THE FOURTH CHURCH PULPIT
The Cross

John M. Buchanan
April 16, 2000

“Many will object that it is morbid to focus on someone’s sufferings.... Yet the death
of Jesus still draws children, women, and men to the love of the one, true, God and,
holding them in that love, sustains them not only in their personal living but also in
their personal wrestling with the powers of evil, giving them courage.... The cross
of Jesus is thus the Christian symbol par excellence, forming the focal point of
Christian spirituality, Christian praying, Christian believing, and Christian action.
And the manifold ways in which it is and does all of this can trace their roots
legitimately to the mind and intention, to the action and passion, of Jesus’ himself.

N. T. Wright
The Meaning of Jesus

Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago
126 East Chestnut Street, Chicago, IL 60611-2094
(312) 787-4570

THE CROSS

JOHN M. BUCHANAN, PASTOR
FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
April 16, 2000

Mark 8: 31-39 {NRSV)

O God, on this day of strong love, strong feeling, strong passions, when people
responded spontaneously and joyfully and gladly, open us to your presence in our city
and our world and our lives, And at the beginning of this holy week, silence in us any
voice but your own, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

All week I could not get her out of my mind. The Tribune told about her on the front page
in an article about Sarajevo and the remnants of the war that keep killing. Her name was
Ema Alic. She was eleven years old and she and two friends died Monday when playing,
they ventured out into a minefield on the outskirts of Sarajevo.

What I couldn't forget all week was this description from the Associated Press reporter:
“For two hours, the girl was showing signs of life, waved with her little hand and called
for help. Then she went quiet.” (4/12/00) As I turned my mind to the preparation of a
Palm Sunday sermon, I couldn’t get her out of my thoughts and I realized that whatever
the preacher tries to say on this day, in this week, must, in some way, take into account
Ema Alic; must in some way acknowledge the harshest realities of the world in which we
live. For that is what this day is about. On this day Jesus came to the city. On this day
Jesus confronted human life at its most real, its most cynical, its most cruel, its most
urban.

In his recent book, Desire of the Everlasting Hills, The World Before and After Jesus,
Thomas Cahill—who wrote the best selling, Gifts of the Jews and How the Irish Saved
Civilization, turns his attention to Jesus and the origins of Christianity. At the end of the
book he tries his hand at the meaning of the passion, the crucifixion of Jesus. He notes
that “in every age since Jesus’s, the human race has done its best, as did the first
Christians, not to look on him whom we have pierced.”

Naturally, Cahill observes, we prefer the resurrection to the crucifixion. We like Easter
better than Good Friday. Westerners prefer happy endings. “Our most common reference
to the horror of the crucifixion is the sanitized cross,” he says, “... and we seem
determined to keep our eyes off the (one) who hung there.”

But then Cahill makes an observation familiar to anyone who lives with or attempts to
deal with the reality of human suffering and grief—“. . . the poor and miserable know
better.” The oppressed, the sick and dying, the helpless, the frightened—know
instinctively, it seems, the power—and the importance—of the cross.

In a strange way, Jewish thinkers and artists, who do not agree with us on his identity
seem, particularly, to understand his suffering. Marc Chagall has painted it powerfully.

At the center of his strong painting about a pogrom, entitled “The White Crucifixion,”
there is a rabbi on a cross.

Asher Lev, the observant Jew of Chaim Potok’s novels “finds himself in the Duomo in
Florence, eyes riveted on Michelangelo’s final pieta:

“I stared at the geometry of the stone and felt the stone luminous with strange suffering
and power. I was an observant Jew, yet that block of stone moved me like a cry, like the
call of seagulls over morning surf, like the echoing blasts of the shofar sounded by the
Rebbe. I do not mean to blaspheme—I do not know how a devout Christian reacts to the
Pieta. I was only able to relate it to elements in my own lived past. I stared at it. I
walked slowly around it. I do not know how long I was there that first time. When I
came back out into the brightness of that crowded square, I was astonished to discover
that my eyes were wet.” (Thomas Cahill, Desire of the Everlasting Hills, The World
Before and After Jesus, p. 301-303)

The cross is where the story leads. A little girl dies in a Bosnian minefield. Six million
Jews are murdered. Little Kayla Rolland is shot and killed by her six-year-old classmate.
A good man dies on a cross outside the capital city, caught, it appears, in swirling
political, economic and religious currents that reduce him to an expendable rabble-rouser,
a trouble-maker. The cross is where it leads.

