SERMON MANUSCRIPT - Year
C, Passion Sunday
– By Fr. Jason Lewis
May the
words of my mouth, the meditation of all our hearts, draw us deeper in the life
of Christ, further in to the mission of Christ in the world: in the name of God
who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
1. Utterly
alone. What strikes me about the Passion story is that Jesus seems to be utterly
alone. There are no words of consolation, no friendly voices. Only voices of
question, only words of condemnation, only derision and ridicule. And for those of us who listen to this story on this
day there seems to be no reprieve. There’s only layer upon layer of confusion, brokenness, hatred, pain and
suffering. Conspiracies for death, shouts for crucifixion, the jeers of
the soldiers, the crown of thorns, the spit, the blows to the heard, the
mocking words of the bandits and passers-by, and ultimately at the "bottoming
out" of it all - the last breath of life and the spirit given over to death. And
all through this Jesus seems to be utterly alone – in a place that seems to be abandoned, of complete
forsakenness.
2. There is
no other way to do this then to just go right at "the heart" of what is at stake
for us this morning. The cross of Christ is either the end of all hope, or it
is the beginning of a specifically and profoundly Christian hope. The cross is
either the triumph of suffering and death over and against all goodness and all
life, or it is profoundly, radically, amazingly something else all together.
The end of hope, or the beginning
of hope - this is what is at stake for us this morning. The grotesque horror of
the Passion of Jesus put this question before us: where is God in the midst of
suffering? Or more specifically, I think there is a question that is underneath
this one. We are not so much concerned about the “location” of God. Our
question isn’t really, “Where is God’s location? Where is God’s place of
residence?” We are really asking, “What is God doing?” “How is God related to
this?” “Does God even care?” And even deeper then all these questions - what is
at the heart of them - is this question: “Is God good?” In the midst of pain,
suffering, death – is God good?
3. And here
we are the holding in our hands the horns of a big bull, a question we humans
have wrestled with for centuries. We have grasped a hold of and have begun to
wrestle with the question of Evil, the “Problem of Evil”, as it is classically
called. If God is good and all powerful,
how can suffering be allowed to exist so profoundly? How can God be good with
all of the pervasive evil in our world? Where is God in the midst of evil? If
God is good, then why all of this hurt and pain?
Now do you
see why I say what is at stake for us this morning? The cross
of Christ is either the end of all hope (the triumph of suffering and death
over and against all goodness and all life), or the cross is the beginning of
specifically and profoundly Christian hope (it has something profoundly,
radically, amazingly to say about God’s relationship to evil, suffering and
pain).
-
A few year back my little nephew was born with what
we lay folk call “water on the brain.” The long and short of it = Dylan’s development
is severely delayed. This has cause significant question within my family, and
particularly for Dylan’s father, my brother. What you hear this morning is not
theory spun in the cold laboratory of seminary classroom, but the echo of years
of conversation with my brother.
-
And it is all around: you don’t have to sit there
and think to yourself, “hmm…I wonder where I’ve encounter suffering in my world
that this message might apply to.” We don’t have to go far to find profound
suffering that raises the questions about the problem of evil, the goodness of
God and tentative teetering nature and possibility of hope.
4. Yet,
through the centuries the Church has proclaimed that a Roman instrument of
death has become the symbol of God’s love for us. Our faith confessions that the
cross of Christ is the very beginning of hope. And how is that? If in
hearing your mind has a disjoint here that is okay? Let’s unpack this a little.
The cross is hope. How can we
say this? And more importantly how can we know
this, experientially know,
the hope and love God intends for us in the cross?
a. Our Christian faith tells us
that all question about God, the world, and evil must be submitted to the God’s
self-disclosure (God’s showing of himself) in Jesus. In Christ, God’s has
revealed the nature and character of Godself fully, completely. Jesus is the
picture of God in our world.
b. So, what does this say about the
cross? More specifically, what sort of God do we meet in the cross? The God we meet on the Cross is none
other than the God who in complete and
absolute solidarity suffers with us. The cross guarantees that God
is present with us. God doesn’t stand safely aloof. In Christ we meet the
eternal God, who so radically indentifies with a suffering world that he takes
the world’s evil upon himself. Not just the sins of the world, but the unfathomable
abyss of evil itself. In Christ, God radically identifies with human
brokenness. God loves so much that he is willing to suffer heinous death of
Jesus to show us the depth, the extent of that love. Jesus death on the cross
is God saying to you, “If love means this, then indeed I will endure it.” The cross is God saying to you, “When you’re
suffering, I am redemptively suffering with you in my love.”
c. And how extensively does God
suffer with you? How far does that this compassion go? Well, God would go as far
as the cross. For the Roman who invented death on a cross it was the ultimate
in vulnerability, human pain,
humiliation, rejection and loneliness. The Passion narrative strikes us
a stark, painful, humiliating and lonely because that is just what Roman
crucifixion was in its reality. The Gospel writer has embodied well the reality
itself in his story telling. In the cross God became what we do not ever want
to be – an outcast, accursed,
humiliated - utterly rejected. God has gone to the very fringes of
human existence and beyond – God ventures past the boundaries of existence and
journeys into death itself. The eternal God took all of this and more upon
himself.
5. And why? Did
God go to the cross because some external power imposed it on him? No, God goes
to the cross because in love God freely choose it!
a. As Jesus was being mocked and
spit on that day those who jeered at him thought that they had power over Jesus. They thought
that they were the ones who were killing Jesus, the ones who were in control
and in charge of Jesus’ life and will.
1. The chief
priest and religious scribes saw the death of Jesus as the end of their
desire for Jesus, as an expression of their ability to shape and form the
religious views and opinions of their day.
2. The Roman soldiers saw the death of
Jesus as an expression of their political power; this is what happens when you
stir up trouble in a Roman providence.
b. But no, it was neither of these.
The religious establishment, the
political powers of the day was not ultimately why Jesus was
on the cross. In fact it was not even the physical nails pounded into his hands
and feet that held him. The nails didn’t hold him on that cross that day; it
was love that held him.
6. God loves
us even to the point of death on the cross. Where
is God on that day of the Passion? God is suffering with us and for us on
the cross. God is suffering in His Son and it reveals to us the way
he is affected by the suffering in this our world. The creation is God’s, and God suffers
radically and freely with it.
The cross shows us how seriously
God takes the creation. God did not create this world and
abandoned it when it turned by its own will to suffering and death. No, God in
covenant relationship gives himself to creation. The cross shows us how far he’ll
go, how seriously God takes the
fulfillment of that relationship. Was it nails that held Jesus to the
cross that day? No, it was God’s love for creation! The cross is the supreme place of God’s
self-emptying compassion, his self-imposed vulnerability.
Let us here it again:
The cross of Christ is either the
end of all hope, or it is the beginning of a specifically and profoundly
Christian hope. The cross either confirms that God has abandoned the world and
has failed in his goodness, or it establishes the inexhaustible goodness of
God. And the one who can seriously question whether God is all-loving is the
one who has yet to understand the Good News, the Gospel of the Cross.
Jesus: utterly alone? No… God is with
Jesus, that is to say, with and for all of humanity! My fellow journeyers, my
fellow sharers in the burden of human suffering: hear the good news! - The
cross is hope.
Here on this Sunday of the Passion
we encounter that God is the One who is by loving choice inextricably with us
and for us.
Indeed, good news for us to share,
to embody, for us to live into out in this broken
and hungry world. That is why we
can still sing praises on this day. Why Hosanna is an appropriate place to end.
Hosanna – praise be to God. In Jesus, Our Hope is embodied. May it be so among
us. Amen.
