Meditations on the Crucifixion and What It Means for Us: Taking Up the Cross and Dying Daily

Preached at Silverton Friends Church, December 8, 2024

Novelist Flannery O’Connor, in her novel Wise Blood, wrote about a street preacher named Haze Motes who has given up on religion, and preaches the Church without Christ.  He harangues people with this: “Where in your time and your body has Jesus redeemed you.  Show me where because I don’t see that place….If you had been redeemed … you would care about redemption but you don’t.”  (84, 72) I’m still intrigued about what Jesus’s crucifixion and our redemption means for us, and as Haze wonders, what it means specifically in our daily lives.  

Let us just remember that Jesus ministered and died and was resurrected in a world where the Roman Emperor was a god and demanded worship, where his own homeland and was occupied by the Roman army and governed by Roman puppet rulers, and where executions took place in public and with regularity, for offenses from theft to murder to political protest and insurrection. So what Jesus says applies under those very unpleasant circumstances.

We’ll start with what Jesus said before the crucifixion about what it would mean to be his follower. In Mark 10, with similar passages in Matthew and Luke, Jesus tells his disciples, “All those who want to follow me will have to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and then follow me.” Matt 16:24, Mark 10:24; Luke 9:23. I have puzzled about what I am denying when I deny myself, because I have also felt confident that God loves that self, and God wants me to rejoice in my life and humanity. But what I want us to consider is that denying oneself refers to saying no to the need for admiration, approval, praise, control, fame, power, position.

We can see that no one wanted to hear that message, because shortly after, two disciples, expecting him to become king, wanted Jesus to promise them pride of place on his left and right hand. Understandably, this infuriated the other disciples (who may have regretted not getting in there first) until they heard Jesus’s answer:  You don’t know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with? They answered: We are able.  In hindsight we can see the giant warning in Jesus’s metaphors, but they didn’t have our understanding that the cup was his suffering and the baptism was his death.

Jesus said, “You will indeed drink the cup that I drink and you will be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with, but those seats of honor are already assigned.“ 

Then he went on to say some home truths about power vs discipleship to his followers then and now; “The nature of rulers is to lord it over their people, the great ones exercise authority over the people; You can’t be like that. Whoever wants to be one of the great ones must be your servant and whoever wants to have first place must be the slave of all.  

For even the Son of Man (namely Jesus) did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Remember this verse: 

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in this body I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Gal. 2:20

So what does it mean that we are with Jesus in his crucifixion? What does it mean to pick up the cross daily? St. Paul was working on this when he wrote, “I die daily.” Or this: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” (Gal. 6:12)

The idea of “denying one’s self” links up with “the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world” and “Christ lives in me.” These truths can help us live meaningfully and hopefully and humanely in troublesome times.

In early November, I pulled out The Roots of Goodness and Resistance to Evil by Ervin Staub, which I referenced last time I was here. Staub was sheltered from the Nazis by a Christian family, which began his interest in why people choose goodness in circumstances which make it dangerous to get involved, circumstances where evil is easier.  The writer I want to bring in today is Tzvetan Todorov, who grew up in totalitarian Bulgaria. As a scholar, he inquired into the nature of virtue under the Nazis and in the concentration camps and wrote about it in Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps. 

One of his main conclusions is to differentiate between heroic and ordinary virtues. And this is where we can see how dying to the world, denying one’s self, and Christ living in us can help us make decisions about our responses and responsibilities.

We aim for ordinary virtues, rather than heroism.

Heroes are courageous and willing to risk their own lives for an ideal; but also Heroes are careless of others’ lives. Heroes are willing for any number of  people to die so that the ideal can survive; the beneficiary of their deaths is an abstraction such as humanity or history or democracy or freedom. heroes prefer the ideal to the real.

People of ordinary virtues are also courageous and willing to risk their lives, they also refuse to accept that things have to be this way, they also do not mindlessly follow orders. But, unlike those of heroic virtues, they prioritize the safety and escape of other people.  They embody the ordinary virtues of dignity (remaining a subject with a will) and caring (contributing to the welfare of others). In complete contrast to the heroes, they live or die for individuals rather than for ideas. The beneficiaries of their courage are real individual persons. They will be active bystanders, aware of their surroundings and their companions and choosing to disrupt the actions of hatred and violence that afflict them. At the same time, it is best not to be a martyr if possible. As Jesus advised, “Be wise as the serpent and as harmless as the dove.” Pay attention, be aware, and intervene with as little harm done as possible.