It would have been so easy not to go to Jerusalem. The first to attempt to write about his
life introduces Jesus as a teacher and wonder worker attracting enormous crowds of
people in Galilee, a rural fishing and farming district, nestled around the largest body of
fresh water in the area, the lake or Sea of Galilee. It is far from Jerusalem and in the
Galilean villages with their small synagogues, Jesus of Nazareth travels and teaches and
heals, and people respond, crowding in on him everywhere he goes. There are deeper
dynamics—he is transforming outsiders in his society, those who are rejected by polite,
civil, religiously orthodox, into his own cadre of insiders. The insiders, religious officials,
are becoming outsiders. There is a conflict brewing and exactly half way through the
story Mark describes a pivotal incident.

Jesus, pretty much out of the blue, predicts that he’s going to suffer, be rejected by the
Jerusalem religious authorities, and be killed. His friends must have been stunned. There
had been a few testy confrontations with local religious authorities—but no mention of
suffering and death. He must have been in the sun too long. And who said anything about
Jerusalem?

So Peter, interceding to protect Jesus from making a fool of himself, takes him aside and
says something like, “Come on, Jesus, let’s not be melodramatic. N othing like that is going
to happen to you.” What happened next is perhaps the most disturbing incident in the
record. Jesus looks at them all—looks at them with an unfamiliar ferocity, his eyes burn
into them and focus on the one who has been so protective, so condescending, so
patronizing. “Get behind me Satan!” Satan? Prince of Darkness—the very
personification of evil, the ultimate enemy of and threat to life. Satan?

Is it more Hebrew hyperbole? Peter isn’t Satan. He’s Jesus’ best friend.

I take it to mean that Peter, his friend, had just played into Jesus’ most sensitive
vulnerability. He didn’t have to go to Jerusalem. He must have struggled with it. In part
of his soul he did not want to go, dreaded going, dreaded the thought of what could
happen to him if he did go. He could have continued the life of an itinerate rabbi, living
pleasantly in Capernaum, making a living with his hands at carpentry, enjoying Peter’s
and John’s catch of the day, when the spirit moved and time allowed teaching a little,
healing the sick, maybe marrying, settling down, having a family, attending synagogue
with his sons.

Jesus’ strong reaction to Peter’s imminently sensible suggestion is, I think, indication that
staying in Galilee, not going to Jerusalem, not risking confrontation with people of real
power, not risking arrest and death, was a real possibility, a very real temptation. People
did not like Martin Scorcesi’s film, The Last Temptation of Christ, precisely because it

suggested, rightly I think, that Jesus was tempted not to go, to live a safe and quiet and
normal life in Galilee.

But he will not settle for that, because in his heart, in his very soul, is the truest truth in
the world, the very truth of God—“those who want to save their life will lose it, and those
who lose life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it.”

Three times Jesus predicts the disaster ahead and tries to warn his friends. Three times
they will hear none of it. And then they go to Jerusalem, at Passover, among the perhaps
one million religious pilgrims who will converge on the city and slowly but surely and
then quickly, what he predicted began to happen.

But first, some of the pilgrims on their way into the city from the north recognized him
and recognized instantly the gesture he was making. In Galilee he had repeatedly
instructed his friends not to talk about what they had seen him doing. But now, he had
gone out of his way seemingly to enact one of his peoples’ most precious hopes—that the
Messiah would come to Jerusalem on a donkey. Never before had he ridden anywhere.
Now he chooses to enter the city as the prophet Zechariah had predicted, “Lo your king
comes to you, humble and lowly, riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass.”

