The Crux of the Matter

Good Friday/ 10^th April 2009

Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church: “For the message about the cross, is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1: 18).” The wisdom contained in this “foolishness” is immeasurable and inscrutable.

Remember, the cross was originally not a religious icon, “but the ultimate deterrent to those who would challenge the sovereignty of Rome.”[1] It was a horrific symbol of destructive power and violence. Execution by crucifixion was chilling and inhumane. Even the great Roman statesman and philosopher, Cicero (106-43 B.C.), writing in 63 B .C., argued that it should be outlawed: “If we are to be threatened with death, then we want to die in freedom; let the executioner, the shrouding of the head, and the very name of the cross be banished from the body and life of Roman citizens, from their thoughts, eyes, and ears!”[2] For Jews, it was equally disturbing, a shocking offense. A body should never be treated that way and a naked body should never be exposed in that way for all the public to see.

The fact that Paul would come to see the cross – given it’s political, cultural meanings and religious offense – as conveying a message of grace, a word about the saving power of God, is itself a sign of the transforming power at work here, in the way this symbol of death was transformed into an extraordinary symbol of life.

The actual symbol of the cross doesn’t become associated with Christianity until after Emperor Constantine (c.272-337) makes Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 313 A.D (Edict of Milan). Prior to then Christians preferred other symbols to the cross. Down in the catacombs outside Rome you the symbols of the fish, the dove, an anchor, the good shepherd, the peacock, the Chi-Rho (the first two Greek letters for Christos, Christ).

The cross for Paul and the early church was an event, a word-event, which conveyed a message, a truth that revealed something about the nature and way of God. The cross tells us something about who God is because God was there on the cross through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. The cross tells us something about the power of God to transform and save, that new life can and does emerge from suffering and death.

Ever since that fateful day disciples have tried to find the words, the images, the means to fathom the meaning of what took place on Calvary. We always come up short, our language inadequate. But still we are compelled to try, with words, or music, or images.

When I was a sophomore at Rutgers College, I took a theology class (without really understanding theology!). I had to pick a theologian, select a title, read the text, and then present a report back to the class. That was my first introduction to the great Swiss, Reformed theologian, Karl Barth (1886-1968) – I didn’t realize at that moment just how great he really was and how much the reading of that text would change my life. In his book The Word of God and the of Man (Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, 1928), he made several oblique references to a painting that attracted my interest, a depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion. I went looking for a copy of the painting and found one. In the foreground, to Jesus’ left is the figure of John the Baptist with an out-stretched, crooked finger pointing the way to him. The words, “He must increase and I must decrease,” in Latin, are inscribed behind him. John wasn’t at the crucifixion, of course. Barth saw John’s stance there as a model for the preacher and it came to shape my understanding of preaching, of always pointing the way to him. I made a copy of the painting, folded it, and tucked it away in my copy of the book. I later learned that Barth had a copy of this painting over his desk in Basel, at the desk where he wrote the Church Dogmatics, one of the most profound, theological works in the history of the church. It was written, literally, under the influence of that painting, of Christ on the cross.

Twenty-four years later, last June, as part of my sabbatical, I went on a pilgrimage to see this painting with my own eyes. The painting by the German Renaissance painter, Mathias Grünewald (c.1470-1528), was completed sometime before 1516 . Today, it’s known as the Isenheim Altarpiece or Retable, and is on display at the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, in eastern France. The altarpiece is a large triptych (three wooden panels) that opens up to multiple panels with scenes from Jesus’ life that then opens up further to a marble altar honoring the life of early desert mystic, St. Anthony of Egypt (born middle of the third century, died 356/7). It’s when the altarpiece is closed that you see the crucifixion scene. The altarpiece was commissioned by the brothers of the St. Anthony monastery and hospice located about twenty-five kilometers from Colmar. The hospice was a refuge for very sick men who suffered from the incurable disease called ergotism, caused by a fungus that can grow on grains of rye. It was also known as St. Anthony’s Fire. The pain – more like painful fire throughout your body – was excruciating. The men in this monastery were also treated for syphilis. The altarpiece was situated in the refectory of the monastery so that when they gathered to eat, they could take solace from the painting.[3]

