NEW EVERY MORNING John M. Buchanan

John 12:20-33 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
March 24, 1985 Columbus, Ghio

it is stunning whenever it happens. Whenever one person voluntarily dies
that others may live, the effect is powerful, compelling, and revealing. When
4a tearine jumps on a grenade and in that act gives his own life and saves the
lives of his buddies; when Father Maksymilian Kolbe steps out of the line of
prisoners in the concentration camp and volunteers to die in the piace of a
fellow prisoner; something glorious about our humanity is affirmed, something
almost unspeakably beautiful about human love is suggested, And something
bright and clear about the nature of reality ie revealed. gTed Gill defines
good art as an “abrupt window" which allowa us to see audden y into the depths
of reality. Thus Yan Gogh with violet that pulsates and greens vividly alive
- opens for us the reality of Iris: and J. S. Bach, alternating mathematic
precision with soft, poignant melody, opens for us a window into the reality
of human passion. Self sacrifice for principle lifts the hearts of all of us
because of what it says about all of ua: Bonhoeffer dying in a Nazi prison,
or Maitlau Rostopovitch conducting his mentors and fellow Russian Shostoko-
vich’s “Fifth," at the Ohio Theatre Friday, with auch incredible passion —
that those present knew something heroic and defiant and selfless about our
humanity was being affirmed. So, the voluntary dying for others stuns us with
the truth of what it reveals about our own humanness and the incredible power
of the love that is within us..."And I, when I am lifted up. from the earth,
will draw all people to myself," Jesus said.

The Christian faith is about a man who died, willingly. The Gospel is a
story about one man who so loved the rest of us that he died willingly so that
we might live. That sort of thing is stunning whenever it happens. And as
the pace of Lent quickens and we come again to the cross of Jesus Christ, we
experience the compelling power of that drama to draw us in.

Reflecting on the significance of the crucifixion in his work On Being s
Christian, Hans Kung wrote:

“Anyone who thinks that all religiona and their ’founders’ are alike
will see the differences which appear if he compares the deaths of
such men...Moges died in aight of the promised land...at the age of
120 - his eyes undimmed, his vigor unfaded. Buddha died at the age
of eighty, his disciples around him. Confucius returned in old age
to Lu — to continue and preserve his work...Muhammed, after he had
thoroughly enjoyed the last years of his life as political ruler in

Arabia, died in the midat of his harem in the arma of his favorite
wife.

“Here on the other hand we have a young man of thirty, after three
years at most of activity..Expelled from society, betrayed and
denied by his disciples and supporters, mocked and ridiculed by
his opponents, forsaken by men and even by God, he goes through a
ritual of death that ia one of the most atrocious and enigmatic
ever invented by man's ingenious cruelty." (p, 384-335)

The best we can do, it seems, when confronted by the central sysbol of the
faith, is mumble questions: Why did it happen? What does it mean? Was it
necessary? Even liturgically, the great hymns of the passion, abandon the
normal confident, declaratory made of the faith, and begin asking:

Ah, dearest Jesus,

How has thou offended?

Who was guilty?

Who brought this upon thee? . or

What language shall I borrow
To thank thee, dearest friend.
For this thy dying sorrow,
‘Thy pity without end?

And, of course, St. Paul: combative, original systematic theclogian of
the Gospel, at the cross of Jesus Christ is never more eloquent than in s
question...

Where is the wise man?

Where is the scribe?

Has not God made foolish

The wisdom of the world? (I Corinthians 1:20)

Bid it have to happen? Politically, sociologically the answer is “no.”

Of course it did not have to happen. Jesus of Nazareth was executed by the
provincial Roman government of Palestine, essentially because it seemed like
the politically, expedient thing to do that afternoon. Ke clearly had

disturbed the peace. He obviously had managed to alienate and infuriate the
power brokers within his own people in Jerusalem. They, in turn, frantically,
almost desparately, in an all-night emergency session of the high court, tried
to devise a creative way to convince Filate that Jesus had done something
seriously wrong enough to warrant execution. They never got that done, by the
way. The imperial power of Rome backed into the most important and disastrous
decision it ever made. It's governor, Pontius Pilate, tried to wash his hands
of the whole affair, but finally, for expedience sake, ordered the execution.
Barbara Tuchman's excellent book, The March of Folly, chronicles the grim
human record of making foolish and wrong political decisions. hy, she asks,
when important decisions are to be made, do we usually make the wrong one?
Rome had cther alternatives that day but failed to exercise them.

Historically, the crucifixion of Jesus was not inevitable. Theologicaily,
however, it is a different story. Theologically, the story of the crucifixion
of Jesus begins back on the edges of history, at the very beginning in fact,
with the suggestion that there is one God, not many, and that the one God
loves so mich he calis creation into being, and then calls a people into being
to so live in harmony with the creation that all the rest of the people will
see in them their creator’s intent and will. The story of the crucifixion
begins with a rainbow in the sky when, in one of their earliest stories about
a faithful family and the ark they built, this one God remembers Noah, and
love overcomes anger and he provides for Noah and for life to continue. And
then oan elderly couple are given a future, as Abrsham and Sarah move into a
new land. The story of crucifixion unfolds as the one God hears the agony of
hig now captive people and sets them free and gives them a law which will
provide life for them in a convenant with hope. And it reaches a crescendo
600 years before the fact, when that same covenant people are captive again,

exiles in a foreign land, and one of their most powerful prophets and poets
writes:

~h

Behold the days are coming...when I will make a new covenant...
iT will put wy law within them

I will write it upon their hearts

And I will be their God,

And they shall be my people.

