Lester Mackenzie, Good Friday Sermon 20010. If one were enjoying an iced decaf tall sugar-free vanilla valencia non-fat less ice caramel macchiato, and a stranger, who saw you wearing a cross asked, Why the cross?" how would we answer them? I suspect that our answer would begin with love, something like: "Because Jesus dying on the cross as God's Son shows us how very much God loves us." Like some films that go into graphic detail about the horrific suffering that Jesus went through, and then the bottom line of the message was that Jesus did this all out of love for you and me. We could say that. This is true, of course. God through Jesus Christ does love each of us this much, to have suffered and died in the way that he did on the cross. But someone outside of our faith might still ask, "But how does this save the whole world, as you Christians claim? Is it just love that saves the world? And, if so, then why did it take Jesus dying on the cross to bring about that saving love? Couldn't God have shown us the divine love just as dramatically in some way other than dying? And even if it took dying for us, then why the cross? Why an execution?" After another sip of our iced decaf tall sugar-free vanilla valencia non-fat less ice caramel macchiato we might answer, "That's the mystery of God's ways. We can't know that. We can only have faith." The tension with this answer, though, is that it begs the question for the person who does not yet have faith but is honestly searching for it. Isn't there anything we can say that doesn't already assume their faith? We need to remember that Christianity isn't the only game in town anymore.
Buddhists have a way to salvation. So do Hindus, Islam, Jews, and New Agers. And the answers for salvation of these other faiths don't have anything to do with something quite so violent as the cross. How can we answer folks in this context of so many religions, which offer so many different answers to the question of salvation? Can we articulate the Christian answer of the cross in a way that makes sense? I believe that we can, and it begins, with that concern that many people have for today's world. We look around us, and we are frightened by so much violence. The last century was the bloodiest in human history. Apartheid, Genocide, War, Terrorism, the Holocaust. And, when we consider the fact that so many of the people who carried out that horror called some of them called themselves Christians, then we can understand more clearly a modern concern for the story of our Lord's Passion. We need to be mindful that Christians have killed millions in the name of Christ through the ages. Is the discomfort of many with the cross beginning to make a bit more sense now? And our concern over violence has grown since then, hasn't it? We are still well aware of many very significant slaughters going on in various corners of the world. Closer to home, we are aware of growing random violence that has even moved into the schools of our children in varies cities and states. Yes, we have grown very sensitive to the issue of violence in our world. Many modern people, then, look at the cross and are maybe put off by its violence. If God is associated with such violence as the cross, then how is it that we can ever be saved from the violence, that plagues us?
Aha! But now I think we are closer to the kind of answer that might be pointed directly at those modern concerns about violence. The answer maybe is connected with viewing our humanness through the lens of the Gospel. The answer maybe is that it precisely took the violence of the cross in order for God to first show us the depth of the problem we humans have with violence; then, secondly, it took the cross to show us God's forgiveness for our horrific problems with violence, precisely the kind of violence that killed Christ on the cross; and, thirdly -- God wasn't through yet because -- it took the resurrection to offer us a new way to live without the violence. So, if the modern person is concerned about the violence all around us, then the cross is the right answer for us precisely because it faces that problem so squarely. The cross had to be about violence to show us our role in it. And it does so in the only way that God could do it without becoming violent right along with us. That way, the way of the cross -- contrary to our way of trying to combat violence with more violence -- was for God to save us from our own violence by submitting to it in Jesus Christ. God lets the Son die on the cross to our violence, and then raises him up so that we might finally see that there's another way. God is a God of life, so much so that not even Jesus' death on the cross could thwart such a power of life. Why does the cross matter? Not only to show us God's love, but also to show us God's unstoppable power of life. God's love is so powerful that God can let the Son die to our violence and still begin to turn it all around with the divine power of life. But there's still something that's almost impossible for us to see here -- after all, like we said, Christians don't have a good track record when it comes to hurting others
in the name of the cross. There's still something we're not quite seeing. The thing we are so resistant to seeing is precisely what the cross is -- not just violence, but an act of righteous violence. Those who killed Jesus saw it as an act of justice, following their law. God wanted them to kill blasphemers, or so they thought. We need to be clear about the difference of what we will call righteous violence. I said a moment ago that our solution to violence is to bring another counter-violence against it. But we always see that counter-violence of ours as righteous (morally upright, without guilt) As such we don't really see it as violence, at least not in the same way as the violence we are trying to stop. The other person's violence we can see as violence yes. But when we use violence to stop them, it's not the same, is it? It's a righteous violence. The point of the cross is for all of us to finally see it revealing the problem we have with righteous violence. To many times have we abused scripture to justify the oppression of a people or anyone we felt to be different It is this sin of righteous violence that I believe God is desperate for us to see, and we refuse to see it. We Christians have gotten good at copping to a whole variety of sins. There are the juicy sins like sexual immorality or drunkenness or adultery. There are the more subtle sins like pride and shame. Gossip, hurting each other through hypocrisy. But the sin we still haven't seen is the sin that the cross specifically is -- namely, an act of righteous violence! In Jesus Christ, God is trying to show us the only way to peace. Violence will never
end as long as we think that our righteous violence is the only way to stop it. So, in Jesus Christ, God submits to our supposedly righteous violence in order to show us another definition of righteousness, one that is completely without violence. It is a righteousness that comes through the faith of Jesus when he went to the cross, trusting in a God of life, trusting in a God who would raise him on the third day in order that we might begin to live with that same faith in a God of life. AAH, now we can begin to see how we might have something very important to offer to our neighbors who are concerned for the violence in this world? Yes, the cross is violence. But we must see how it is decidedly our violence, our righteous violence. It is never God's violence, in any way. Rather, the cross is our violence meeting God's unconditional love, and forgiveness, and power of life. So the cross and its violence is precisely the answer we desperately need in order to finally give up all our failed attempts at peace through superior firepower. The cross is the answer we need to finally live with God's power of love and life, the answer we need to finally let God lead our feet into the way of peace. We take our stand today: not betraying Jesus, not denying Jesus, not judging Jesus, not condemning Jesus, not rejecting Jesus, not mocking Jesus, not flogging Jesus, not killing Jesus, but standing at the foot of the Cross with others who love him, putting our arms around each other for comfort and strength so that we answer boldly YES, when the world asks us, Sing Were you there when they crucified my Lord were you there when they Crucified OH OH OH Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble tremble, were you there when they Crucified my Lord.