A Sermon Based Upon Mark 15: 12-15; 25, 29-39, NRSV
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 13th , 2016
There is a comical scene in Clyde Edgerton’s “Bible Salesmen” where a young man is trying sell a Bible to a nice lady. When selling anything you hope to catch people in a positive mood but this lady’s cat, affectionately named “Bunny”, had just died. She thinks it died in its sleep.
In hopes of winning her confidence, the salesman offers to bury the cat, but as he squats down to get a closer look, its head is swollen with a large copperhead snake its mouth, which also died in the scuffle. The salesman knows that if this lady sees this sickening sight, he’ll never make a sale. So he does everything in his power to keep her from finding out.
After succeeding at getting the cat buried (with the snake) without her seeing them, then the lady decides he should have buried the cat in something. “You want to rebury her?” He hesitantly asks. Tearfully speaking of her brother Walter, who was lost in the war and was never properly buried, she finally asks, “Would you mind?” While the lady goes inside to get a shoebox, you’re left wondering whether the Bible salesman will be able to keep her from seeing what really happenned to her cat (Adapted from Clyde Edgerton, The Bible Salesman, Back Bay Books, 2008, pp 15-20).
In a similar way, Even if you a good salesman of the good news of the gospel, ‘sooner or later…. you will have to answer the question about what happened to Jesus’. Even as you are trying to convince somebody that the Christian life and Christian faith is a wonderful way to believe and live, you still have to get to what happened to the first man who ever lived this way---“they hung him up to die on a stick” (Fred Craddock). You just can’t hide this to make a ‘sale’. Each gospel is written to ask you look straight into what really happened. The gospels are at their ‘best’ when they are telling you the ‘worst’. They make everything point toward the cross.
Why can’t the Church have a more ‘optimistic’ enlightenment religion like Buddhism, or a religious faith where God always has to dominate like Islam? Why do Christians alway have to gain their ‘true bearings’ by looking straight at the cross? “At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light….,” the song goes. Why the cross? Why can’t we have, as one theologian (Reinhold Niebuhr) complained, “a God without wrath, bringing people without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a Cross?” Why can’t we just sit around telling nice stories, asking little of anyone, doing only what we want, whenever, or however we want?
Well, the truth is we can, but if we do we can’t call our faith what the apostle Paul called it; ‘the preaching of the cross’ (1 Cor. 1.18). Paul says he could have preached with ‘lofty words or wisdom’, but he was ‘determined not to know anything… except Christ and him crucified’ (1 Cor. 2.2). Does this look foolish? Once a young man entered my study, marveling at all my Bible commentaries and then said, “Don’t you ever read anything else?” “The preaching of the cross is foolishness to those that are perishing,” Paul wrote, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1.18).
Did you catch that Paul does not say this cross is God’s power for those who ‘have been saved’, or ‘are saved’ (KJV), but Paul says the message of the cross is God’s power that is still at work for those of ‘us who are being saved’? This is not a trick translation, but it’s a constant reminder that the cross of Jesus is not just for believing, but it’s also about living your own life in the shape of a cross. It is this cruciform way of living Paul refers to when he wrote to the Galatians, “…I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal. 2:19-20 NRS). This is Paul’s way of saying we cannot have the life of Jesus without also having his death; we cannot say we have his faith, without living the way of the cross.
What does it mean--not just to read about or worship at the cross, to adorn our Churches, our Bibles or our jewelry with the cross,--but what ‘sense’ does it make if we would ‘take up’ this ‘cross’ (Mark 8.34) and make it the method of living our own faith?