Theolegically, the crucifixion of Jesus is not adequately described as an
historical accident, or human cruelty and folly. Rather, theology sees in the
crucifixion the consistent love of the God of the covenant, whe continues to
lave his people and who loves then so thoroughly that the life of his son is
poured out for them. Theology sees in the crucifixion - not simply what
people did to Jesus, but what God has done and continues to do for us.

The compelling power of that also repels. And so the church that bears
the name of the crucufied one often seems determined to disguise the reality
of what heppened. Aesthetically the cross is more palatable in burnished
brass and polished silver. There was a now infamous incident several years
ago involving a congregation somewhere in the south which decided to observe
Lent by erecting e@ realiatic cress on the lawn of the church. But the
neighbors complained to City Hall because the cross was se ugly. It wasa’l
pretty or pleasant. The idea of the cross was intolerable to the patriotic
Jews of the day. They were, the more I read about them, admirable people. TI
can empathize with them. They wanted to be free. When they said "Messiah,"
they meant “Liberetor: " One who would drive the pagan Romana into the sea.
The thought that their Messiah would be executed as a disturber of the peace,
voluntarily yet, was simply intolerable. "A stumbling block," Paul said, on
a day when he was feeling generous.

fo the Gentiles, the intellectually astute Greeks, the idea was foolish.
From the beginning logic seems to be on the side of the pagans. An all-
powerful deity, vulnerable to the whims of humankind? An ommipotent creator
with feelings? The Lord of the whirlwind, source of truth, ground of being,
hung up on a cross like a criminal? Where, indeed, is the logic in that? But
it head always been there. In the Jeremiah poem 600 years before, God is
described, not as an angry, judgmental potentate, but as a parent who stoops
and takes israel by the hand and leads the people out ef Egypt; a touchingly,
intimate image. A God who loves tenderly, intimately and who cares personally
about people - ia not an idea philosophers have come to on the basis of their
own reason. Thomas Merton wrote once:

“Sometimes a man may have no philosophy at all. His faith may
be so inarticulate as to seem absurd. Nevertheless, he knows
the peace of the one who has conquered everything."

(No Man Is an Island, p. 76)

Sometimes the church disguises the reality of the cross aesthetically, and
sometimes, worse yet, the disguise is theslogical. It happeng subtly when we
convince ourselves that evangelical faithfulness necessitates sound marketing
Strategies, slick promotion, a Gospel that will make you feel better and help
you succeed. It happens when the only criteria by which we measure ourselves
ig the world’s definition of success. It happens when we allow the crucified
one to be marketed like «a new soap powder and the rigorously dangerous voca—
tion of discipleship to becoma, in the words of a modern oritic, "squeezingly
soft enough to go one on one with Wendy’s Diet Pepsi, and Miller Light."

-d-

The crucifixion of Jesus is what the Gospel is about. He said, "If I am
Lifted up, I will draw all to myself" and it is true. The crucifixion
addresses something fundamental, almost primal, within the human condition.
There is something amiss. There is something wrong. That isn’t a new
discovery. But it is affirmed every morning with the arrival of the news-
paper. There is a sour note in the human symphony and we can’t seem to locate
it, We have no comfortable precedent for how to Live on this planet ~ in
harmony with the other people whe inhabit it. And so we are in the demonic
dilemma of trying to convince ourselves that it is worth the life-blood of the
world’s only rich nations to construct more weapons of death, to produce
peace. Even if you are convinced, that dilemna, which at present prevents us
from investing in the lives of our children, our elderly, our sick and hungry

and homeless —- that dilemma is at least an eloquent symbcel that something is
amiss at the heart ef things.

The crucifixion of Jesus heppens in the middle of that kind of dilemna,
and expresses the constant, hopeful, insistent love of God, for the whole
order. The crucifixion is the suggestion of a strong hope in the midst of the

darkness. God has not given up. God continues to love. God continues to
offer the covenant of life.

St. Augustine, in the 4th century, wrote: "Thou hast made us restless
until we find our rest in thee," Soa, st the most personal, most intimate
level, where we live and move and have being, the crucifixion of Jesus
addresses each one of us. Jeremiah’s new covenant talka about a law written
in the heart of each individual. The striking thing sbout that new covenant
is its intense personal impact...Tt is in each, individual heart, ne on
tablets of stone or papyrus scrolis, or books of theology. The new covenant
is in our hearts. And it is in each, individual heart that our deepest hurts

are, our noblest dreams, our dearest loves, our strongest regrets, our worst
fears.

Do we matter? Does my life amount to anything? When I die, will anybody
care ultimately? Is there anything lasting, anything significant about these
brief decades I am living? is there anyway to live the rest of them with a
little joy, a little hops, a little peace?

Yale professor William Much] wrote:

“The people to whom the Gospel is to speak today are not huddled
fearfully in the shadow of ancient sltars...they are rather wander—
ing about aimlessly, troubled by the increasing suspicion that no
one literally gives a damn about what they do.”

{ALi the Damned Angels, p. 38)

God’s new covenant, sensed by a poet six centuries before Christ, is
written in your heart. It is sealed by God’s love in this awesome, beautiful
dying. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ means that you matter and 1 matter:
that God cares deeply and ultimately and eternally about us...This dying means
that the worst that can happen hes already happened...te God, and that, there-
fore, you and I can live into the Puture in the confidence that the God who

loves, has lived through and overcome death, the death of our dearest Ones ,
even our own dying.

H-

So it seems the best of us are willing to be silent before the cross...to
resolve in our heart of hearts, where that covenant is written new every
morning; to love this Lord with some smal! measure of the love with which he
has loved us; to honor this Lord by living in love, new every morning: to be

silent finally, and to allow artists, poets, musicians to express that for
which we have no words.

What language shall I borrow
To thank this dearest friend
For this Thy dying sorrow
Thy pity without end?

O make me thine forever:

And should I fainting be,

Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love to thee. Amen.