Why solace? Because Grünewald did something that was extremely rare (actually unheard of in theological circles and the art world). When you approach the painting you notice something exceptional, unlike any other rendering of the crucifixion I’ve ever seen. Jesus’ body is covered with black spots, sores, and blisters. He has ergotism too (and perhaps syphilis). It’s shocking for us to hear and consider this, but imagine what it was like in the early 16^th century? His suffering is their suffering, their suffering is his. Christ understands their pain, not from a historical distance; he’s in their pain and suffering. We know very little about Grünewald, but it’s clear that he’s projecting upon that image his own pain and suffering. He clearly sees Christ as one who identifies so completely with human suffering and can never be aloof from it. Christ doesn’t remove the suffering or offer healing, but is known in human suffering and pain. The painting conveys that life and hope can be found through contemplation of how our pain is known by him and in our pain we are not alone. By connecting their suffering with his suffering a kind of transformation can take place; a kind of healing power is present. It is possible to find the Risen Christ there.

All of this doesn’t sound rational, I’m sure, because it’s not. It’s the kind of truth that can only be found in paradox – which is what Paul came to know about the cross, it’s a wisdom found in foolishness, the power of God known in weakness, a stumbling block, and offense.

This painting is offensive and grotesque, arresting and shocking. I spent one afternoon and one morning before it. You can get up very close to it. Grünewald’s realism takes your breath away. But the realism is healing. “Nothing known to the human race is unknown to the Christ figure painted on the altarpiece cross.”[4] One art critic and essayist has said, Grünewald’s “pestiferous Christ would have offended the taste of the [royal]courts;” it still offends the respectable and conventional, but he goes on to make this critical point, “[this Christ] could only be understood by the sick, the unhappy and the monks, by the suffering members of Christ.”[5]

Friends, it’s the sick,

the unhappy,

the suffering members of Christ,

the lost,

the broken,

the abused,

the lonely,

the forsaken and forgotten,

the hopeless and loveless,

the dying,

who see in Christ and his cross his power and his presence.

Otherwise the cross remains the most violent of symbols and every expression of suffering and pain, meaninglessness and unbearable. It doesn’t make any sense without knowing that our pain and is also his pain; his pain is also our pain. He understands. And through that this sweet communion, this sharing of pain, by the power and grace of God, something new will emerge. Perhaps it’s why we can, with integrity, call this Friday good.

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[1] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 383.

[2] Cited in Myers, 383.

[3] See Eugene Monick, Evil, Sexuality, and Disease in Grunewald’s Body of Christ. Foreword by David L. Miller (Dallas, TX: Spring Publications 1993). This is psychological analysis of the painting from a Jungian perspective.

[4] Comment by Monick, 20. Monick suggests that the “curious power of the Isenheim seems to be growing, the more so, I believe, as conventional Christianity fades in its ability to touch the depths of unconsciousness in an increasingly numbed and exhausted Western society.” 6.

[5] J. -K. Huysmans (1848-1907), cited in Monick, 64.

Covenant

Mark 14: 12-25

Maundy Thursday Meditation/ 9^th April 2009

“And as they were eating,”…in the midst of the meal, in the midst of the Passover celebration, Jesus took bread and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them. He took a cup of wine, gave thanks for it, gave it to them, and they all drank of it. There’s nothing extraordinary about this gesture. It’s what the head of any household would have done, sharing food and drink, extending the blessings of his household with his guests. It’s hospitality. It’s what table fellowship is about. Each person who breaks off a piece of bread and drinks from this cup shares in the blessings of the host. The members of the table share in the common blessing of the bread and the cup.

But the question before the disciples that fateful night – and the question that is ever before disciples, especially on this night, or whenever disciples gather around this table, is whether or not we are willing to share in the blessings our Lord gives us?

Do we really want a share of his bread, if his bread represents his body, a body that will undergo great suffering?

