Colossians
1:11-20, Luke 23:33-43
Christ
the King
November
24, 2019
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to
dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
I
was twenty-five years old when I discovered a new hymn. Having grown up in the
church, I thought I knew them all. We sang from the old red Presbyterian hymnal
in the church where I grew up, the 1955 edition with all the hymns that were
fit to print. Thanks to our pastor, we sang them all. I learned as much faith
from those hymns as I ever did from pulpit or classroom.
So
when the graduating class at my seminary took a poll to select our graduation
hymn, I naturally made a lot of suggestions. My family took me to church every
week. I was loaded with recommendations. To my astonishment, I was vastly
outvoted. My classmates picked something I had never heard and never sang. When
I inquired, a friend said, “I think it’s a Lutheran hymn.”
I
had never heart of it. He said, “You never heard it? What’s wrong with you?” A
few weeks later we lined up to process down the aisle of the Princeton University
Chapel. The organ fired up, a brass quartet blended in, and we sang, “Lift High
the Cross, the love of Christ proclaim.” It was stirring. It was powerful. It
was triumphant -and therefore a little weird.
“Lift
High the Cross”? Celebrate the crucifixion? It portrays the death of Jesus as a
joyful event, puts the “good” in Good Friday. Have you ever considered how
strange that is?
Years
ago, the gothic chapel at Duke University was rented out for a movie set. The
film was Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. The original film
was filmed at Duke before it recently was re-created for cable TV. The producer
booked the chapel during spring break, and then erected a gallows on the lawn
outside the chapel. They filmed a terrifying scene of an execution outside of
this enormous Christian chapel. Word spread, critics called it sacrilegious,
tempers flared.
When
the chapel preacher arrived on Sunday morning, here’s this gallows erected
outside his church. It wasn’t just any Sunday. Spring break coincided with Palm
Sunday! People were furious. He said, “Now, wait a second. I agree this is
scandalous, horrifying, and wrong. But if you look inside the chapel, right
behind the altar, you’ll see the cross, an instrument of capital punishment. If
we are true to the Christian story, the cross was a first-century Roman
gallows.”[1]
He's
right about that. The Roman Empire crucified troublemakers to display as a bad
example. That’s why the crucifixion of Jesus took place right along a heavily traveled
highway outside of Jerusalem. It happened at Passover, when the traffic was
higher than any other time of the year. The message was clear: don’t do what
these people did. Keep in line or this could happen to you.
Crucifixion
was a brutal death. Arms extended, full weight of your body bearing down, the
prisoners died of suffocation. It could take three to five days, unless you
were beaten severely as Jesus was. Then it might take three hours.
And
that anybody would look on this scene, and then sing, “So shall our song of
triumph ever be: praise to the Crucified for victory… Lift high the cross!”
What is it, that turns this horrible, wretched scene into a moment of triumph?
The
New Testament suggests a lot of answers, all based on the deep reflection of
people of faith. One of the most common is that “Jesus died for our sins.” (1
Peter 3:18). We hear that a lot, even say it a good bit. It’s a scapegoat idea,
drawn from the sacrifices of Jewish temple religion. In the 16th chapter of Leviticus, the priest presents a goat to be sacrificed – a scapegoat.
The blood of that pure animal atone for the sins of the people.
Some
Jewish writers like the apostle Paul thought of the cross of Christ this way. As
he wrote to the Corinthian church, “God made (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21). Paul
says this was done “for our sake.” Christ died for sins.
Over
the years, as Christian people thought about this, and thought some more about
this, theological circles were added. Some declared it was God’s will that Jesus
should suffer, drawing on the words of the prophet Isaiah. Then somebody else
said it was God’s intent from the dawn of time to send Jesus to die; however
that seems to speed by all the life-giving work that he did (the healings and
the feedings) and all the life-giving wisdom he taught. Everything is reduced
to the cross, an event set on autopilot at creation.
The
problem with reducing all this is that it ignores the mess that people
generally keep making of things, and the original intent of God to make a beautiful
world in a beautiful universe. As surely as we can say “Jesus died for our
sins,” we can equally say he died as a result of our sins. People crucified the
Lord. The cross is a collision between the will of God and the willfulness of
human beings. It is the worst thing we have ever done.
