Sermons for the Month

Witness for the Execution
DATE: November 19, 2000
SERVICE: Pentecost XXII
TEXT: Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25

“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

"He deserves to die, so let him fry."

So say the vast majority of Americans when asked about the appropriateness of the death penalty for Timothy McVeigh. After all, he remorselessly reduced a federal building to rubble, crushing 168 innocent adults and children. Whether he had partners or not is beside the point. He did it, and many have no problem with saying: "Hang him high."

But would you watch his death if it were a prime-time special? The notion of a televised execution does, in fact, pop up from time to time. Phil Donahue proposed showing one, and more recently 60 Minutes host Mike Wallace suggested televising the McVeigh execution.

Talk about violence on the tube! A full-color, real-time, high-definition image of a murderer's being put to death would be a shockingly unforgettable moment. But don't go grabbing for your remote quite yet - 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt has already said, "No!"

Of course, the airwaves are full of reality-based "shockumentaries" and other shows without so many scruples, so the idea is still alive. "My position on capital punishment? As close as possible to the switch," says Hank Hill, working class hero of the Sunday-night program King of the Hill. This raunchy, Texas-based cartoon was recently praised as the best television show by top critics, including TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly.

But I do not wish to get drawn into the capital punishment debate itself. Good people of faith are anchored firmly on both sides of this issue. Rather I would like to use the debate as an illustration of today's text, rather than get sidetracked by the debate itself.

The point is that neither executions nor the witnessing of them is a new thing. You think that Gladiator, last spring's blockbuster film spectacular, drew crowds interested in Roman art and architecture? Executions in the Middle Ages were highly public events, carrying a strong deterrent message. Even in the United States, mobs used to gather in the South to witness the horror of a lynching. Recently, the Fox TV show, America's Most Wanted, followed a serial killer right up until minutes before his execution.

And if you think that third-millennium people are more refined and have risen above such rabble-rousing, why the gawking at the bloody scene of a highway accident? Or why do we enjoy the mayhem at hockey games, when gloves come off and fists start flying? Why the fascination when 60 Minutes televises Dr. Kevorkian's "assisting" the death of a terminally ill person?

We're not so genteel that we can't handle - and even enjoy - a little gore. That's why it is surprising that a grim and unanticipated problem is emerging from American's recent sharp rise in executions: It's getting harder to find enough civilians to act as witnesses. Yes, it's true: Fewer and fewer people are willing to walk into prisons and make sure that criminals are put to death in a dignified manner.

To address this problem, corrections officials are hitting the phones, issuing press releases and going on the Internet to drum up witnesses. Of the 38 states that have capital punishment, most require law enforcement and media officials to attend the execution, and almost half have the further requirement of "civilian witnesses." In states such as Arizona, Florida and Virginia, about 300 people had to be rustled up last year to witness some 50 executions.

Can you guess why these are such tough slots to fill? It may be that people today just don't want to get their hands dirty in the work of government, don't want to descend into a dark and depressing place to make sure that inmates aren't stabbed, kicked or beaten to death.

Or, folks fear emotional trauma - one college sophomore who witnessed an execution in Virginia was haunted by the question, "Is God going to forgive me for what I saw?"

Then again, maybe it's simply a question of rapidly rising demand. Between 1976 and 1983, there were a total of just 11 people executed nationwide, and wardens had more than enough volunteers to fill the designated civilian-witness slots. But then in two recent years, 1998 and 1999, there were a total of 166 convicted criminals put to death - and those executions severely drained the pool of available witnesses, leading one corrections official to start calling state legislators and personally to invite them to attend!

Witnesses for the execution are hard to find - in Departments of Corrections, and in the Body of Christ. While in the Christian community, we don't need volunteers to watch an electric chair, we do need people who are willing to keep their eyes on the cross.

