When it comes to
the important, decisive and defining moments, we
remember—the year we graduated from high school, the month
when the flooding was so bad, the hour and even minute of a
child’s birth. It was 1983 when I walked across the stage
at Richardson High School, December of 1991 when water
actually covered the road into Walburg where we were living
at the time and according to the the red numbers on the
digital clock in the birthing room 3:23 A.M. when our first
born Max came kicking and screaming into the world. When
the year, the month, the hour comes somehow life is never
the same.
And it’s not only
the significant personal events we remember, but those hours
when the earth seemed to shake and life was forever
changed—day break December 7th 1941, sometime
around noon November 22nd 1963, a little before
ten in the morning Tuesday, September 11th 2001.
There are moments that define us not only as individuals,
but as communities, as a nation and as a world, moments when
the hour comes and we’re never the same again.
“The hour has
come.” Although simple, they are four words heavy with
meaning. And now one knows this better than Jesus. As the
hours slip away, as he prepares to hand himself over to be
crucified, Jesus declares that his hour has come. In
a way, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. When the
wine ran out at the wedding in Cana, Jesus told his mother
to “get off his case” because his hour had not yet come.
Later, he told the Samaritan woman at the well that his hour
was coming. As he wandered around Galilee with the
disciples, they encouraged him to go where the action really
was, over in Judea so that other disciples might see the
works he was doing. To their proposal he said, “My time has
not yet come, but your time is always here.” But here in
Jerusalem the wind has shifted and something has changed.
Now, “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be
glorified.” His response is ominous, particularly for those
of us who know what is to come, the betrayal, the suffering
and death that lie ahead.
It’s as if at long
last, Jesus concedes to the inevitable. He’s going to die
and there’s nothing that can stop it now, hard words for us
to accept, especially in a “death denying” culture like ours
those are hard words to accept. The summer before I was
ordained, I worked at a hospital as a chaplain. I always
found it interesting that whenever someone died, the medical
staff often spoke of the patient expiring like a driver’s
license or a gallon of milk in the refrigerator. I wonder
if the problem well trained, well equipped medical staff had
with the word was that for them it represented some sort of
failure on their part. I can’t say I ever came close to
figuring that one out. Of course the best solution is to
ignore or minimize the reality of death. War seems easier
to justify when we make passing reference to “collateral
damage” rather than having to reckon with the disturbing
images of flag draped coffins or the carnage wrought upon
the bodies of civilians by a so called “smart bomb”, or the
reality of hunger and poverty in our world, of the person
who dies needlessly every time we take a breath in places
like Darfur in the Sudan. No, the way we live our life
reflects a kind of thinking that says if we can just avoid
talking about death, then somehow, maybe we can avoid it
altogether.
And surely buying
into the beliefs of a death denying culture says something
about our faith as well.
Some years ago, a
congregation in another part of the country found itself
wrapped up in controversy when the pastor thought in the
name of outreach that it would be a nice gesture to invite
one of the more marginal members of the church, a woodcarver
to use his gifts crafting a processional cross for the
church to use during Lent. The pastor had in mind something
simple, modern and clean a piece that would reflect the
church’s new modern architecture and that would be light
enough for the acolyte to carry down the aisle on Sunday
morning. The woodcarver gladly accepted the invitation and
went to work with abandon. To the surprise of everyone but
the woodcarver, what the congregation got on the First
Sunday in Lent was a startling crucifix, heavy and dark,
with a realistic body, a hanging crucified Jesus, “with
blood and everything” as kids like to say. Some folks made
themselves like it because the artist was such a nice guy.
But a lot of other people were upset, even angry because the
cross seemed more Roman Catholic than was befitting their
respectable Protestant Church, too gory and depressing and
as one person noted it just didn’t go with the carpet. The
reality of suffering and death are simply too much to take
when all is said and don. “My hour has come” says Jesus and
if truth be told we’d just as soon let him have it himself,
alone!
Unlike you and me
though, Jesus doesn’t play the denial game. Rather, he
accepts willingly the burden of suffering and so becomes as
the single grain of wheat that dies but that bears much
fruit. And Jesus isn’t just another would be martyr for yet
another one of the world’s causes, but the gift of God’s
love for us and for the whole world. The hour has come when
Jesus is lifted up so that all people might come to him.
But that was then
and this is now. The hour has come and gone. Life (and
death) goes on. So, after two thousand plus years why
doesn’t the world seem to be any better off? If the whole
world doesn’t see what we see in Jesus, did Jesus really
make a difference? Could it be that the problem is one of
marketing? Instead of a hung up to die Jesus, who calls his
followers to hate their lives, maybe another approach is
called for, one more palatable and agreeable. Then if that
doesn’t work then we need to work on the packaging, the way
in which the message is presented. Tell people that we’ve
got the answer to what ails them and if they just become
like us, then everything will be okay. They’ll be safe for
all eternity. But if they refuse, well, they weren’t worth
it anyway. In the end what is most important is that we
were right.
I wonder sometimes
where we get such notions. The Jesus who reveals himself to
us never resorts to hard sell tactics. He doesn’t coerce or
force people into anything. He doesn’t say “understand and
accept everything I’m saying and be saved” because it never
works that way. As the catechism reminds us, none of us is
saved by our own effort or understanding. The great
theologian Karl Barth once said, “Here in Christ is a
truth we cannot understand—we can only stand under this
truth.” Here in Christ is a savior who as the write
of Hebrews reminds us dwells among us “with loud cries and
tears”, who “although he was a Son, learned obedience
through what he suffered”, or who, as a guy named Paul
proclaims, “though he was in the form of God did not regard
equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied
himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human
likeness and being found in human form, humbled himself and
became obedient to the point of death, even death on a
cross.”
Finally, what
Jesus accomplishes through the cross isn’t something we can
ever fully understand. It isn’t another piece on
information to digest and then try to apply to our lives
like yet another self help scheme that we in turn have to
convince others to buy into. All we can do is to behold
him, the Word Become Flesh in all mystery, at times
fleetingly, sometimes more clearly, sometimes less and to
hear him, hear the gracious words of invitation to “come and
see”. And at that moment we join those who beginning with
the disciples have seen—Francis Bernadone who centuries ago
wandered into a church in the Italian city of Assisi, beheld
the crucifix hanging over the altar and hears God calling
him, or in Central American cathedral where the cross is
lifted up over an ocean of worn brown faces and a thousand
peasant knees hit the ground like thunder, or in the eyes of
the guy who carved the Lenten cross that caused such a stir,
a guy who was so amazed that God’s love should be so clear
to him to lead him to say, “Jesus did it all. He did it all
for me.” And through the gift of faith, each of too us in
our have been given eyes to see, ears to hear. So, let us
look and listen, for Christ, the Word made flesh has come to
dwell with us forever.
"O Love, how deep, how high, how broad, beyond all thought
and fantasy, that God, the Son of God should take our mortal
form for mortal's sake." For you, for me, for the whole wide world,
Jesus did it all. At last the hour has come, look and
listen for the one whose love knows no end draws near.
Amen.