Do we really want to drink from his cup, share in this cup when we know what it means?

Mark tells us they all drank of it. Did they really know what they were drinking? How could they? Can they then really be blamed for drinking and then fleeing? Even Jesus would later ask this night for the cup to be removed from him. “Can the disciples be with Jesus while he prays in the heart of darkness for the strength to face the journey into the heart of power?”[1] Everyone who drank the cup of discipleship that night fled, abandoned him, and denied him, unwilling to share in his suffering. All of us who break this bread and share this cup tonight do the same. Disciples of the crucified always flee.

But the Crucified doesn’t flee – neither from his God-appointed task nor from his friends. He does not abandon them, nor does he abandon us. He does not deny them, nor does he deny us.

Before he goes to the garden to pray he transforms the Passover meal from a commemoration of liberation in the past to the promise of communion in a future, of liberation on the other side of the cross. Only here does Mark have Jesus use the word “covenant.” Covenant is the bridge across time, across the cross and every cross. Come what may, Christ’s covenant – his commitment, his faithfulness – to his wayward disciples is untiring and unwavering.

In Mark’s Gospel, this is not a memorial meal, we’re not asked to do anything in remembrance of him.[2] “Truly – Amen – I say to you, I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” The focus is toward the future, on the other side of the cross, on the other side of come what may, on the other side of the tomb. For he will be there to meet them. The Crucified is ever faithful and will never give up on us, even though we will be and are faithless, even when we give up on him and give up on one another and give up on ourselves. He will still be there.

To sit at his table with him, to break his bread and share his cup, means we want to be his disciples, that we want to risk sharing in his life – whatever that might mean to us individually and together. It means to share in the blessings of our host –the Crucified. To receive the Crucified into ourselves is to acknowledge, to affirm, to trust in Christ’s undying faithfulness and vulnerable love to all his wayward disciples.

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[1] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 366.

[2] Myers, 364.

A Temple Tantrum

A Temple Tantrum

Mark 11: 1-25

Palm Sunday/ 5^th April 2009

Our liturgical calendar calls today “Palm Sunday” and so we turn to various accounts of Jesus’ approach to Jerusalem. This year we’re in Mark’s gospel. This morning I want to stay particularly close to the text, trying to unpack what’s here, trying to open up this familiar story to show what Mark is trying to say. For, the gospel accounts are not all the same. Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John each have a different angle. Did you notice that Mark doesn’t even mention the word “palms;” instead his eyewitnesses “spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.” In Mark, Jesus is riding on only a colt (not a donkey), unlike in Matthew where he’s appears to be straddling both a colt and donkey. In Luke and Matthew, Jesus goes straight to the temple and overturns the tables of the money-changers. In Mark, Jesus’ temple tantrum, as it were, occurs not on that Sunday, but on Monday and for John it comes very early in his gospel, in the second chapter (2: 13-22) and depicts Jesus’ wielding a whip.

Mark’s account is bizarre. He paints a grand procession; the crowds are shouting and waving as Jesus enters the City of Shalom. Jesus makes his way up to the massive Temple Mount (the size of five football fields) built by Herod the Great (73-4 BC), then he goes into the Temple (built by Solomon), and, then Mark tells us, “when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany to the twelve.” What was Jesus looking for? It’s as if he was checking out the location before something could take place. It’s obviously too late in the day for whatever it was. Late for what? So, Jesus leaves. It’s kind of anti-climatic, isn’t it? Indeed, nothing seems to happen. The procession just seems to fizzle out and everyone goes home. That’s how Mark describes it.

