“Without the cross the resurrection couldn’t have happened. But because it did, we are free to be fully alive by the power of that resurrection. Healed, whole and liberated to follow that boundary-crossing, table-tossing, rabble-rousing rabbi from Nazareth.”
Meditation by Susan Russell at the Great Three Hours on Good Friday, April 19, 2019. Reading: John 19:17-27.
Donate to support the mission and ministries of All Saints at https://allsaints-pas.org/donate/donate-now/.
Who Is This King?
Then the chief priests said to Pilate “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.'”
This was not a king they claimed.
His was not a reign they recognized.
They wanted nothing to do with the Good News he and his followers proclaimed.
They wanted no part of the kingdom he kept saying was “in their midst.”
They hadn’t gone looking for this fight – most of them probably expected this Jesus-stuff would quickly run its course and they could get back to orthodoxy-as-usual. But it had gotten out of hand – so out of hand that something had to be done.
The last straw for many was the uproar just days before in the Temple when Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers, disrupting the pious in their prayers while daring to quote back to them the scripture they shared as his “opening argument” — “My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples” … but you have turned it into a den of thieves!
No wonder they began to plot his demise.
And what were his greatest crimes? Knowing their tradition as well as they did.
Calling them out of their comfort zone and asking them to abandon “how we’ve always done it.”
Insisting that “a house of prayer for all the peoples” meant all the peoples … not just the ritually clean, not just the ones with enough wealth to purchase the doves necessary for the temple sacrifice – all the peoples.
Offering God’s healing grace to all people — the lepers and outcasts, the women and the children, the Roman centurion and the Syro-Phonecian woman.
Fulfilling the vision of the prophet Isaiah who spoke for Yahweh to the people of Israel, “It is not enough for you … to bring back the survivors of Israel; I will make you the light of the nations, so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
Our prayer book service of Morning Prayer calls us to remember that vision every single morning with these words: Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace. So clothe us in your Spirit that we may reach out our own hands in that love.
That everyone might come. Everyone.
The Good News of the inclusive love of God for absolutely everyone was not only what Jesus was willing to die for — it was what he was willing to pitch a fit for.
What got those tables tossed in the Temple was righteous indignation at those who would put themselves and their rituals, their sacrifices and their “theological boundaries” between God’s grace and anyone who God created in love and calls into that saving embrace.
And the beat goes on.
The mindset operating in the Temple that Jerusalem day is still hard at work in parts of the church in general — and in parts of our Big Fat Anglican Family in particular.
It is the mindset that results in comments like this one from a post to in an online discussion about the decision of the Archbishop of Canterbury to exclude the spouses of gay and lesbian bishops from the upcoming Lambeth Conference:
“The Anglican Communion’s current problems have little to do with sexuality, but everything to do with an unwillingness to maintain theological boundaries.”
Maintain theological boundaries.
Let’s try that on: Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that we might maintain theological boundaries.
Don’t know about you but that’s not working for me. And it didn’t work for a clergy colleague of mine who offered response which I wish I’d written:
The Jesus I have met on my walk of faith constantly challenged theological boundaries, constantly bothered the authorities both civil and religious.
He consorted with the unclean, he had women in his cohort, he denied the priority of familial relations, he violated purity codes.
With the procession into Jerusalem, he upset the civil authorities and with the subsequent overturning of the temple tables he upset the religious authorities.
Here a boundary, there a boundary, everywhere a boundary.
I think that unwillingness to maintain boundaries may in fact be of the very essence of the faith … at least if Jesus is at the center of that faith.
This is the Jesus who is at the center of our faith: the boundary crosser, the table tosser, the rabble rouser.
This is the King who in our Palm Sunday prayers we pledged “to follow in the way that leads to eternal life.”
Who is this King?
He is the king the chief priests didn’t recognize because his kingship is not about earthly power or political authority; revenge or judgment.