I grew up in Central Africa under a military dictatorship, and during two civil wars.  In the one from 1960, a young man who had studied in the U.S. and was on the army's hit list took refuge in the house of a Quaker missionary doctor. When the soldiers came to his door, Perry met them and said, "This man is a guest in my home. If you want to take him, you will have to take me also." This seemed too risky to the soldiers, since they were afraid that the U.S. might retaliate if they harmed an American, so they went away.  The young man was spirited across the border and eventually found safety in the U.S.  Perry used his privilege as a white American to deflect violence without making the situation worse and without harm to anyone. He exemplified a person of ordinary virtue.

How does this relate to taking up the cross and dying to self?  First, dignity and caring, the ordinary virtues, are not about exercising power, only choice.  It is hard for humans to give up trying to be the powerful one, the leader, the charismatic prophet, particularly if there are followers to be had.  Second, recognizing that I am responsible to do all the good I can for as long as I can removes the impulse to go out in a blaze of glory, glory being another kind of ego trip.  Third, my impulse to remain as safe as I can takes a back seat to my choice to disrupt violence, hatred, and evil. Fourth, I don’t waste my time saying I care; instead I do caring actions.

St. Paul says that our old worn-out habitual self is crucified with Jesus. Certainly the instinct of facing danger with fight, flight, or freeze are old habits that we can choose against.  Certainly the natural and unhelpful impulse to grasp the upper hand, to be or to follow idealistic leaders is something we can question. Paul says that this old mindset is dead on the cross, and that from now on we should choose not to serve it. He calls it sin, and I want us to think about this meaning something other than lust or avarice, something instead that causes us to acquiesce to systemic evil.  He says in Galatians that he is dead with Christ, and the life he lives now is lived by the faith of God’s Son. He is alive because Christ is faithful. He says that because Christ is raised, we also will live with him in a setting where death has no dominion. (Romans 6:6-9) Thus we do not fear death, but also we do not run towards it.  “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain,” is not the slogan of a man hurrying toward martyrdom.  

I want to draw attention to the number of times Jesus simply evaded dying by slipping away in the crowd. Even when he was encircled by a mob of angry and self-righteous men wanting to stone an adulterous woman, he responded to their mood quietly and disruptively, standing with the woman, but not inciting or inviting violence toward her or himself. When he protested against the systemic evils of temple merchandising and priestly corruption  by overturning tables, he exposed only himself to retaliation, and when he was captured in the garden, he made certain his followers lived to see another day. He made his choices with dignity and purpose, and he cared for those within his sphere.  This is a leader who is dead to ego needs and alive to God and his neighbors.

As we face into an uncertain and worrisome future, I encourage us to be persons of ordinary virtues, persons who recognize everyday evil and choose to act to diminish, deflect, or disrupt it rather than ignore it or comply with it. Let’s live so that we show in our time and body where Jesus has redeemed us. Let us respect our own ability to choose, let us care for our neighbor, and let us rejoice in the faithfulness of Jesus who lives in us.

The Consuming Fire of God's Love

 Preached at  North Valley Friends Church

September 22, 2024

The Consuming Fire of God’s Love

When Leslie asked me to consider preaching at NVFC, I told her that I think I am always preaching one sermon in different guises, namely that God’s love must have an object and God’s creation is that object, that God loves you and me. Often this is a consoling message. As Jesus said, perhaps with a bit of wry humor, “are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and yet not one of them falls to the ground without my Father knowing. Fear not, for you are of more value than many sparrows.” Here is a bit of the flavor of Micah 3.  "Listen, pray, chieftains of Jacob and captains of the house of Israel. Is it not yours to know what is right? Haters of good and lovers of evil . . . who devour My people's flesh and strip their skin from them and crack open their bones.  And they cut it like flesh in the pot and like meat in the cauldron" (The Hebrew Bible, "Prophets," tr. Robert Alter, 2015).

It was a surprise to me to find that it took only a few hours to see that this message too is about the fact that God loves us, you and me.  This is a message about God’s grace.

But first, I want to respond to Micah. I notice that he addresses three classes of people with power in their culture: priests, judges, and prophets. These define morality for the rest of their society. They tell other people what is right and wrong. But Micah accuses them of cannibalism towards other people, skinning them, breaking their bones, sucking out the marrow. To bring this into non-figurative terms, they destroy the lives of those for whom they define the rules, those in their care, under their influence; they take away their lives in order to enrich their own. They are predatory. 

We can look at those in our own society’s leadership who also cannibalize others, who remove from them the means of life; who destroy others to add to their own abundance; who ruin others’ chances to live fully and freely. 

And while it is comforting to point the finger at corruption above us in the power structure,

it would be a mistake to hear Micah talking only to those at the top of his culture. For this to have relevance to us, we need to consider that power includes greater physical strength, greater prestige and social capital, greater ability to decide who gets in and who must stay out—gate keeping. We need to recognize our own power over others, whether it is coercive or manipulative or accidental. We need to admit when we have misused our power, our privilege, depriving others of the ability to thrive and become their whole selves.