So
why do we lift it up high? What’s the Good in Good Friday?
Well,
listen to what Luke hears. In the third Gospel, the Son of God comes into our
midst with prophetic love for all, and we do away with him. Just like all the
prophets before him! It’s an enormous mistake. We do our worst – yet on the
cross, God in Christ does his best. Luke hears Jesus say, “Father, forgive
them, they know not what they do.” Or to translate that more literally, “Father,
forgive them, they are clueless…”
According
to Luke, that is the recurring diagnosis of the human family. It’s still going
on. Breathe in toxic substances, and we wonder why our lungs are damaged. Put
toxins in the atmosphere, and we wonder why the weather goes haywire. Sell
weapons to people of other nations and wonder why they turn on us. Give violent
video games to our children and wonder why they are combative and unable to
concentrate. We know better, but we don’t really get it.
So hear
Jesus pray: “Father, forgive them.” That’s the prayer that he offers with that
sign over his head, “This is the king of the Jews.” Father, forgive us, all of
us. I tell you the truth, the Gospel truth: my life depends on the answering of
that prayer. So does yours.
When
Christian people speak about the cross, one way or another they declare it is
inevitable. Either God set it up or people cooked it up. It could be either; it’s
probably both. What matters is what happens there: Christ prays for forgiveness
– for the cancelling of the sins that put him there – and we trust God has
answered this prayer. That’s what make all the difference.
In
the high language from our reading in Colossians, the event is a reconciliation,
a balancing of accounts, a cancellation of debt and debtors. It’s the making of
peace between heaven and earth, and it happens, says the text, “through the
blood of his cross.”
Is
Jesus the scapegoat? The sacrificial Lamb? Is he the Passover lamb, as the
Gospel of John suggests? Is he the innocent victim of the Gospel of Luke? All
the above, and then some. The truth about Christ and what he has accomplished
is far great than one specific description . . . because he is the king, the
true king even on the cross.
To
speak of Jesus and what he has done will always lead us to the brink of
paradox, which is exactly how the New Testament portrays the immensity of his
grace. We will have a taste of this in the hymn by Sylvia Dunstan which we will
sing in a few minutes. The title itself is a paradox: “You, Lord, Are Both Lamb
and Shepherd.” Well, which is it? Is he the Lamb? Or is he the Shepherd? The New
Testament says, “yes.” Listen to what the hymn goes on to declare:
Clothed in light
upon the mountain, stripped of might upon the cross,
Shining in eternal
glory, beggared by a soldier’s toss…
You, who walk each
day beside us, sit in power at God’s side.
You, who preach a
way that’s narrow, have a love that reaches wide…
Worthy is our earthly
Jesus! Worthy is our cosmic Christ!
Worthy your defeat
and victory; worthy still your peace and strife…
You, who are our
death and life.[2]
All
of it is true – and it is held together in the truth of God. A month from
tonight is Christmas Eve. We will light candles and sing, “Silent Night, holy
night, Son of God, love’s pure light…Jesus, Lord, at this birth.” Have you ever
considered the immensity of what we sing? That a child, born to peasants and
laid to rest in a feeding trough, is the ruler over all things. It’s
mind-boggling. It doesn’t compute easily – because it’s that enormous. It’s the
stuff of paradox.
Or
the subject for today: the profound truth that the King of the Universe rules
from a cross. A couple of jokers put a sign above his head that said, “Here’s
your king.” He has no crown, so they weave him a crown of thorns. He has no
royal robe, so they give him a make-believe robe, make fun of him, and then
take it back and gamble it away. He possesses nothing, yet he gives us
everything – for he prays, “Father, forgive them.” Rather than punish us, God
answers that prayer.
So
maybe we shouldn’t live by punishment, since God has forgiven all of us.
· Maybe
we should be careful about punishing others, since God in Christ has already forgiven
them.
· Maybe
we should lighten up and refuse to punish ourselves, since God in Christ has
forgiven us too.
· Maybe
we could reconsider a lot of the ways the evil world works and work a good bit
harder at living by mercy, if only because the mercy of God is the only reason any
of us are still here.
I
think that’s the good news. What do you think?
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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