Love Freely
There is certainly still a ‘sense’ that this cross is just ‘foolishness’, as it was suggested to Paul. Even as we consider the crucifixion story right here in Mark’s text, think about where Jesus was when he was killed? He was is Jerusalem, right? Was this his home? Did he live there? No, he was from up north, in Nazareth, about 68 miles away. He had even moved away from there and had been living in Capernaum, some 120 miles away. If Jesus found himself in troubled in this big town, why didn’t he just ‘get out of town’? He did all his good ministry of teaching and healing and then went to Jerusalem. When things got tough, his followers scattered, but he stayed there in the middle of all that danger. Why didn’t he just ‘pack up’ and leave, at least until things settled down? He was a smart man. He knew about all the threats. How ‘foolish’ can you be? (This point well made by Fred Craddock in “Why the Cross” from Collected Sermons, WJK Press, 2011, p. 236-240).
Even after the governor, Pilate, tried to give him a way out (15.4-5), and the whole crowd is calling for crucifixion, Pilate questions, “Why, what evil has he done (vs. 14)? The whole scenario still makes no sense. It appears so foolish that Jesus walks allows himself to be betrayed, arrested, denied, and now ‘handed over’ to be killed (15.15), when there should have been another, better, even more humane way of accomplishing God’s will and work. He does consider it, and even prays about it, but he still goes through with it and he does not walk or run away. What was he thinking?
The truth in this story about the cross is that Jesus was not thinking as we might, but Jesus had to be thinking what God would think. How can we know what God was thinking? Everything in the story of Jesus’ willingness to stay turns out not to be so foolish after all---“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son…. “But God demonstrated his love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us….” For the love of Christ constrains us,… that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself….” What looked like ‘foolishness’ was not foolish at all, but Jesus stayed in Jerusalem to show us the stuff that life is really made of---the good stuff that can the hard’ stuff we call love.
Many things can be called ‘love’, but the death of Jesus on the cross narrows the definition and keeps it real. “God loves us in freedom” (Karl Barth). In other words, the whole gospel story was ‘free’ to go another way, but being true to the Father, Jesus freely stayed in Jerusalem, because living does not make sense unless you choose love. What else could Jesus choose, even when the world rejected him? Jesus chooses the cross because Jesus chose to serve, to give, and to love: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mk. 10:45 NRS). In Jesus Christ, we discover that God’s free choice is to love us and to love the world, even when we are at our worst.
To say that the cross means love does not mean we are to love the cross. ‘The cross is not and cannot be loved’ (Jurgen Moltman). When you understand what the cross means and ‘take up your cross’ to follow Jesus you ‘bear’ the cross to love, even when it hurts, even when they hate you, and especially when you know that what you are saying and doing what is right. There is no ‘right’ without freely choosing this ‘cross’ that freely loves. But of course, there have always been those who want to try to ‘preach’ another kind of right, who have tried to turn the cross into a way to dominate, a way to hate, or a way to hate. We know about the ‘twisted thinking’ of the KKK who dared to put hoods on their heads, and set fire to a cross burning in people’s yards so that children could be heard screaming blocks away. We know about people who fly ‘cross bone’ flags because they are really inspired by hate, not love. We also know about armies that marched with a shield of a cross, claiming to be able to conquer the world with a cross and a sword. Or what about the kind of crossed up religion which says if you give God your nickel, he’ll give you back a dime? There are so many ways to try to try to rewrite, reshape, or avoid the truth of the cross, but if the cross is to the same, true cross--the cross that has the power to save---it must be a cross that ‘freely loves’ so that it stands ready to bear the hurt, to suffer and die to itself, rather than demand to hurt, bring pain or to cause loss to the one it loves.
Forgive Fully
How do we do this? How do we bear a cross that freely loves, when others have not loved us as they should, or when they have hurt, despised, or done wrong to us? The answer is that this is exactly the ‘cross’ that Jesus lived and died upon. It is exactly this kind of ‘cross’ of love that cannot be lived freely unless we live fully into the ‘mystery’ of forgiveness. In other words, as Jesus loved freely, he also forgave fully (“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing., Luke 23.34), for there is no love that does not also bear the burden of forgiveness.
Perhaps we are looking straight into the full mystery of forgiveness in that Cry of Dereliction as Jesus cried out:“My God, Why have you forsaken me!” (v. 34). A lot of ink has been spilt trying to decipher exactly what Jesus felt or meant in that moment. What we know is that when Jesus quotes Scripture (Psalm 22:1) he also fulfills it. These mysterious words point us directly into the mystery of the atoning work acknowledged by the apostle Paul when he wrote, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).
