Sermons for the Month
Death in Freeze-Frame
DATE: DATE: March 12, 2000
SERVICE: Lent I
TEXT: 1 Peter 3:18-22“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
Some events happen to us that seem frozen in time. One can easily suppose that in the street markets of Jerusalem about AD 60, peddlers and thieves, buyers and sellers were still talking about the crucifixion of Jesus some thirty years later. Perhaps some could still remember the precise moment they heard the news. They were squeezing pomegranates, sacking olives or quaffing a draft of red wine when they got the news, "Jesus of Nazareth has been executed." It's happens to us, too. We remember, depending on our age, where we were, what we were doing the moment we heard in the 40s that Pearl Harbor had been attacked or in the 60s that JFK or RFK or Martin Luther King had been assassinated. Or the Challenger explosion. Or Princess Diana. Or the young JFK last year. And I am sure that everyone in the Columbine community knew exactly when and where they were when they heard of the massacre at the high school. A public figure dies, and we find ourselves somehow frozen in time, and curiously connected to the community around us. We remember the scene as if it was a freeze-frame or a photograph - sharp, colorful, haunting and surreal. This is no phantom phenomenon. It's powerful, predictable and even profound. There is a recognizable process we all go through that accompanies public death, a science of public grieving, reflection and analysis. A public death is a stop-action event in which there is a collective participation that brings people together. It's a freeze-frame moment that captures our history, which serves as a signal marker for the culture. Now Jesus may not have been an early first-century household name like Herod or Pontius Pilate, but he did have a public impact in the relatively small sphere of Jerusalem church-state relations. A week before his death he had created an uproar in the city, and a few days later the temple was in chaos. Then, on an unforgettable afternoon, they killed him. His death could have unleashed a torrent of public reaction uniting the citizenry in a crisscross set of connections and even rebellion. Could have. But it didn't. His notoriety notwithstanding, very few of his followers hung around for the bitter end, and once a spineless toady named Pilate had determined his fate, it was business as usual. There was no public grieving for Jesus, no media reflection on the meaning of his death, and no post-mortem analysis of his remarkable life. The death of Jesus was in many respects strikingly different from the deaths of the public figures we've mentioned. They died suddenly and involuntarily. Their suffering, however horrible, was relatively brief. The news of their deaths was met with universal shock, and innumerable tributes and memorials have been established in their names. Jesus, however, got none of this. He had a strong premonition of his death. He voluntarily laid down his life. His suffering was long and painful. The authorities could not wait until he died, and took measures to hasten the process. He was unceremoniously bundled off to a borrowed tomb in the late afternoon darkness. No one was with him except those who laid the body to rest. So our opening suggestion of peddlers and thieves in Jerusalem about AD 60 who remembered where they were when they got the news of Jesus' death is so much religious sentimentality. Didn't happen. Couldn't have happened. What is more likely, is that these characters remembered where they were when they got the news that Jesus had been sprung from his grave three days later! It was not the death of Jesus that set off a public furor, as in the case of Princess Di or John Lennon. It was the unexpected resurrection that set off a universal sense of collective participation, a public reaction and a message that has endured for 2,000 years. Without that empty tomb, there's no story. Peter, however, considered Jesus' death--the cross-----just as memorable if not more so than Jesus' resurrection. On the contrary, Peter has plenty to say about it. In our lesson appointed for this morning, he alludes to several hinge points upon which his appreciation depended. 1) Jesus loved us so much that even though he saw us as sinners, he saw us as sinners he could die for. Therefore, we are not only all linked together as those for whom Jesus died, we are linked to God because the purpose of the connective cross, Peter says, is "to bring [us] to God" (3:18). 2) The cross also has morphing power. Jesus died in the flesh, but was raised in the spirit (v. 18), a reminder of our own morphing potential when we say "no" to the destructive forces within us, and "yes" to the restructive power of the Holy Spirit. 3) Don't get mad - get to work. "Who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?" Peter asks (v. 13). Cross Christians may suffer as they interface with others in the public square, but Peter's advice has logic: If you're going to take some heat, take it for doing good, not evil. Better to be known for a father who tried than an uncle who ran a crack house and hoarded stolen guns for a six year old to steal and kill a playmate. Don't waste your energy on useless information or lost causes. Get down. Get dirty. Get busy. 4) Peter's final hinge point is equally forceful: Don't wait - initiate. Elsewhere, the author has made a case for proactive, cross-connected living. "As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil. Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God" (2:16-17). Closer to our text, he suggests that we "be ready" to defend ourselves when asked about having hope in a hopeless world (3:15). We are to keep our conscience clear, he says (3:16). Christianity is not for the passive-aggressives. God has not called us to be waiters, but initiators. The cross and the empty tomb are a freeze-frame conjunction of events, which links Christ with us and we with God. It is also the lynchpin of our communion with others in the church itself. When JFK Jr., died, Douglas Brinkley claimed in The New York Times that his death was "a crippling blow" for his generation. "With his earnest demeanor, handsome countenance and admirable devotion to being a socially responsible citizen, he was my generation's photogenic redeemer" (cited in The Wall Street Journal, July 23, 1999, W11). Now I don't mean to insult the Kennedy family but "give me a break.". With all due respect to John Kennedy Jr., it is hard to imagine him uniting a generation and serving as its redeemer. But public deaths are bound to inspire such epithets of praise. Far more believable is the possibility that the Cross/Easter axis of God's redemptive power draws us closer to Jesus, and so to one another, thus producing a more bonded church. Near the city of Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, is a remarkable facility. Twenty years ago the Brazilian government turned a prison over to two Christians. The institution was renamed Humaita, and the plan was to run it on Christian principles. With the exception of two full-time staff, inmates do all the work. Families outside the prison adopt an inmate to work with during and after his term. Chuck Colson visited the prison and made this report: "When I visited Humaita I found the inmates smiling - particularly the murderer who held the keys, opened the gates and let me in. Wherever I walked I saw men at peace. I saw clean living areas, people working industriously. The walls were decorated with biblical sayings from Psalms and Proverbs .... My guide escorted me to the notorious prison cell once used for torture. Today, he told me, that block houses only a single inmate. As we reached the end of a long concrete corridor and he put the key in the lock, he paused and asked, 'Are you sure you want to go in?' "'Of course,' I replied impatiently, 'I've been in isolation cells all over the world.' Slowly he swung open the massive door, and I saw the prisoner in that punishment cell: a crucifix, beautifully carved by the Humaita inmates - the prisoner Jesus, hanging on a cross. "'He's doing time for the rest of us,' my guide said softly." (Max Lucado, In the Grip of Grace (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1996), 113. What binds us together here at Faith Lutheran Church? Is it the worship style? With as many different opinions about worship in this place as there are, that can't be it. How about economic station? We have millionaires in this church and we have people out of work. How about life circumstances? We have marrieds with children, marrieds without children, singles with and without children, men, women, young, old, African-America, Caucasian, Eurasian, Oriental. None of that can be it. Could it be that we are all here because we affirm our loyalty to a common Lord and a common ideal: To share the good news of Jesus with everyone; to transform followers into disciples with a faith that works in real life; to joyfully go and share his love in the world? Do you suppose that could be it? A God that loved us so much that he died for us--for all of us? AMEN