St. Paul’s United Church Good Friday, April 10th, 2009
Bandaid Christianity – Rev. David Mundy
Isaiah 53:1-7 John 19:17-30
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Earlier this year we flew to the sunny island of Cuba and, as is always
the case with international flights, we went through customs upon landing. A
very stern looking young woman rummaged through my carry-on bag and pulled out
a magazine which she scrutinized carefully. Cuba is a communist country that
claims to allow freedom of religion. While that is official policy, it has not
been the practice through the years, and only recently have Cubans felt more
comfortable publicly acknowledging their faith.
Visitors to the country who want to share their faith are still viewed
with great suspicion and the magazine that caught the customs agent’s attention
was a Christian journal. It is called The Christian Century and the
cover article had the title God Does Not Require Blood. The cover
art shows a cross, the universal symbol of Jesus and Christianity, made with
two bandages. She fixed me with a long stare and asked “more?” I nodded “no,”
which was true, but I felt like a criminal.
It isn’t often that we are treated with suspicion because of our faith
is it? I have no idea if this woman could read English but she understood what
the cross symbolizes, in terms of this pivotal, or shall we say crucial event
of Christian faith.
I wonder, do we understand what the cross means
for our lives this morning? If there is any day in the year where we are made
aware of the meaning of the cross and of the shed blood of Christ it is today,
Good Friday. This is the day when we ponder the execution of Jesus by
crucifixion and the implications for us as individuals, as well for all of
humanity. Hardly anyone disputes that Jesus existed as a human being and that
he died an untimely death at the hands of the Roman empire.
What Christians have wrestled with through the centuries is why God
might have chosen death by crucifixion as the ultimate act and symbol of
identification with humanity.
You have probably heard often enough that crucifixion was a common form
of capital punishment in the ancient world and a number of empires employed it
before the Romans. Alexander the Great was reported to have crucified
thousands. Even the Jews used crucifixion as a form of capital punishment on
occasion. The Romans usually reserved
this form of execution for rebellious slaves and it was actually known as
slaves’ punishment. In the film Spartacus there is a scene of rebellious
slaves being put to death along the Appian Way.
Although it took centuries, the Christian faith eventually accepted and honoured the crucifixion of Jesus as an essential act of
love in the great drama of our faith. We cannot get to the empty tomb by
avoiding the cross,
But in many respects the dark events of Good Friday open up as many
questions as they provide answers. Why did this need to happen? Was, and is God
so angry at us, because of our willfulness and sinfulness, that is was
necessary to send the innocent and faithful Jesus to be punished in our place?
The message often offered is that God wants to love us, but can only do so if
there is some form of payment for our sins that is so jarring that it brings us
to our knees in shame.
The graphic image used to illustrate this concept is of angry man
pulling back the string of a bow, arrow in place. It is aimed at someone who
has wronged him, but at the very moment the arrow is released the man’s son
steps into the path of its flight and is struck down. We can take this image a
step further by pointing out that the man knew what his son would do before he
let loose.
There will probably be many sermons preached today which state that God
is this Heavenly Father, and that Jesus is the rescuing Son who willingly steps
into the path of death. Perhaps the most powerful sermon preached in this vein
during recent years was offered in the darkness of thousands of movie theatres
rather than from the pulpits of churches.
When Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ, was released
in 2003 I had already seen it because pastors and their partners had been
invited to preview screenings. I was so disturbed by its unrelenting violence,
the glorification of Jesus’ pain and suffering, that I recommended that people
not see it. Apparently the world was not listening because it became a massive
box office success and there were many discussions about Christ’s death that
ensued.
I had a conversation with a friend who goes to a much more conservative
church and he felt that it was an excellent film. I pointed out to him that no
human being could have endured the physical torture portrayed in the movie and
that the violence distorted the message of the gospels.
He offered that in a world which is desensitized to violence by
everything from the nightly news to video games, it might have been necessary
to exaggerate the suffering inflicted upon Jesus for dramatic effect.
I don’t know how you feel, but I do not want a symbol of faith which
accentuates or glorifies human suffering. Instead, I need to know that in a
world of pain and often senseless suffering God is not at a distance God has come in Christ and journeys with us
and is vulnerable enough to suffer and die with us and for us.
And at the same time I read the gospels and hear Jesus’ message that
violence and anger do not redeem us or save us. In the teaching we know as the
Sermon on the Mount Jesus says that God’s blessing is on those who craft peace.
He invites us to “turn the other cheek” rather than strike back. Not long ago
we read that Jesus told a religious seeker named Nicodemus that “God so
loved the world that he sent his only Son so that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into
the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved
through him.”
All through my life I have heard these verses from John as Good News as
a promise of God’s love in Christ, not as a reminder of God’s anger. I know
that I am a sinful person, who has turned away from God many times, and I have
caused hurt to others by my selfishness. I have been reluctant to forgive even
when I have preached and taught about the importance of forgiveness. I have
come to realize through a lifetime that I do not have the power in myself to
change all this, as earnest as I may be at times. I need to be changed and
healed by the grace of God. Still when I look to the cross it is God’s
redeeming love in Christ that I see and experience rather than God’s wrath and
condemnation.
Philip Newell is a Church of Scotland priest who has written a number of
books on Celtic Christianity. In his latest book he offers that the early
Celtic Christians did not choose an understanding of the crucifixion which was
a grim payment for sin. Yet the Celtic Christians still raised high and very
public crosses all through Ireland and Scotland, as symbols of their faith. As
Newell brings this into our context he says:
To speak about the cross as a
revelation of love rather than payment for sin is not to suggest that this is a
show. This is real blood. This is real self-giving . . . This is real suffering
at the hands of a corrupt religious leadership and an inhumane empire that
would tolerate the challenging implications of the law of love. But it is not a
payment to God, it is a disclosure of God. It is not a
purchasing of love; it is the manifestation of love.
What does this manifestation of love mean for us as Christians in this
moment? We have already decided that it is essential to be here, to stand at
the foot of the cross, perhaps to shed tears of gratitude. We can sing our
traditional hymns of suffering love, realizing they have great meaning for us.
Slowly, patiently, reverently, we can ask God to give us insight in the
fullest sense of the word into a “way of the cross” which carries us to the
heart of love. If Jesus truly came for our healing and the healing of the
nations, if he came for the reconciliation of humanity and creation to God,
then Good Friday is the moment when we express gratitude for a sacrificial love
which we can never really comprehend, but changes the world and our lives
forever.
You may have seen the two bandages in your order of worship today and
wondered what on earth they were for. The sermon title offers a clue, although
usually when we speak of a “bandaid solution” for a
problem it is a temporary fix, one that won’t hold up. But the Good Friday
message is that Christ the Suffering Servant, who is also Christ the Healer,
continues to heal the wounds of our hearts and the suffering of this world.
I would encourage you to take a moment now to take these bandages and
make the form of the cross on the back of one of your hands and wear them there
for the next two days as we complete our journey to Easter, when we will
celebrate the resurrection. And every time you are aware of them they can serve
as a reminder that Christ has come to heal the darkness and the sinfulness of
our world. Putting on these bandages might be hard to do for yourself, so you
might turn to the person next to you for help.
God does not require or demand blood, but by Christ’s stripes we are
healed. Thanks be to God.