We can hear echoes of Micah’s message in the words of Jesus, first to the religious leaders, but then to everyone who has ears. I won’t rehearse all of the condemnations of the actions of the scribes and Pharisees, but I’ll remind you of this one: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and uncleanness. You bind heavy loads on others’ shoulders but you are unwilling to lift a finger to help them carry those loads.”  I will remind us, remind me, that Jesus also said, shockingly, that anyone who makes it hard for a little one to trust God would be better off drowned, and that whatever is done to the “least of these” is done to Jesus Himself.  And also that not everyone who says Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what Jesus’s Father and our Father says to do. And further that those who look on their hungry, thirsty, ragged, imprisoned neighbors and do nothing to alleviate this distress are not part of God’s sheep, not among God’s people. How much worse to actively contribute to or even cause another’s misery.  Jesus is not less demanding than Micah, and perhaps, given that he is talking right to us, is even more so. No wonder the liturgical confession includes both what we have done and what we have left undone.  

When Jesus was asked the greatest commandment, he said, “Love God with everything you are and have, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus knew he had to add the second, which he said is like the first, because we can talk ourselves into believing we love God while we are doing harm to our neighbor. But also, this contains in it the truth that when we harm others we also harm ourselves, and conversely that love for others and love for oneself go arm in arm.

We have seen that Jesus shares Micah’s outrage about the misuse of power and influence. So how can we move from admitting our selfishness and apathy and self-indulgence at others’ expense to a better understanding about God’s love for us, God’s grace toward us? We need to recognize that God’s grace may look a lot like judgment, God’s grace is surgical, and our response to this intrusive grace of God makes all the difference.

I owe much of my understanding of God’s intrusive and uncomfortable grace to three writers: George MacDonald, Flannery O’Connor, and Julian of Norwich. George MacDonald was a novelist and preacher in the 1800s whose writing was hugely influential on C.S. Lewis.  He writes in one of his Unspoken Sermons, “The Consuming Fire”:

Nothing is inexorable but love….Love has ever in view the absolute [the potential] loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more…Therefore all that…comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire. (18-19)

Let us have grace to serve the Consuming Fire, our God, with divine fear; not with the fear that cringes and craves, but with the bowing down of all thoughts, all delights, all loves before him who is the life of them all and will have them all pure. (20)

…the fear towards God will be one with the homeliest love. Yea, the fear of God will cause a person to flee, not from God, but from the self, in terror lest that person do [wrong to ] God or [to] a neighbor .… (21)

In sum, God will love us into our best selves, and whatever we carry around with us that prevents us being that best self will have to go. This is the work of grace for us.

I learned a similar view of God’s grace from Flannery O’Connor, a mid 20th century writer of novels and short stories. Her self-satisfied characters are often jolted awake by God’s grace in a way they would never have chosen. Their casual American Christianity is not enough. I’ll mention one character and how God’s grace destroys in order to redeem.  In “Revelation,” a good solid Christian woman named Mrs. Turpin is attacked in the doctor’s office as she is making banal conversation about who is and who isn’t trash. A young woman throws a book at her, raising a bump on the forehead, and shouts, “Go back to hell where you came from, you fat warthog.”

What makes this traumatic moment redemptive is that Mrs. Turpin turns immediately to God and complains about being treated like this, while all the while wondering why God would send her this message. And because she turns toward God instead of away, and in recognition of her willingness to learn despite her anger and humiliation, God gives her a vision of the redemption of humanity, beginning with those she places at the bottom of the heap and ending with her kind of people. She sees the vast stream of human beings moving into glory, and her own kind of people are at the end of the line.

She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were [singing] on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.  She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead…In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah. (The Complete Stories, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 508) 

And finally, to Julian of Norwich, a mystic and anchorite from the 1300s. She had a near-death experience in which she had a vision of Jesus. She meditated on that vision for the rest of her life and gained profound understanding about God’s love and God’s intention to redeem and make all things well.  Along the way, she hears Jesus say this:

“For I will wholly break you of your vain affections and your vicious pride; and after that I shall gather you and make you meek and mild, clean and holy by oneing (uniting) you to me.” ( The Revelation of Love, tr. John Skinner, 86)

So what can we take of comfort and consolation from Micah 3? We can rejoice that God’s love always intends what is best for us and always builds up what is best in us; we can trust that God will make us good, and we can welcome the intrusion of God’s grace when we are not good as we face the both the consequences of doing harm and the divine surgery that will save us.  We can understand that God’s grace is not about excusing but about remaking, about healing, about redeeming what is perverse, wounded, and lost.  We can take heart, even as we tremble, that God’s love is inexorable and will do us good.