Some interpret these mysterious words of ‘forsakenness’ by concluding that while God the Father looked away, Jesus the Son had to be abandoned to die this very violent death of suffering and shame on the cross just so that the Father’s holiness or wrath could be ‘satisfied’ and forgiveness made possible. What we must keep in mind however, is that in this very same passage Paul also says “…in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor. 5:20). In this great ‘atoning sacrifice’ (Rom. 3.25, 1 John 2.2; 4:10) we should not consider God another god demanding appeasement, nor is God the kind of Father that would turn his back on his own Son. Scripture says that it was through Jesus’ obedience (Roms. 5.9; Hebrews 5.8) as the ‘only begotten Son’ (Jn. 3:16) that God himself bears the burden, bears the difficulty and bears the forsakenness that is needed to forgive sin. In Christ, God himself suspends his wrath against us (Rom. 5.9) and reconciles us with him (Rom 5:18-19), while remaining holy, just and right.
It is important to understand that in Jesus, God himself experiences the ‘forsakenness’ of forgiving, because in Jesus, God not only redeems us from sin, but through Jesus, God is also modeling for us the very kind of humble example of forgiving love (John 13.14) which is required of those who follow Jesus (Mark 11.25; Luke 11.4; Matt 6.14). To ‘fully forgive’ as Christ commands, we must do the most difficult thing imaginable: we must forgo own feelings of wrath and vengeance by suspending our own sense of what is right, what is fair, and what is just. This is the very kind of ‘forsakenness’ that we too must enter, so that we can forgive the sin that has been committed against us. Isn’t this the kind of dark ‘forsakenness’ that the Amish community entered when they forgave that Pennsylvania man who murdered their 5 daughters? Isn’t this also the kind of hard, difficult ‘forsakenness’ Mother Immanuel church entered when they forgave that evil young man Dylann Roof, who came to a church Bible study and killed nine of their own? True forgiveness, is not easy, but requires from us the most demanding, difficult act of forsakenness---that very same kind of forsakenness similar to what Jesus himself experienced on the cross.
The late ethicist Lewis B. Smedes, tells of Michael Christopher’s play The Black Angel, which tells the story of Herman Engel, a German general in World War II, who has just been released from prison, having completed
the 30-year sentence imposed by the Nuremberg Tribunal. Now that he has served his time, Engel hopes to build a new life. He and his wife have gone to Alsace, on the French-German border. There they have built a woodland cabin, where they hope to live out their years, at peace and unrecognized.
However, they have not counted on Morrieaux. Morrieaux is a French journalist whose family was massacred by Engel’s army. When the Nuremberg court failed to sentence Engel to death, Morrieaux vowed to do it himself, no matter how long it might take to accomplish, no matter
how long he might have to wait. Now the time is ripe. He’s found the hiding place, and has stirred up the village people. That very night, they are going to enter the woods, burn down the cabin, and kill Engel and his wife.
Before this happens, however, Morrieaux wants to do one thing. He wants to talk to Engel. There are still some gaps in the story that his journalist’s mind wants to resolve. And so he goes to the cabin, confronts a very shaken Engel, and spends the afternoon grilling him.
It turns out he’s confused by the interview. He’d come expecting to find a monster, but instead finds a feeble old man. Not only that, but he’s having trouble piecing the story together. There are gaps – doubt creeps into his mind. His hatred, clear and bright for so long, now begins to grow fuzzy around the edges. And so, as the sun is setting, Morrieaux finds himself doing the unexpected. He blurts out to his adversary, “The villagers are coming! They plan to kill you tonight!” And then, “But it doesn’t have to happen – I will lead you out of the woods and save your life!”