And so they ripped branches from the trees and laid their coats in his path and they sang
and shouted, “Hosanna, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” and their
public demonstration and his complicity with it starts in motion the forces which will take
exactly five days to eliminate him and restore order.

Somehow he means for this to happen. He means to make his statement, to be whe he
must be. And his act, his courage, his integrity, forces his friends and opponents and,
before it is over, people who don’t even know him, to take their stand: to stand with him
or against him; to be faithful to him and to the new humanity he has created in their
hearts and souls, or to stand with another crowd that shouts, “crucify him.”

Cahill and others suggest that we don’t ordinarily want to think about where this day
leads. Peter Gomes says he was brought up in the “‘let’s have a parade’ theory of Palm
Sunday, that discreet form of Protestantism that could not bear the embarrassment or

indignity of the cross.” We resolve the irony of Palm Sunday, Gomes says, “by removing
the passion from the palms, and thereby leave today free for triumphalism and an Easter
dress rehearsal.” (Peter Gomes, Sermons, Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living, p.69)

The end of the story has always been troubling. We do like happy endings. We want our
religion to be inspiring and uplifting and positive and what is there inspiring, uplifting,
positive about a public execution? William Willimon tells about a church that placed a
large, rough wooden cross outside during Lent and the neighbors complained because it
was so ugly. And just this week I was walking past the blue ribbon trees outside which
eloquently remind us of the ugly reality of child abuse and a woman, reading the sign and
looking at the trees recognized me and said, “Why do you do this every year? It’s so
unpleasant.”

In a Newsweek cover article, “The Other Jesus,” (3/27/00) the views of Jesus from other
world religions were explained. Islam regards him as a great prophet, but his crucifixion
is an insult to Allah. A Buddhist monk said “the figure of the crucified Christ is very
painful to me.” The magazine concluded that the cross is what is unique about
Christianity among the world religions, a fact St. Paul understood when he said the cross
is foolishness by the world’s standards, a stumbling block. It’s the central Christian
idea—that Jesus Christ lives human life to its fullest, experiences human life at its most
joyful and passionate, but also its most vulnerable and painful, experiences even the
enigma of human mortality, experiences even human tragedy and death. It is the central
Christian idea that Jesus does this with full intentionality, decides to go to Jerusalem, to
take the risks, to suffer the implications and the results of being himself fully, not only in
the relative safety of Galilee, but in the city, the capital, the heart of his nation, and in the
Temple.

And it is the central Christian idea that this is not just a well meaning teacher from
Galilee getting caught in a web of political intrigue, this is God, acting in human history,
God come dramatically among us in the life of this one—that what happened to Jesus in
Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon is not only the story of human tragedy and suffering, it is
also the story of God’s love.

It's a world in which an eleven year old Croatian girl dies in a minefield, a world in
which people we love get sick and die too soon, a world in which innocent children suffer
and the good does not always come out on top, a world with enough tragedy and loss and
grief to go around, a world in which the Son of God is crucified.

And those of us who are foolish enough to stand up in pulpits or brave enough to come to
church this week, can only confess—as Peter Gomes so eloquently put it, that “God's love
is the only reality. That God’s love is the only thing that makes sense out of suffering,
conflict and tragedy. God’s love does not do away with conflict or suffering or tragedy;
the cross should teach us that God’s love does not do away with it, God’s love is the thing

that makes it possible to bear it, to see it, to share in it, to understand it, to pass through
it.” (Ibid.)

In the middle of a busy day last week, in fact the day I began by reading about Ema Alic, I
received a phone call from a three-year-old grandson. He and his mother had been talking

about Sunday School and Jesus and suddenly he asked, “Who’s God?” His mother took a
pass at it and then said, “Let’s call granddaddy,” which they did. And fortunate for me he

was, by that time, on to other matters and the basic theological question had receded
temporarily.

