This was the 19th Good Friday sermon I've preached from All Saints Church in Pasadena and the second one in The Time of COVID-19. Always a privilege to be part of the three-hour service of prayer, music and meditations at the foot of the cross and never more so than in this poignant time of so much loss and grief; hope and challenge. Inspirations this year include Marcus Borg, Malcolm Boyd and Stephanie Spellers. And of course Jesus.
Luke 22:54-62
Again Peter went out and wept bitterly.
What
a difference a week makes. Just days before – during the triumphal entry into
Jerusalem – when the Pharisees had challenged Jesus to rebuke his disciples for
their “Hosannas” Jesus had replied, “I tell you, if they were to keep silent,
the very stones would cry out.”
But
that night in the courtyard the stones were silent. There were no hosannas. No
palm waving crowds. No “Blessed is the One who comes in the name of our God.” There
was just a cock crow echoing in the silence of betrayal and denial. And Peter
weeping bitterly.
Soon
they will stand at the foot of the cross where the life -- the promise -- the
light that shone so brightly in the Jesus they knew as son, teacher, leader and
friend will be extinguished. All that would remain of the rabbi from Nazareth
was a broken body and the broken dreams of his scattered followers. The Kingdom
he proclaimed had not come. The powerful remained powerful: the oppressed
remain oppressed -- and where there had been hope there is only despair.
And
yet we call this Friday “Good” -- because even the worst that we can do cannot
kill the love of God.
The amazing promise of Good Friday is
that even at the foot of the cross … in the midst of the pain and agony and
betrayal and denial … the love greater than the worst the world could do to it
never wavered … but prayed, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they
do.”
And they didn’t. Know what they had
done … were doing. None of them. Not really. Not the ones who nailed him to the
cross. And not the ones who followed him there. Not even the ones who had been
the closest to him – who had trudged along with him all over Galilee as he
preached and taught and healed and proclaimed the good news of God’s love made
present and available for all.
How many times during his earthly
ministry did Jesus have to take a time out to explain to his disciples what was
going on – to remind them what the “mission statement” was – what the
“strategic plan” looked like?
Love
God and love your neighbors as yourself.
On those two hang all the law and the prophets.
“Right, right,” they’d say. “But when
are we going to rise up and throw the Romans out? And why can’t we build a
booth up on the top of the mountain and hang out with Moses and Elijah? And when
we take over, can me and my brother sit on your right hand? Please?
The scriptures are full of examples
of just how much the disciples didn’t “get” what this Jesus of Nazareth was
about. What the kingdom was he came to proclaim was meant to be.
I’ve sometimes wondered if all the
times we read about when Jesus “went off to a quiet place to pray” one of his
prayers wasn’t, “And could you send me another twelve disciples? These twelve
don't seem to be catching on and I’m running out of time!”
Even at the last – on Maundy Thursday
when Jesus washed the feet of the disciples as they ate their last meal together
in that upper room -- Peter ... the disciple renamed by Jesus as the "rock
on which I will build my church" -- protested at the very idea of Jesus washing
their feet and Jesus responded: "You do not know now what I am doing, but
later you will understand."
And over 2000 years later we're still
on the journey to that understanding.
As we gather on this Good Friday 2021, we gather in the shadow of and ongoing
cycle of Breaking News of how the Good News of the God who loved us enough
to become one of us in order to show us how to love one another continues to be
used and misused as a weapon of mass discrimination in our nation; used and
misused to inflict trauma rather than to heal trauma; used and misused for
oppression rather than for liberation.
We see it over and over and over
again as we watch the video footage of violent insurrectionists storming our
nation's Capitol screaming hateful rhetoric and carrying the cross of the Lord
of Love.
We see it in lawmakers restricting
healthcare options for transgender youth based on bad theology rather than good medical science.
We see it in the denial of climate
science based on bad biblical studies standing in the way of action needed to
save this fragile Earth, our island home.
We see it in the adoption of
restrictive voting laws denying the dignity of black and brown voters ... creating
a 21st century version of the 1st century parable:
And
they will ask
“When did we see you thirsty and did not give you water to drink?’”
And the answer will be,
“Standing in line to vote in Georgia.”
The list goes on and on ...
And if we let that use and misuse go unchallenged: If we let the love, justice
and compassion of the Gospel be hijacked
in the service of hatred, oppression and marginalization then we deny Jesus
just as surely as Peter did.
