MUMC Sermon-04/02/2006

Methodist Bishop Will Willimon tells the following Lenten story, set in the early days of his life as a pastor. He begins innocently:

All I did was to suggest to an amateur woodcarver in the congregation that it would be nice if he turned his talents toward the carving of a processional cross for our church. I had in mind something simple, modern and clean, something congruent with [our] Church’s minimalist architecture…What we got on the first Sunday of Lent was a dramatic sort of cross, heavy, complete with a realistic, bleeding corpus, a hanging, crucified Christ, blood and everything.

And he goes on:

Some managed to like it because a nice person had made it. Some liked it because they appreciated the intricate carving. But many were upset because it was “more Catholic than Methodist,” “gory and depressing,” or didn’t “go with our colors.” What is a modern, progressive, slightly liberal, well-budgeted Methodist church to do with a bloody cross these days?[1]

It’s a good question, although apparently one we have already answered. We as a “modern, progressive, slightly liberal, well-budgeted Methodist church” have no such cross. Ours is clean, simple, and probably most importantly, empty. It’s likely not dissimilar to the one Willimon initially imagined for his congregation years ago.

As I was thinking about hymns for our worship this morning, I have to confess to you, I had a really difficult time. So many that seemed appropriate for the season and the readings were the musical versions of the bloody crucifix in Willimon’s story. I didn’t like them. And before I go on let me say that I am well aware that some of you sitting there are thinking, “You didn’t like the hymns, huh? Well now you know how I feel!!!” But this is a conversation for another day.

The point is, bloody, laden crosses and bloody hymns can offend us, theologically, artistically, or both. But I am reminded of the advice one of my professors recently gave me. It’s advice I remember better than I keep: “Be suspicious of what feels right and be open to what feels wrong.” Hear it again, “Be suspicious of what feels right and be open to what feels wrong.” And before you decide what you think of the advice, keep it in mind as you listen to some of Jesus’ words from our gospel reading this morning:

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life for my sake will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life…

And I, when I am lifted up from this earth, will draw all people to myself.[2]

And then the gospel writer explains what all of us already know, when Jesus is “lifted up,” he will be lifted up on a cross. “He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.” (John 12.33)

Jesus is glorified by being executed? Saving your life means you lose it and hating your life means you keep it? Bloody crosses in the Methodist church? Bloody hymns? “Be suspicious of what feels right and be open to what feels wrong.”

“We human beings live by the pleasure principle. We can do no more than avoid pain, whatever its source -- other people, finitude, failure, risk, truth. We are all practical hedonists to the core, asking no more of ourselves than that we have a nice day. So what can we understand, intellectually speaking, of a twisted body hanging from a cross?

[But] It is not by understanding that we are saved. As Karl Barth says, “Here is a truth we cannot understand -- we can only stand under this truth.” John’s Gospel implies that the cross is not to be understood; it is simply to be seen.”[3]

Our final hymn today is about seeing the cross. “When I survey the wondrous cross,” it begins, “When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died; my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.” When we see the cross, really see it, something about us begins to change.

It’s important to be clear here, about just how seeing the cross can change us. In many hands, Crucifixes and bloody hymns are used to make us feel badly about ourselves; they have become objects to provoke guilt, emblems of ours or others’ badness. But this is a perversion of the cross. I mean really, are we actually willing to believe that Jesus went to the cross to make us feel badly about ourselves, or like others less? Unfortunately, we often don’t need help for that; and so such theology renders the crucifixion somewhere between a wasted effort and a shame.

The cross is last, if at all, about feeling guilty. Because guilt is all about us. The cross is not a mirror; it is a window through which we can see, as the hymn puts it, “love so amazing, so divine” that it demands something of us: our souls, our lives, our all.

I imagine it is fear of this demand that has at least as much to do with why we avoid crucifixes and bloody hymns as aesthetics. “Be suspicious of what feels right and be open to what feels wrong.”

Two years ago when I was in Nicaragua, I only wanted to do construction, and so I was careful that construction was all I did. I told myself it was because I like physical labor (which is true), and because it would be such a departure from my daily life (also true). But when we returned this year I had to revisit those conclusions. For a number of reasons on this year’s trip, my time was fairly equally divided between construction work and work with the children in the schools. By the third day I knew that the reason I had only done construction the year before was not to get out of my comfort zone, but to stay in it.

Going to the schools forced me to be worse at understanding Spanish than I wanted to admit, and to see—really see children who were usually hungry, and who at age four, know suffering. Having seen these children in this way won’t allow me to reduce them to poignant little stories or moving images. They are so much more than reasons to feel bad about the things I have or to give some of those things away. They are human beings, no more, and no less, and they deserve more than a passing glance.

Likewise, a real look at the cross will not allow us only a passing glance. As Javier said a few weeks ago, and as I have heard so many of you say since, “Once we have seen, we can never pretend not to have seen.” To look at the cross is vulnerable. It means allowing an instrument of death to be a source of hope. It means not shying away from the suffering of others that can feel very scary. It means seeing another’s humanity in such a way that we have no choice but to respond.

Because what we see on the cross is Jesus, and he is suffering. Know compassion for the one who is lifted up there. And know that compassion for Jesus is compassion for all those who suffer greatly, who are wounded by the powers that be, who have given of themselves for another. Love of God IS love of neighbor. And the cross is the picture of why.

The cross we are marked with at our baptism, the one on the wall in front of you, the one you wear around your neck, the bloody crucifix in Willimon’s church, the one traced on your forehead with ashes at the beginning of Lent, and the one Jesus hauled through the jeering crowds are one and the same. Together this cross calls us to a life of compassion. “Compassion,” literally translated “to suffer with.” The question the cross begs today is “With whom?” With whom are you being called to suffer and what will it mean? Will it mean forgoing your comfort to ask your co-worker with cancer how they really are? Will it mean swallowing your pride and asking for forgiveness from someone still hurt by you? Or will it mean naming your own suffering in such a way that allows you to be the kind of friend who can truly say, “I know how you feel?”

Last year one of our more inquisitive young members asked me why Good Friday was good if that’s the day Jesus died on the cross. It’s a great question, and one that can only be answered with our lives. Lives “open to what feels wrong,” open to call a very bad Friday good, and open to see there on that Friday’s cross “love so amazing, so divine,” that we give our souls, our lives, our all.

[1] Willimon, Will. “And I, When I am lifted up, I will draw all men unto me,” in The Christian Century. 24 March 1982, (pp. 32-36).

[2] John 12.23b-25, 32, NRSV.

[3] Willimon, 33.