and perhaps told the secret of the disciples that Jesus was a King in a world where only Caesar could be king. The disciples of Jesus, in their fright, were not all that loyal when Jesus was arrested; they scattered. Even the crowds of the Palm parade were accomplices since a crowd that proclaimed Jesus to be a King would make him an immediate target of the Roman authorities. In the irony of ironies, the Roman centurion at the cross confesses Jesus to be God's Son. The Gospel writers were trying to import the Gentile confession of Jesus back into the crucifixion event itself. The one carrying out the execution declares the victim to be God's Son.
In the Passion accounts, the providential mysticism of the cross does not over-ride how really bad the past event was. Providence does not mean the denial of pain, cruelty, injustice and oppression.
Genocide and slavery and human cruelty cannot be minimized simply because time passes and people forget or people come to view past events differently.
The providence of the Cross is really about our confession about God, being able to do what no one else can do. What only God can do is what was confessed in the words of Jesus from the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."
We are not great enough to forgive all of the cruel events in humanity. We are horrified by what freedom permits to happen in our world. Maybe in our best moments we can confess that God is forgiving of all, even when we don't think God should be forgiving.
How can the cross be providential in our understanding today? We can embrace the mysticism of death being a power to end selfishness in our lives in order to make room for new life.
The cross of Christ can be providential in that we can proclaim that in all human suffering in the conditions of freedom in our world, God in Christ suffers with everyone. God became fully human in Christ when Christ died on the cross. God becomes fully human in suffering with all who suffer.
The cross of Christ can be providential if we can hope to believe that the power of God's forgiveness can someday be the power to remake everything because of hopeful outcomes within the freedom of everything that can happen.
This seems too inaccessible to believe; there has been too much horrendous evil in this world to imagine a God capable of remedial forgiveness for the whole world. So today, we still seek to believe in a big God of redemption today. I must confess that I'm not there yet to believe God can forgive everything, but I am still hoping to be convinced. What I am convinced about is that the freedom which allowed the cross to happen, means God freely chooses to suffer in the suffering of the world. Knowing this, we should arise in freedom to work to prevent and heal as much suffering in the world as we can. What we can learn from the Cross of Jesus is to work to prevent suffering and cruelty in our world because through the witness of Christ, we are inspired to assert the freedom to overcome evil with good. Amen.
Is.45:21-25 Ps. 22:1-11
Phil. 2:5-11 Matthew 26:36-27:66
"Were you there when they crucified my Lord? O, sometimes, it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?"
Well, we weren't there, neither was St. Paul, but that did not stop him from making the cross of Jesus a mystical event in his life. St. Paul wrote, "I have been crucified with Christ, but I live, yet not I, for Christ lives within me." How can such a horrible event of capital punishment become a providential event of mystical transformation?
How long does it take to get to Providence? No, not Rhode Island. Providence in religious vocabulary means the discovery or the revelation that God was active and present within an event in life.
We might say that for people, providence does not seem to happen in real time. Providence only happens in 20/20 hindsight when subsequent events have re-defined the meaning and value of a previous event.
Let's use our imaginations for awhile and suspend the passing of a couple of thousand years and imagine that we were there with Jesus at the cross as his friend.
If we were there we would be fearful for our own lives. If we were there we would be horrified by the loss of our best friend and mentor. If we were there our lives would be up in the air. If we were there we would not be beating our chest proudly about this horrendous event of Roman capital punishment being the glorious plan of God to save the human race.
In real time, we could not declare the Cross of Jesus as God's divine will. We could only experience the oppression of the Roman authorities dealing with a religious and social movement which gained too much attention.
In real time when nice and wonderful things happen, we feel lucky and blessed and confident to say good things in real time are God's will for us. In non-religious vocabulary providential just means good luck or good fortune. When really bad things happen in real time, we are less likely to say, "Wow, this is God's will. Thank you God!" We would be really masochistic if we proclaimed events of our oppression as God's will. If bad things happen to us, in real time we feel unlucky or ill-fated, even picked on even though in our logical minds we know that in the conditions of freedom, we cannot be exempted from what might happen.
So how did the Cross of Jesus become providence? How did we get the point of singing songs about our sins being washed in the blood of Jesus, as though such a poetic image is somehow poetically pleasing? How did we come to render in gold miniature versions of a cruel instrument of torture and wearing them as beautiful jewelry around our necks? Can anyone imagine electric chairs or rope nooses rendered in golden charms being worn around our necks? How did wearing a cross around our neck escape from being a very macabre practice? The Christian theology and piety of the cross of Jesus illustrates the illogical alchemy of providence. How can a terrible event become a glorified event of God's holy will?