But do you know what Mark has in common with the other three gospel writers? They all have the crowds shouting the same text: “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest!” It’s lifted from Psalm 118: 24-26. Actually – a little Bible trivia here – Psalm 118 is the most quoted psalm in the New Testament, for both the gospel and epistle writers. Not Psalm 23, not 100, or 121 or 139. It’s this psalm. The crowds voice these verses, lauding, celebrating Jesus as a conquering hero who is bringing salvation to the city (not knowing that he is about to be killed). We have to remember this as we read this text. We know what happens, the crowd didn’t. It’s like watching those black and white film clippings from November, 1963, in Dallas, watching President and Mrs. Kennedy in the convertible, waving at the crowd. We’ve seen those images so many times, we know what is about to occur and we cringe. Similarly, the crowd is waving at Jesus, but they don’t realize what is about to happen. They’re making him into the hero they want him to be. But it’s not the triumphant entry that will bring God’s salvation to the people.

It’s easy to miss the use of irony here in drawing from Psalm 118. We really need to have the rest of the psalm memorize; as a good Jew you would have it memorized. If you start at verse 20, listen to what it says, “Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD. This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it. I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the LORD’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.” The image of the “rejected stone” was often used to describe Jesus. There’s more than a subtle hint here that these same people will be rejecting this same Jesus in no time.

This isn’t a triumphal entry for Mark. Neither can we allow it to be a pre-Easter Easter celebration.[1] It’s a warning: do not mold Jesus into your image of what a savior can or cannot do. Jesus will not be defined by the crowd or the city of Jerusalem or the Temple or the Jewish authorities or the Roman authorities or even, later, by the church. There is also another warning here which we’ll get to in a minute.

So what is Jesus up to here? What will have to wait until Monday morning? The next morning we’re told Jesus was hungry, saw a fig tree off in the distance, but found no fruit on it, so he cursed it for all the disciples to hear. Then on Tuesday morning, we’re told they passed that same fig tree, but now the tree had “withered away to its roots.” Jesus uses that as the occasion to preach, “Have faith in God,” and he instructs them how to pray and how to forgive. And then wedged right between these two obscure, even odd encounters with a fig tree we find Jesus’ demonstration in the temple, on Monday morning. And it was a demonstration. What was Jesus trying to show, to say? Nothing is in Mark’s gospel by mistake; we have to pay attention to every detail. Why does Mark, then, frame it this way? What does it all mean?

What we need to know here is something most of us don’t know and would have no reason to know, although the text gives us a clue. The time of Passover, early spring, is not the time for fig trees to bear fruit. It’s not the season for figs. Mark’s audience would have known that, which means we shouldn’t take this literally or as being historically true. It’s meant to be a symbol. If it was true, then it would certainly be an example of Jesus abusing divine power. This magic-story is a metaphor. But why would Jesus curse a tree when he knew it wasn’t the season for figs?

If we were raised in Israel we would have known what the reference to figs meant. The fig tree in Israel’s history was very significant. It was the emblem of peace, security, and prosperity – it’s there in Genesis (3:7), the Exodus, the Wilderness experience, the Promised Land, the reign of Solomon and Simon Maccabaeus, and the coming Messianic age. It’s featured prominently in the prophetic books. A blossoming fig tree represents Yahweh’s blessing, a withering fig tree points to Yahweh’s judgment. The fig was also associated with the Temple and even with the nation of Israel. “By placing the story…in the context of Jesus’ visit to the Temple, Mark has dramatically indicated that the expected fruitfulness associated with that institution” was not to be found. “Its destiny is rather to be withered, and that – ek rhizon [to the roots]!” [2]

Judging the fig tree because it’s not bearing fruit is a way to symbolically say what Jesus was doing when he got to the Temple – judging it, indeed shutting it down completely – because it’s not bearing fruit. This is the second warning. The fig tree is a symbol of the Temple. Jesus wants the Temple to bear fruit and it’s not.

