NO CROSS, NO CROWN

Jesus replied, “God and tell that fox, ‘I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’” (Luke 13: 32)

            A minister friend of mine was once invited to deliver a sermon in a church that was about to celebrate the burning of a mortgage. At the appropriate time in the service representatives of the congregation came forward to join the pastor in putting a match to the legal documents that had kept that church in debt for many years. As he told of the event, flames brightened and the circles of smoke danced their way toward the ceiling, much as they did here on Ash Wednesday when we burned the papers on which we wrote our transgressions. He said he looked out at the congregation, and one could sense the jubilation and relief of a grateful people.

            But then he noted that he himself was an interested and sympathetic outsider, and was unable to reach the heights of joy that the congregation felt. He was present at the victory celebration but had not shared their daring vision, their risk of faith, their sacrificial giving, and their patient waiting. At best he was an outsider looking in. It could not have been otherwise.

            Something like that will happen in just five Sundays from now, at Easter. In heartening numbers, people around the world will gather to participate in an ecstasy without having participated in the agony that preceded it. What can restoration mean to those who have never suffered separation? What can resurrection mean to those who have not died? What is Easter Sunday without Good Friday but a rite of spring, a haberdasher’s delight, a time for colored eggs and jelly beans?

            We will meet in five Sundays not to celebrate resurrection in general but the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. His resurrection is not an isolated event but a sequel to earlier happenings. “The third day he rose from the dead.” That statement in the Apostles’ Creed is unintelligible unless we know what preceded it. “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the dead.”

            Good Friday is the neglected day in the Christian year. Popular Christianity passes from the poinsettias of Christmas to the lilies of Easter, conveniently by-passing the thorns of Good Friday. But death and resurrection are inseparable in scripture. No cross, no crown, that’s the principle. The agony and the ecstasy go hand in hand.

            The disciples had trouble at this point. In the north country beyond Caesarea Philippi, Jesus experienced one of the major crises of his life. Peter had just announced in a triumph of faith, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” Jesus had responded, in effect, “Bravo!” “On this rock I will build my church.” From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed, and on the third day be raised to life. This was too much for Peter. He both resisted and rebuked his Lord: “Never! Not you!” But Jesus retorted, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

            Let’s not be too hard on Peter. He was only being human. We would all prefer to avoid the tragic dimension of life. The shallows are less demanding. We are on the prowl for a painless, cost-free faith, an “ouchless” Christianity. When I was at the tenderfoot level of Boy Scouts, the other guys and I in our patrol got on to this rather early. We discovered that iodine dropped into an open cut made it sting. But about that time there was a new medical breakthrough. A major scientific advance. It was called Mercurochrome! Which didn’t hurt when applied, but had the same antiseptic value. We became self-prescribing. When the need arose, we always insisted on Mercurochrome.

            The cross and the crown belong together, the agony and the ecstasy. Jesus was totally committed in this direction. When some of the Pharisees, of all people, came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”  Jesus says in response, “God tell that fox, I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal. In other words, “My career is determined not by Herod, no matter how sly he was, but by God. Setting his face steadfastly toward Jerusalem, the city known for killing the prophets and stoning those sent to it, over which Jesus brooded and cried, he marched to his death.

            The point is as true for us as it was for Jesus’ disciples. The Easter message is not indiscriminantly radiant. It is not a portable happy ending that can be hitched to just any story. It has little to say to those who live the unexamined life, who crave only creature comforts and security, whose only questions are “What shall I eat, what shall I drink, what shall I wear?” The Easter message comes home with power and conviction to those who have already borne the torments of life’s larger questions.

            On such is, “Can I be forgiven?” Good Friday raises that question. One cannot be casual about his or her sins in the presence of Jesus’ crucifixion.  Nor can I lay the blame at the feet of others.  What the crowd urged and what the soldiers did, they urged and did as if I were one of them.  Johann Heerman in his searching hymn is right: “Who was the guilty? / Who brought this upon you?/ It is my treason, Lord, that has undone you./ ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied you/ I crucified you.

            Yet from the cross that day the savior was heard to say, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That was his prayer for us. But we do not know whether that prayer was heard or answered until the third day when God raised Jesus from the dead. The resurrection was the Father’s “yes” to Jesus’ prayer.

            We were not there on Good Friday. But as I understand the meaning of the New Testament experience of God, we must in an act of faith identify ourselves with Jesus in his dying, if we would participate in his resurrection. This is what Paul means when he says, “I have been crucified with Christ… Christ lives in me.” Only as we know him in the fellowship of his suffering can we know him in the power of his resurrection.

            This is what we affirm at every baptism. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

            If we haven’t wrestled with our sins what can forgiveness mean?  If we haven’t died to ourselves what can resurrection mean. Easter is ready when you are! No cross, no crown. No agony, no ecstasy.

            “Jesus, you better get out of here. Herod is out to kill you.” “God and tell that fox, I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.”

            It was the way the master went, should not the servant tread it still?”