In its original forms, this sermon went on forever. In its editing, I fear I may be a bit too condensed. Our short passage from 1st Corinthians is a critical one for Christian belief. God works in mysterious ways and few more mysterious than the cross. while we know so much, wisdom is so lacking. Paul sees the Christ as a decisive move, a revelation, the apocalypse.
Gil Scott Heron said the revolution will not be televised. Neither was the apocalyptic event of Jesus Christ. It changes the way we view the world. Paul says that God’s foolish act confounds human wisdom, even a seemingly weak act strips all human arrogance ot power.Divine logic, the divine idea is decidely different than our own.So many churches either have eliminated the cross as too negative or have left it some sort of signal of divine wrath that then lets us all off the hook, or also glory in its bloody misery as in Mel Gibson’s notorious Pasison of the Christ that gets so involved in the early torture that the crucifixion itself get short shrift. In our country we make a fetish of the cross itself as blood and violence.
Sufjan Stevens has a new song, no shade in the shadow of the cross. God takes the very weapon of defeat and shame and converts it into a tool for healing. Sin, the very thing that separates from God, is the wedge God uses to draw us into healing, into salvation.Of all things, God moves toward us in the cross, in the midst of weakness,in the midst of suffering. In majesty, god is hidden. So God uses the last place we would look for god tobe the vehicle of revelation of God.At the very place Jesus himself felt abandoned by God is the place where we see God with the victim, with the victimized. God takes the worst we do to each other and transform the electric chair into a doctor’s office, a surgery center, a place of healing.
(Hall via tillich): One of Luther’s most profound insights was that God made himself small for us in Christ... He showed us His heart, so that our hearts could be won. When we look at the misery of our world, its evil and its sin, we long for divine interference.. We long for a king of peace within history, or for a king of glory above history. We long for a Christ of power. Yet if He were to come and transform us and our world...Perhaps we would be happier; but we should also be lower beings, our present misery, struggle and despair notwithstanding. Those who dream of a better life and try to avoid the Cross as a way, and those who hope for a Christ and attempt to exclude the Crucified, have no knowledge of the mystery of God and of man.”
As a direct final entrance into the troubles of the world, the cross offers no relief from the desire to rise above troubles as a way of being spiritual. Bonhoeffer- Cross sends [a person] back into . . . life on earth in a wholly new way…. The Christian, has no last line of escape available from earthly tasks and difficulties into the eternal, but, like Christ himself . . . he must drink the earthly cup to the dregs, and only in his doing so is the crucified and risen Lord with him, and he crucified and risen with Christ. This world must not be prematurely written off. This world, our world, our lives are important enough for Jesus to die for.Jesus did not avoid the valley of shadow, but went through it toward redemption and resurrection.
No comments:
Post a Comment