He is the king whose kingship is about kinship of the whole human family: about wholeness, about restoring creation to the fullness of peace and justice; truth and love that God intended. It’s about all lands — ALL people — not just a chosen few.
It is about the primary moral value of prizing the interconnectedness of all humanity — of loving our neighbors as ourselves.
The kingship of Jesus is and always has been vastly different from a worldly kingship and it was and still is a kingship that can be as difficult for us to grasp as it was for Pilate and chief priests who argued at the foot of the cross.
The crucifixion account in the Gospel of Luke includes these words spoken by Jesus from the cross: “My God, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
And I think the truth is, most of the time, neither do we. Know what we are doing. And I think again of the words of former Arizona Bishop Robert Shahan:
“Faith is what you’re willing to die for. Dogma is what you’re willing to kill for.”
Faith is what Jesus was willing to die for and dogma was what they were willing to kill for — to crucify him for.
And every time we choose the institution of the church over the inspiration of the Holy Spirit we join those in the Jerusalem streets whose cries of “hosanna” so quickly turned to cries of “crucify him.”
Every time we try to make the kingship of Christ into a rule of law rather than a reign of love we join the chief priests who said to Pilate, “He’s not our king!”
Every time we keep silent as the strident voices of those all-too-certain ideologues of the Religious Right claim moral values as their sole and private preserve we join Peter in denying the Jesus we have pledged to follow — this king whose throne was a cross.
This king who proclaimed a love too radical,
too inclusive, too dangerous to the status quo
to survive without a struggle — then or now.
The Lord of Love we follow is the king whose kingdom is about gathering all humanity — all creation — into God’s loving embrace. Not just those who look like us, act like us, dress, worship or vote like us.
That’s the job description of the King of Love — the One who loved us enough to become one of us and died still trying to show us how to love each other as God loves us.
To paraphrase the inimitable Richard Rohr: Jesus did not come to change God’s mind about us; Jesus came to change our mind about God.
Jesus came to show us that God loved us enough to become one of us. Jesus was so aligned – so “at-one-ment” – with God’s values of love, justice and compassion that he showed us not only how we could live our lives by the life he lived but showed us as well that the worst the world can do cannot kill the love of God.
And for the first 1000 years of Christian theology that was the narrative the church told about the cross.
It was not “Jesus died for our sins,” but “Jesus was killed because of the sin of the world.” It was the injustice of domination systems that killed him.
There was no angry God; there was no atoning sacrifice.
Instead there was the paradigmatic example of the One who loved us enough to become one of us not only to show us how to love one another but who loved us enough to die in order to rise again to heal us of our amnesia about the love of God so great that it transcends even death. It was a theology of Redemptive Compassion rather than a theology of Redemptive Violence.
Jesus saves, to be sure. But he doesn’t save us from an angry God. He saves us from our fear.
In penetrating the boundary between life and death Jesus assures us that the crossing over at the end of this earthly life is to something very real.
With that assurance, Jesus saves us from the fear of death that is such an existential fear that it can paralyze us into trying to control the bits of life we can wrap our hands around rather than letting go to receive the abundance of life God would have us receive.
Jesus saves us from worrying so much about getting to heaven that we’re too paralyzed by fear to participate in bringing heaven to earth.
We are the stewards of this story: the story which is quite literally the truth that will set us free.
In these challenging, divided and polarized times this is that truth we have to offer the church and the world..
The Good News we have this Good Friday is that we follow the One who proclaimed a love too radical, too inclusive, too dangerous to the status quo to survive without a struggle — then or now.
The Good News we have this Good Friday is we stand at the foot of the cross knowing that the way of the cross part of the journey – not the destination. The destination is the resurrection – and our passport is an empty tomb that frees us to live lives of perfect freedom: free from the fear of death.
Without the cross, the resurrection couldn’t have happened. But because it did we are freed to be fully alive by the power of the resurrection – healed, whole and liberated to follow the boundary crossing, table tossing rabble rousing rabbi from Nazareth.
Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched our your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we may reach out our own hands in that love. Amen.