Why is the Temple being judged? We have to be careful how we answer this because a lot of damage has been done over the centuries by Christians who have missed the point altogether. Jesus is not against Judaism. Jesus was Jewish and remained a Jew his entire life. It’s questionable whether Jesus ever really intended the formation of a new religion or for the church to become a substitute for Israel. We have to speak with care about “cleansing” the Temple. Some scholars argue it’s not a cleaning. The animal sacrifices that went on in the Temple were appropriate.[3]

Why is the Temple being judged? It’s there in vs. 17: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” And who are the robbers? The Temple high priests who had become collaborators with the Roman Imperial occupation. The Roman Imperial garrison was built just beside the Temple, with high towers so they could look down into the Temple precincts and over all of Jerusalem. The Jewish high priest was Rome’s primary local collaborator. The temple was both the house of Yahweh and the institutional seat of submission to Rome. The Roman Imperial eagle was placed over the entrance to the Temple. Was the temple the house of Jupiter – the supreme deity in the Roman pantheon and protector of Rome – or of Yahweh? Jupiter or Yahweh?

What is more, the worship of Yahweh always includes justice for the people. Worship and justice go hand-in-hand for Yahweh and can never – ever! – even today. At the hands of the Romans, untold suffering and injustice were inflicted upon Palestine and the temple authorities, especially the high priest – who was personally appointed by Rome – did little to stop it.

Jesus then quotes the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah who spoke for Yahweh and said this of the temple. Listen: “If you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly with one another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever….Has this house, which is called by name, become a den of robbers in your sight? (Jeremiah 7:5-7, 11).

These two fig tree encounters serve as a frame and inside the frame is Jesus in the temple account. The temple is not the place where the robbery occurs, but the place the robbers go for refuge, the place robbers hide for having done their robbing elsewhere.[4] This means that the purpose of the Temple was being subverted. Sure, the religious practices were ongoing – prayer and sacrifice – but the religious function of the Temple was masking the gross injustices going on in full view of the religious authorities collaborating with Rome. So Jesus took it on, just like God did through the voice of Jeremiah. God still takes it on; Jesus takes it on and the judgment remains – whether it’s the temple, synagogue, or the church. “God is a God of justice and righteousness and when worship substitutes for justice, God rejects God’s temple – or, for us today, God’s church.”[5]

That’s what Jesus set out to do in Jerusalem – and it’s what gets him killed at the hands of both the religious and political authorities. Jesus hungered for figs. But the figs were out of season. Jesus’ demonstration in the Temple vividly shows us what Jesus hungers for, not only from the Temple, but from the church – that we be fruitful: worship has to be linked with justice. We see God’s wrath and Jesus’ anger when our piety, our worship stands in the way of justice. Jesus hungers for the fruit of our faith which should never be out of season. The fruit of our faith is justice - not retributive justice (getting even), but restorative justice, correcting the inequities in the world, being agents of peace, caring for everyone who is alien to us, caring for the orphan, the widow, alleviating the burdens of the oppressed. This is a fruit that should never be out of season. Worship without pursuing these ends is empty and withers our souls down to their roots – ek rhizon. The rejection of Jesus was humanity’s ultimate rejection of God’s desire that worship be linked with justice.

In a few moments we will commission our Vision Task Force to lead us in a holy conversation, to help us discern God’s vision for this congregation. The temple in Jerusalem was built to be a holy dwelling place for God. By the time the church was formed it became clear that Jesus had become that temple, God dwelling fully in him, and that, in time the church was formed, so that we, too, might be formed into a community, a unique group of people that embodies God’s presence and hope for the world, where worship is linked with justice. In the life of the church it is Christ Jesus who is our chief cornerstone, the foundation upon which the church is built. “In him,” Paul wrote, “the whole structure” of this community “is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you are also built spirituality into a dwelling place for God. (Ephesians 2: 19-22)” That’s what Jesus continues to hung for in the church – every church, in this church – that we more and more be formed into a holy temple in the Lord, a dwelling place for God, a temple that bears fruit worthy of God. That’s what Jesus still hungers for.

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[1] The point made by Fred Craddock, see Center for the Excellence in Preaching, www. http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/viewArticle.php?aID=282

[2] W. Telford’s observation cited in Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), 297-298.

[3] See Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 32-53. Throughout, I am indebted to their interpretation of Mark’s gospel.

[4] Borg & Crossan, 44.

[5] Borg & Crossan, 49.