Why is the cross of Jesus Christ regarded to be providential for us? It is because a subsequent event in the life of Jesus brought about the re-writing of the meaning of the Cross of Jesus. Why has the Cross of Jesus been rehabilitated and declared to be in the providential plan of the salvation history of humanity? Because we revisit and re-view the Cross of Jesus through the event of the post-resurrection appearances of Christ. Not only did the Risen Christ, re-appear but his reappearances founded a movement among people. The movement did not die and finish. The movement continued to grow and snowball to massive proportions and it did so against all logic. The political reality within the Roman Empire meant that no great social or religious movement could arise. And a social or religious movement that was not sponsored by the Caesar for the benefit of the Caesar could not come into being.
But the Jesus Movement, came into being and resistance from the synagogue and suppression by the Roman political forces did not keep the Jesus Movement from becoming a guerilla force taking over in the private house churches in the cities of the Roman Empire.
In the first writings of the New Testament, Paul the Apostle, who did not see Jesus die on the Cross, took the event of the Cross and made it into a personal milestone of identification. Paul wrote that he was crucified with Christ. But Paul, you weren't there. Paul said, "No I wasn't there but the strong trace left-over from the dying of Christ is the power to subvert my ego into a submission which allows for another sublime personality to be experienced as the higher power and the higher personality of my life." "I have been crucified with Christ, and I live, yet not I, for Christ lives within me." This expresses the mysticism of the Cross for St. Paul and the early church. After the mysticism of the Cross, the early church was able to return to telling the story of death of Jesus as a milestone within God's plan for saving humanity from selfishness and the extreme effects of selfishness.
But when the mysticism of the cross as an event of personal transformation brings about a confession of the providence of the actual Cross, how does one tell the story of the cross?
It certainly was told with irony. If the cross of Jesus was a necessary event in human salvation, how could it still retain the fact that it was really a very evil and cruel event?
We have at least four different accounts of the cross of Jesus in the four Gospels. Matthew's account almost borrows verbatim, the account of Mark's. If the Cross is divine will, how can we assign guilt and blame for those who were the perpetrators of this event? The Romans were the one with the power to execute the crucifixion. The Jewish religious leaders are presented as those who conspired to convict him in the eyes of the Roman. Judas is the one who betrayed him and perhaps told the secret of the disciples that Jesus was a King in a world where only Caesar could be king. The disciples of Jesus, in their fright, were not all that loyal when Jesus was arrested; they scattered. Even the crowds of the Palm parade were accomplices since a crowd that proclaimed Jesus to be a King would make him an immediate target of the Roman authorities. In the irony of ironies, the Roman centurion at the cross confesses Jesus to be God's Son. The Gospel writers were trying to import the Gentile confession of Jesus back into the crucifixion event itself. The one carrying out the execution declares the victim to be God's Son.
In the Passion accounts, the providential mysticism of the cross does not over-ride how really bad the past event was. Providence does not mean the denial of pain, cruelty, injustice and oppression.
Genocide and slavery and human cruelty cannot be minimized simply because time passes and people forget or people come to view past events differently.
The providence of the Cross is really about our confession about God, being able to do what no one else can do. What only God can do is what was confessed in the words of Jesus from the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."
We are not great enough to forgive all of the cruel events in humanity. We are horrified by what freedom permits to happen in our world. Maybe in our best moments we can confess that God is forgiving of all, even when we don't think God should be forgiving.
How can the cross be providential in our understanding today? We can embrace the mysticism of death being a power to end selfishness in our lives in order to make room for new life.
The cross of Christ can be providential in that we can proclaim that in all human suffering in the conditions of freedom in our world, God in Christ suffers with everyone. God became fully human in Christ when Christ died on the cross. God becomes fully human in suffering with all who suffer.
The cross of Christ can be providential if we can hope to believe that the power of God's forgiveness can someday be the power to remake everything because of hopeful outcomes within the freedom of everything that can happen.
This seems too inaccessible to believe; there has been too much horrendous evil in this world to imagine a God capable of remedial forgiveness for the whole world. So today, we still seek to believe in a big God of redemption today. I must confess that I'm not there yet to believe God can forgive everything, but I am still hoping to be convinced. What I am convinced about is that the freedom which allowed the cross to happen, means God freely chooses to suffer in the suffering of the world. Knowing this, we should arise in freedom to work to prevent and heal as much suffering in the world as we can. What we can learn from the Cross of Jesus is to work to prevent suffering and cruelty in our world because through the witness of Christ, we are inspired to assert the freedom to overcome evil with good. Amen.
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