“The Colors Through Which we Look at Life”
Sixth in a Series on the Sanctuary
Stained Glass Windows
March 28, 2010 (Palm Sunday) Des Moines
Philippians 2:5-11
Prayers of the People
Steadfast God, you whose son
did not turn away but faced into the difficult winds, we pray for courage and
strength for ourselves. If we are to be
your witnesses in this time and place – if we are to be Christ’s body – we will
need the movement of your Spirit behind us.
For though your name is paraded through the streets
and over the airwaves, your way is commonly ridiculed and
mocked, and those who try to follow it are dismissed as misguided. We are told to stick to more spiritual
matters and leave the ways of the world to those who know better.
But who knows the ways of the
world better than you – you who separated it from the waters and made sun to
shine on it and plants to grow from it; you who molded our very flesh like a
potter? And what could be more powerful
than your spirit that animates us with life itself? We give you thanks and praise, O God, ruler
of all that was and is and is to be, confessing our trust that you are more
powerful than armies and economies, multi-national corporations and ideologies,
political parties and even talk-show hosts.
We pray, then, for courage
and strength to be transformative instruments of your peace. But we pray not simply for ourselves, but for
all those in need of the blessing of your Spirit, ...even as we give you thanks
for all those flashes of joy that brighten and encourage our days.
Center us in and guide us by
the light of your movement ahead of us, O God, for we pray in the name of
Jesus. Amen.
Sermon
“The Cross”
While in
Italy a year or so ago, one of the pilgrimages I was determined to make was to
the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence.
Somewhere in that church was a painting that had captivated me since the
time I saw it as a college student traveling with a group from the religion
department, and for the past 30 years the memory of it had captivated me. It is a painting by the contemporary artist
Pietro Annigoni who uses an unusual combination of bright gold and rich blues
to accentuate the simple scene of the young boy Jesus in his father’s carpenter
shop. He is bent over a worktable,
concentrating on the project at hand, Joseph standing patiently, affectionately
beside. The shop, itself, is a sparse
and simple shed – suggested rather than detailed by a couple of upright studs
and a curiously red lintel that just might recall the lamb’s blood smeared over
the doorways of Israelite households on the night of the Passover. In the foreground, a particular piece of
lumber leans upright against the table, casting on the wall behind the figures a
shadow in the shape of a cross.
Which, looking back
from our vantage point in time, is the way we filter Jesus’ entire
ministry: as lived under the looming
shadow of the cross. It’s strange, when
you think about it, that the cross has come to be such an ubiquitous symbol of
our faith – fashioned into jewelry, mounted as wall ornaments, integrated as
architectural elements. The cross, after
all, isn’t a pretty thing. Having much
in common with nooses and gas chambers and electric chairs, the cross was an
imperial form of execution reserved, in the case of Rome, explicitly for enemies
of the state – those guilty of treason and chronically defiant slaves; which
isn’t the way we typically think of Jesus.
Crucifixion, by design, was a public, prolonged, and excruciatingly
painful form of execution “that carried the message, 'Don't you dare defy
imperial authority, or this will happen to you.' It was state torture and
terrorism” conceived to maintain order – or, as the Roman government would have
defined it, “peace” (Crossan and Borg, The First Paul, pp. 131-132).
My sense is that we are
more accustomed to thinking of the cross in spiritual rather than political
terms – the cross as symbol of personal salvation rather than social
revolution; as the guarantee that my sins are forgiven rather than a frontal
assault on the ways that the world is ordered and run. But any insights about our soul that we might
glean from the death of Jesus are artificial if they ignore what that death
also has to teach us about the kind of community God intends.
It is worth noticing
that the authorities of the time – the “system” – took the measure of Jesus and
essentially voted “no.” Like a deadly
virus they needed to eradicate, Jesus was deemed to be a threat to the order of
life as they had quite methodically shaped it.
And Jesus would have agreed, casting something of a “no” vote of his
own: no to any way of life that values peace
and quiet over honor and compassion; that blithely accommodates the starvation and
disenfranchisement of the many as the reasonable and acceptable cost of the
gluttony of the few; that deems some to be too important to fail while others
are scored too insignificant to matter; that settles for immediate pleasure
over long-term well-being. It’s easy to
see how any king might recoil at being told that he is really only a pawn.