So, are you willing to witness the execution? It's not a pretty sight. Others before us have dared. Such theologians as St. Anselm and his notion of satisfactio, or Gustav Aulen and his classic Christus victor, if you want. Revisit Jorgen Moltmann or Dietrich Bonhoeffer for a theology of the cross. However, each one of them started their witness by stopping first at today's text. The letter to the Hebrews contains a theology of the cross, with such details on why the death of Jesus is important and how Christ's sacrifice is sufficient for all sin - a sacrifice so clearly superior to the old priestly system.

Note that the author of Hebrews stresses that the cross is intended to be a visible event, something to be seen and witnessed - a public and provocative display that confronts us with a divine invitation, and that forces us to deal with an offensive scene.

When we stand at the cross and witness the execution, we are required to make a decision: Are we going to "enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus" (10:19) ... or not?

It's not an easy route because not everyone can stand the sight of blood. But if we do enter God's house by this grisly path, this choice makes an enormous difference. It means that we are able to look to the cross with gratitude, instead of disgust ... it means that we can see Christ as a single and all-sufficient sacrifice for sin, instead of a senseless death. And when we look at the cross in this way, this particular instance of capital punishment switches suddenly from horror to hope, and from gore to good news. We can even share it with others, and help them to see it and rejoice in it, too - something you simply can't do with an execution by electric chair.

But perhaps we're too afraid of public opinion to witness to the cross. Maybe we'd rather hide the fact that we were there "when they crucified my Lord." We know that the cross is as provocative today as it ever was, exciting people to anger, passion, grief and confusion. And in our more honest moments, we have to admit that it confuses us as well because we can't always see what's so good about Good Friday, and we can't quite grasp why a loving God would let his only son die a truly agonizing death.

The cross is provocative ... no doubt about it.

And yet, we can't avoid it. This agonizing instrument of death is central to our identity as Christians. We wear it on our lapels, we hoist it on our steeples and we claim to take it up as we follow Christ. It remains a majestic, mysterious and fitting focal point for our worship of a God who transforms evil into good and provokes us to follow him in faith.

There's just no escaping the cross. It's not a prime-time special that we can turn off at will, and it's not a public execution that we can choose to turn away from and ignore. No, as Christians we are required to be witnesses for this execution, and to witness it in a way that means more than giving intellectual assent to the central role of the cross in a particular plan of salvation. Our role is to be truly "provoked" by the cross - a word which comes from the Latin provocare, which means "to call forth." God uses the cross to provoke us, to call us forth, to stimulate us to action, to arouse our passion.

This means that we witness the execution by embracing a life of sacrificial service. Hebrews 10:24-25 speaks of a ministry of encouragement and mutual support, one that involves meeting together, provoking one another to love and good deeds, and acting as a passionate community of faith. The cross is powerfully provocative as it calls us forth and stimulates us to love one another, to do good and to be the Body of Christ in the world.

Consider the example of Tesfamariam Baraki, a Catholic priest to 2,000 Ethiopians and Eritreans in Washington, D.C. Although back home in Africa these two groups are involved in a bitter border dispute, here in the United States there is a sweet sense of sanctuary in Baraki's church.

His mission is to support struggling immigrant families, steer young people from drugs, sex, alcohol and other social ills, and focus his diverse flock on love, not war - all while performing the ministerial roles of a parish priest. In his effort to wage peace among his parishioners, Baraki mediates conflicts, marries Ethiopian-Eritrean couples and speaks five languages. Somehow his community is sticking together and not allowing the crisis back home to divide them. "People have a tremendous need for peace," asserts Baraki, as he pushes his congregation to love one another and do good in the world.

This is a challenge for us all, even if we - like most people - don't particularly care for being provoked. Most of us, including myself, value personal comfort. But like it or not, our Lord is at work in the cross to stretch us, and challenge us and to arouse our passion for sacrificial service and life in the world. Our primary mission is to do whatever it takes to win people for Christ. The Christ whose execution we have observed is now waiting for us to rise to the challenge of walking his way - the way of the cross.

Only then will we witness something shockingly new. Not the same old frying and dying, but a truly eye-popping form of giving and living.

AMEN

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