But it will be back and my hope is that he and you and all of us will be strong enough and
honest enough and vulnerable enough to see and to know that the clearest picture of God
the human race has is not in a theological or philosophical text, nor the words of a creed,
sermon, or essay. The clearest picture the human race has of God is that man on the
cross, and the clearest idea of what God is like is the courage and will and love that
brought Jesus from Galilee to the city and to his cross.

And that when our moment of radical vulnerability happens, we will remember—that
love—that passion—that dying for us.

And I hope that, in time, he and you and all of us will know the truth that the cross is not
only a symbol of God’s love but also an invitation to life, that for you and me—to live as
he did, with commitment and courage, to go to our Jerusalem, to risk, to give what we
have, to love and care deeply, to be open to suffering and vulnerable, is to be as alive as
God wills us to be, is to be free and whole and safe, in the love of the one who said, “those

who lose their life will save it,” and who, then with courage and commitment and a heart
full of love—did just that.

Cahill, Gomes and others are right. We do not wish to see it end this way. But if we

follow all the way to the end, we will be silent, and the artists, the musicians, the poets,
will speak for us.

Here might I stay and sing

No story so divine

Never was love, dear King,

Never was grief like thine.

This is my friend, In whose sweet praise,

I all my days could gladly spend. (“My Song is Love Unknown,” Samuel Crossan,
1664)

Amen.

Prayers of the People
April 16, 2000
The Reverend Carol J. Allen

For the arc of the sky over us this morning. For the mists far above the skyscraper peaks
all around us. For the miracle of light and sound and green and mystery always
changing. For the children and the choir, the preacher and those seated beside us, for all
that you have ordained to replenish the earth and the people in their courses, all praise
and glory be to you, Redeemer King. (inspired by Carl Sandberg).

Our God, before your suffering and death on the cross, we have come to sing hymns of
praise. To you, who on this day is highly exalted, we come to adorn this sanctuary with
what human minds and hands and bodies can invent. The writer, the singer, the actor, the
painter, the dancer, the musician, the sculptor, the architect are given gifts by which to
share in your creating work. To speak of our world and the human condition through art
is also to speak of you, Creator God. Through these media, parts of your sacred story are
told with deep reverence (inspired by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton). We thank you for
this holy blessing.

As we hear again the ancient story of your triumphant entry into Jerusalem, we are
confronted not with our impending suffering but with your’s, Lord God. The spotlight is
on you, on your beloved one, Jesus, who goes to the city to live out the fullness of his
faith, to complete the promise of his baptism. As we look at him, we are stopped in our
tracks. Where is the good news for us when the ‘bottom falls out’ for Jesus; when he has
‘crashed through ail his safety nets?’ For we put our hopes in human power, in human
intellect, in human talents to make ourselves healthy and wealthy and wise. When
weaknesses overcome us, when fear of losing rules us, when our knees tremble, and
failure is our lot, we wonder who it is we’re loving, God. We remember how Jesus
waited tables and washed feet. He turned the values of the world upside down. This is
who we say we follow, but we wonder if we can pay the cost.

You did not desert Jesus; do not desert us, Holy Ged, in our times of trial. Your wisdom
is not our wisdom. Help us to offer up in hope to your healing, all the times and places
where we and your people around the world ail and ache, strive and fail. Take from us all
cravings save a craving for your presence with us (inspired by Barbara Brown Taylor).
Be our “integrity in the midst of lies and all the deceitful practices that abound. Help us
speak your truth unflinchingly in public places. Give us courage to call to accountability
all who claim to keep your word but violate trust." Keep us from going after false gods
who promise cheap grace or empty actions. In all our daily dealings, may we see your
costly grace at work. Deliver us from all lust for the power that oppresses and kills others
(Miriam Therese Winter), and keep us, despite our doubts and bad behaviors unto eternal
life. We pray in the name of the one who taught his disciples to say together when they
pray, “OUR FATHER, ...Amen.