And we fail to be Body of Christ in the world the church is meant to be ... fail
to be part of making that kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
A long time ago when I was
a young mother my church had a Wednesday night soup and study series during
Lent – and I signed up to go … partly because it was Lent and I wanted to do
something to deepen my spiritual life and partly because there was child care
and I could talk to adults for a couple of hours once a week.
One Wednesday night we had a visiting priest from South India who invited us to
think of the Kingdom of God we’ve been called to build here on earth as a
massive construction project -- and to think of the scaffolding surrounding it
as the church.
“The point of the church is not the church in the same way the point of the
scaffolding is not the scaffolding,” he said. “The point of the church is to
build the kingdom. And the church gets it wrong is when it spends so much time
polishing, preserving and fussing with the scaffolding that it forgets to build
the building – forgets to build the kingdom.”
If we're honest, over the last 2000 years the church has not only gotten it
wrong by forgetting to build the kingdom -- it has gotten it wrong by joining
forces with the empire and instead of building a kingdom of love, justice and
compassion has participate in building systems of domination, injustice and
oppression.
And
every time that happens I imagine Jesus looking at it -- looking at us -- just
he looked at Peter in the courtyard. I imagine I can hear off there in the
distance the faint but unmistakable sound of a cock crowing. And I remember the
words of the prayer Malcolm Boyd taught us to pray:
Dear
Jesus,
Save us from the sin of loving
religion instead of you.
Loving religion instead of Jesus has been one of the ways the church has denied
Jesus over and over and over again as surely as Peter denied Jesus in the
courtyard of the high priest as the cock crowed the third time.
To love religion instead of Jesus – to worship Jesus instead of following him –
is to choose institutionalization over mobilization – to opt for the safety of
becoming an institution rather than risk the invitation to be part of God’s
movement – to … in the words of Jim Sanders of blessed memory: “worship the
gift rather than the giver” making idols of the outward and visible signs that
represent an inward and spiritual grace that transcends any outward and visible
sign … even the ones we hold most dearly the ones we revere as the most sacred.
And here at All Saints Church we certainly gotten a master's course on giving
those up over this last year. In this
time of COVID-19 we have not chosen to love religion instead of Jesus we have
chosen to re-imagine religion because of Jesus.
In this time of COVID-19 we have been loving our neighbor by staying away from
them by washing our hands, by wearing our masks, by sacrificing our deep desire
to gather in person for the sake of the deeper desire to protect the most vulnerable.
The religion we have been claiming is the religion Jesus threw down: “love your
neighbor as yourself.” All your neighbors. Not just the ones who live in your
zip code or are part of your car pool. Not just the ones who think like you or
vote like you or worship like you. Love them enough to stay home to protect
them. ALL your neighbors. Every. Single. One.
And on this Good Friday, the religion we claim has nothing whatsoever to do
with swallowing morally indefensible theories of an atoning sacrifice to
appease an angry God and everything to do with living morally accountable lives
of service and self-offering in alignment with God’s values of love, justice
and compassion.
To live those values is to walk what Marcus Borg called “the way of Jesus” a
way that is not a set of beliefs about Jesus … [but] the way of death and
resurrection – the path of transition and transformation from an old way of
being to a new way of being.”
On
this Good Friday 2021 we are still in the midst of that transition and
transformation. We are not "there yet" -- but we are at the point in
the journey where we see light at the end of the tunnel as we continue to take
what our bishop John Taylor has called
"incremental steps back to a future yet to be discovered."
And
in her wonderful new book “The Church Cracked Open”
Canon Stephanie Spellers unpacks that future with these powerful words:
I love the church
the same way Frederick Douglass loved America:
not in spite of its brokenness,
not hiding from its truths,
but taking what is and what could be
and embracing it with deep love
and fierce, unshaken hope.
That’s the kind of love
our church cracked open needs right now.
A love that gets frustrated and angry
but keeps on going.
A love that gets sad and tired
but keeps on hoping.
A love that’s willing to smash our own jars
and let the oil pour,
because we trust God
is creating something
even more beautiful
with these broken pieces.
As we gather today at the foot of the cross, let us pray for the Body of Christ
in all its beauty and brokenness. And let us pray that as we take those
incremental steps back
to a future yet to be discovered we might each be given the grace to love,
serve and challenge the church to live up to its high calling to truly be the
Body of Christ in our beautiful and broken world.
Holy God, we pray for your Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with
all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it;
where in anything it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it;
where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the
sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Savior. Amen