Taking on the World
John 12: 20-33

Fifth Sunday in Lent/ 29th March 2009

Last Sunday I offered an unconventional (although, I believe, faithful) reading of John 3:16 & 17. You know the verses, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” And then, verse 17, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

What I didn’t touch upon last week, but will today in the context of this morning’s text from John, is the supreme theological significance of this word, “world.” It’s in John 3 and shows up again in John 12. Jesus says to Andrew and Philip, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” He then hears the voice of his Father, the crowd is amazed, and then Jesus says, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” The world is loved in John 3, but by John 12, life in the world is to be given up, hated, for the world is about to be judged. So what happened to all the love? Where did it go?

It’s still there, I would suggest. What was explicit in John 3 is now implicit in John 12. And the link between them is the use of this word, “the world.” In both places we find forms of the Greek word, kosmos, from which we get, well, cosmos. It literally means “world” or “creation.” And that’s how it’s often understood. We generally use the word to describe the vast expanses of space. “For God so loved the world…,” we think of creation, everybody. But through detailed analysis of how this word was used in the ancient world, particularly in New Testament theology, informed by Greek philosophy, kosmos meant more than just creation. This is critical: “’The world’ here is not synonymous with God’s creation,” on the contrary, “The World” refers to “the fallen realm [within creation] that exists in estrangement from God and is organized in opposition to God’s purposes.”

In Jesus’ time it was believed that one’s life was shaped primarily by external forces and circumstances over which one had little or no control, under which one was enslaved. It was the power of these external forces that hindered and destroyed and dehumanized God’s people that caused people to sin. In order for the people to be liberated the powers within creation at odds with God’s purposes of justice and love have to be judged, overcome, and defeated. The kosmos refers to everything within creation that is at odds with, at cross purposes with God’s intent for the liberation and salvation of God’s people, everything that struggles against God’s vision of justice and love and forgiveness, everything that seeks to destroy us or limit our freedom in Christ. In love, the kosmos would have to be defeated, or more correctly, redeemed. To redeem means to buy back.

Hear the profundity of John 3:16 & 17, hear – feel – the earth-shaking claim John is making when we think of kosmos in this light. “For God so loved the kosmos that he gave his Son…,” in other words, that God loved even that which was and is against God. And it’s even stronger in verse seventeen, “Indeed, for God did not send the Son into the kosmos to condemn the kosmos, but in order that the kosmos – remember, all that which is against God! – in order that the kosmos might be saved through him.” Take some time and meditate on this claim for a while. Amazing.

John says it so beautifully in chapter 13, “Having loved his own who were in the world (kosmos), he loved them to the end (13:1b).” Having loved all those bound by the destructive forces of the kosmos, seeing the pain inflicted upon God’s people, he loved them to the end.

This leads us to John 12 with the announcement that Jesus is about to be glorified on a cross. Jesus prays, “Father, glorify your name.” And God replies, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” Then Jesus interprets the meaning of the voice. “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.” Twice we have the use of kosmos (literally, tou kosmou). What this means is that Jesus’ impending death upon the cross will entail judgment (literally, krisis), crisis, not for those, we might suspect, who do not believe, but for the world; the kosmos is being judge by God. The ruler of this kosmos will be driven out. How? When Jesus takes on the kosmos on the cross, both in the sense of bearing, enduring the kosmos, as well as fighting, battling with love.

The church’s earliest understanding of the cross, one that we have largely forgotten, was that it was a cosmic struggle with the powers that overwhelm our lives, it’s God’s defeat of all the powers in the world that hurt, abuse, dehumanize, and destroy God’s people. Even though Jesus’ death was at the hands of the kosmos, the Son of Man lifted up on the tree was for the redemption of the kosmos, the very kosmos that put him there. This was precisely Paul’s point when he came to see that “In Christ God was reconciling the world (kosmos) to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).” Salvation means being released from the destructive power of the kosmos. Jesus will then draw all people to himself. The ruler of the kosmos itself will be dethroned and allowed to live in new world – a New Creation – under the reign of the good shepherd who rules and guides his people in love. This early Christian self-understanding is reflected in Revelation, best known from G. F. Handel’s (1689-1759) “Hallelujah Chorus,” in Messiah, where John’s Revelation reads, “The kingdom of this world (kosmos), has now become the kingdom of Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever. (Rev. 11:15).”