Engel pauses for a moment. In the course of the interview, he’s begun to have some doubts of his own. Finally he says, “Okay, I’ll go with you – on one condition.” And what condition would a man impose for the saving of his own life? “I’ll go with you – but only if you forgive me.” Forgive? In his fantasies, Morrieaux has killed Engel thousands of times. Now, after an afternoon’s encounter with the man’s humanity, he’s prepared to call it off. He’s prepared to save the life of his enemy. But forgive him? No. Never!
That night, because Engel asked for forgiveness, Morrieaux allowed everything to go on according to plan. Villagers appear with sacks over their heads. They burn the cabin down, and they shot Engel and his wife dead. Saving Engel’s life was one thing, but forgiveness was the ‘forsakenness’ that Morrieaux was able enter into again and bear (From “Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve, Harper & Row, 1984, pp 24-25).
Keep The Faith
You, nor I, can bear a cross to love freely or to forgive fully until we keep the faith that will keep us. This kind of faith isn’t just any kind of faith, but it is ‘the faith of Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 2.16, KJV) which the Centurion encountered as he watched Jesus dying, seeing how he died and said, "Truly this man was God's Son!" (Mk. 15:39 NRS)?
Over and over, it is the witness of the New Testament that through the faith OF Jesus Christ which brings faith IN Jesus Christ (Gal. 3.26) we are empowered to bear the cross of love and forgivness (Rom. 1:5; Eph 3:17, Col. 3.13) as we remain ‘rooted and grounded in love (Eph. 3:17). Certainly, you nor I can keep or be kept by such a great ‘faith’ unless we abide or remain connected to it’s source (John 15:4ff). We receive this ‘faith of Jesus’ Christ as a ‘gift of God’ (Eph 2.8) but we must also continue to ‘abide in his love’ to know that “God abides in us” (1 Jn. 1:16). This kind of living and abiding ‘faith in Christ’ that ‘takes up the cross’ with Jesus, can’t be in our own strength alone, because it is a living ‘faith’ that based upon this ‘righteousness from God’ that is not our ‘own’ (Phil 3.9, Rom. 10.3).
Several years ago a fine writer and novelist named Jack Abbott was in federal prison in Atlanta. He wrote an article and sent it in to a New York literary journal. It was published and acknowledged as one of the most beautiful things written in that generation. There was a beautiful line that went something like, “Over the wall, the smell of magnolia, and peach, soft, late evenings.” When some of the powerful people in New York read it, they said, “Anybody who can write like that should not be in prison.” They got his sentence reduced and a few weeks later he got out.
Before long, Jack Abbott was working and writing in New York, “over the wall, the smell of magnolia, and peach, soft, late evenings.” He had just dined in a fine restaurant and after the evening of eating and drinking, he came out with friends to the parking valet, requesting his car. “Bring me my car!” The valet said, “Just a moment. There is someone in front of you.” Abbott then demanded impatiently, “Bring me my car!” and the valet said, “You’ll have to wait your turn. We’ll bring it in a few minutes.” Abbott then pulled out a long knife and killed the attendant. “Over the wall, the smell of magnolia, and peach, soft, late evenings.” And he killed again.
(From “Why the Cross?” by Fred Craddock, WJK Press, 2011, pp 238-239).
As we conclude we need to be reminded ‘why’ we need to bear not just any cross and not just any form of righteousness, but we need to bear the cross of faith in ‘the faith of Jesus Christ’. Just because a person has religion (even Christian), or talent, has been to school, has a nice income, lives in the best neighborhood, or even when they come from a good family, they can still fall into ugliness and cruelty.
But the death, and also the resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, invites us to receive and to live the ‘gift’ of a life and a ‘faith’ that is ‘not our own’. At the cross God invites us to love others, as God loves us (1 Jn 4.10-12). On the cross this Jesus who died for us is the one who commanded us to pray to ‘forgive as we have been forgiven’ (Luk 11:4). It is here, we see the ‘bleeding heart’ of the one whose faith must be received into our own hearts. For only when we bear his cross of love and forgiveness are we empowered to keep a faith that also keeps us. Amen.
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