But at the same time that Jesus on
the cross was speaking a powerful “no” to all that dehumanizes and compresses
human value and dignity into smaller and smaller boxes, he was also proclaiming
a triumphant “yes” to the generosity of God’s affectionate grace, freely
available to all. No wonder the Apostle
Paul could write such an otherwise bizarre sounding wish to the Galatians: “May I never boast of anything except the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (6:14).
And how dramatically evocative it is now to hear him urge the
Philippians to “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus...”
This same Jesus who, among other
things, “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death on a
cross.” Let the same mind be in you – the same “no’s” and the very same
“yes.”
All of which helps me realize
that if it can be said that all of Jesus’ life was lived toward this
demonstration – not so much making possible God’s love for us, as rather making
that love known; not so much passing through this life like a parade float
tossing sweet wisdoms to the crowd, but engaging this world at its very roots
and trying to reorient it to its proper axis; if all of his life was lived
under the shadow of this cross, then we do well to notice that every time we
gather in this room we find ourselves under the very same shadow. There it is, on the south side of this room,
yet another of the colors that we have been meditating on during this Lenten
season through which we, as Christians, look at life: in this instance, the cross: a sign not
simply of what Jesus did, but of what we, ourselves, are called to do.
That, I am convinced, is what
Jesus meant when he told his disciples that they, too, needed to
It isn’t enough, in
other words, to simply fly through life under the radar of conflict, keeping
ourselves unsullied and on the straight and narrow; we are called to stand full
posture, pay attention to those ways both structural and informal in which the generous,
determined and embracing love of God as demonstrated on the cross is twisted
into favoritism, belittlement, or disregard for the pain and well-being of
others, and speak a bold and defiant “no” of our own.
It won’t be easy. People who talk like that are publically
ridiculed as naïve – or worse, lifted up and branded as objects of scorn. Peacemakers, civilizers, reconcilers – lovers
in the biblical sense – rarely make the news, and are more commonly mocked and
martyred than respected or heard. Let me
give you an example. Earlier this month,
on his nationally broadcast talk show, one high-profile commentator whose name
I’ll charitably omit counseled his listeners this way:
“I beg you, look for the words
’social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it,
run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code
words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If you have a priest who is pushing social
justice, go find another parish.”
Really? How, I wonder, would the prophet Micah
respond to that – him who suggested that all God requires of us is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly
with God (Micah 6:8)? How does that
square with Isaiah’s invitation – spoken as though coming from the very lips of
God, "All you who
are thirsty, come and drink. Those of you who do not have money, come, buy and
eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost (Isaiah
55)? How does that jibe with Jesus’ own
parable about God’s assessment of heaven-worthy living that whenever we feed or
clothe or visit or care for even the least of those around us we are as though
caring for Jesus himself (Matthew 25)?
How does that set alongside the model of Christian community described
in Acts where “all who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their
possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:42)?
It sounds to me like we
could fairly conclude that any time we find ourselves in a religious sounding
organization that is disinterested in social and economic
justice we have already left the church.
I can’t squint my eyes enough to see what a church is that doesn’t talk
about and advocate around such words.
It’s what compels us to undertake mission trips to impoverished and
virtually forgotten villages. It’s what
drives us into organizations like AMOS.
It’s what unsettles us about the thought of people not having access to
adequate health care. It’s what moves us
to bring canned goods for the Food Pantry and open classrooms for immigrant
language study. Because it finally
sounds not only hollow but silly to talk about people’s soul without any
conversation about or concern for the rest of their lives.
The gospel according to
Jesus, after all, was not simply “Jesus loves me, this I know...” but also “God
so loved the world that he gave his only son...” It is a world we now view through
cross-shaped glasses.
I understand that this
isn’t real “happy talk.” It isn’t a sexy
way of seeing things, and isn’t likely to lead to prosperity, popularity,
leisurely days or restful nights; it’s only likely to lead to the Kingdom of
God.
Let the same mind be in you that was
in Christ Jesus, who
humbled himself and became obedient even to the point of death on a cross.
“Take up your cross daily,” Jesus
said, “and follow me.”
What else, after all, could we do?
We live under the shadow of -- or better said, in the full light – of
it.