Now, this biblical word-text study, this examination of an antiquarian view of reality might appear academic and abstract. You might think this has nothing to do with your life – but that’s what the kosmos what’s you think, in fact it would prefer we don’t think or talk about it at all, except that the power of the kosmos is all around us and in us. Even though we know at the culmination of time “all shall be well,” in the meantime, as we and the world live into our redemption, there are still plenty of forces in creation that are trying to subvert God’s intention for your life and for creation. New Testament scholar, Walter Wink, aptly describes “the world” as “a superhuman reality concretely embodied in structures and institutions that aggressively shapes human life and seeks to hold human beings captive to its ways.” He likes to translate “the world” as “the System.” And the System is driven by all kinds of forces whose ways are domination, violence, and death. The kosmos is domination, violence, and death.

It’s everything in our hearts, our lives, our relationships, the work that we do, in institutions and corporations and nations that is at odds with God’s vision for the world, a vision given to us most concretely in the life of Jesus Christ. It’s everything in our political or economic systems, cultural and even religious systems that separate us from God, one another, and ourselves. It’s all the choices we make that separate us from God, one another, and ourselves. Just about all the –isms of the world are guilty of this, not one is free from the power of the kosmos. It’s most obvious in those places where life has become cheap or when we’re more worried about money (making it/keeping it) and fail to see the human factor. Look at the kosmos at work in the economic crisis on Wall St., a system of greed that wrecking havoc, inflict untold damage and destruction upon people’s lives. One hundred million people have crossed into poverty, worldwide, as a result of this greed. To hear the disturbing news of what’s happening in Mexico and the United States in our struggle against the drug cartel is a vivid expression of what a far-reaching insidious system looks like, destroying lives and families, communities, even entire cities. Jesus takes on the System, these destructive forces, summed up symbolically in the word, death. And the Spirit of Christ continues to do this.

All of this speaks of the suffering that then comes when one chooses – in love – to take on the System. The kosmos never goes down without a fight. Perhaps this is what Jesus is getting at in the use of the grain of wheat metaphor. It’s really about the suffering Jesus was willing to endure – and the suffering he calls his disciples to take on – when he and we with him, take on the kosmos. He’s talking about his own death which he is willing to do in love because he “hates” what the kosmos has done and is doing to all God’s children. To claim the label “Christian” means we are called to do the same, through him, for him, for the love of the kosmos. There’s no easy way here. So that to die to the world is to remove ourselves out from under everything that oppresses us and tries to make us less than who we are. And this is never easy.

Contemporary writer, Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopalian, gets right to the heart of things. She writes, “What [Jesus] is telling us is that if we do everything in our power to protect our lives as they are – if we successfully prevent change, prevent conflict, prevent pain – then at the end we will find that we had no life at all. But if we hate our lives in this world, which as far as I am concerned can only mean if we hate all the ways we cheapen our lives by chasing comfort, safety, and superiority in this world – if we hate that enough to stop it and start chasing God instead – then there will be no end to the abundance of our lives.”

Jesus had two choices: self-protection, being closed-off from suffering or loving something more than his life, which was his call to self-offering. The choice is either fear or love. Every day we have the same two choices: self-protection, closed-off from suffering (either our own or others) or loving something, someone more than life. It’s the way of suffering love. To choose self-offering inevitably means suffering – for him and for everyone else who chooses this way. There’s no way to get around this. Suffering love is Christ’s way, because it’s God’s way.

For the sake of the world he chased after God and chose to take on the System all the way to Jerusalem. “Having loved his own who were in the kosmos, he loved them to the end.” This is the difficult, painful, and yet exquisitely beautiful, life-giving truth anyone finds who still wishes to see Jesus.