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The Passion of Bob; (sermon 4/17/11)
Topic Started: Apr 16 2011, 06:25 PM (188 Views)
Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
Matthew 27:11-54

Now Jesus stood before the governor; and the governor asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus said, “You say so.” But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he did not answer. Then Pilate said to him, “Do you not hear how many accusations they make against you?” But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed. Now at the festival the governor was accustomed to release a prisoner for the crowd, anyone whom they wanted. At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Jesus Barabbas. So after they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Messiah?” For he realized that it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over. While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him.” Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” All of them said, “Let him be crucified!” Then he asked, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!” So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” Then the people as a whole answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

So he released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole cohort around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They spat on him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him. As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross.

And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; then they sat down there and kept watch over him. Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” Then two bandits were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s Son.’” The bandits who were crucified with him also taunted him in the same way. From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o”clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is calling for Elijah.” At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.”
Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”


=====

I heard a story this past week about a church that stopped having Good Friday services, because they just weren’t comfortable with all the horrific, violent, bloody details of the crucifixion. It disturbed their sensitivities to think about Jesus beaten to a bloody pulp – beyond recognition, the scriptures say. When asked about the decision, the pastor just said, “We don’t do the whole blood thing.” A lot of churches are like that. They’d rather focus on Jesus’ life and teachings, and jump over to his resurrection, without the ugliness and gore of Good Friday.

It’s understandable, really. No reasonable person wants to think about what Jesus endured. And to be honest, there are some Christians who seem to go overboard in the other direction. Every other hymn is something about Jesus’ blood – bathed in the blood, fountains of blood, it’s practically gushing everywhere throughout the whole service. You’d think they’d have to slope the floors and install gutters along the sidewalls just to catch it all.

In general though, more churches these days tend to follow somewhat of a “less blood” approach. That reflects different ways we understand how Jesus atoned for our sins and reconciled us to God, and that some of those ways don’t necessitate Jesus having to be tortured and practically bled out in order to achieve it. It’s an ongoing difference within the faith. In fact, you can see that struggle in the musical selections found in the two different hymnals that we use – the older, medium-blue one is a “more blood” hymnal, and the newer, dark-blue one is a “less blood” one. As with so many things, I think there’s an appropriate balance somewhere between the two extremes - between the churches whose worship services sound more like shop talk at a slaughterhouse, and the pastor who turned up his nose and said, “We don’t do the whole blood thing.”

While most churches still have Good Friday services, and rightly so, the services have become less and less attended. Let’s face it; no one likes getting dressed up and going out on a Friday night just to get depressed and being reminded of all that violence. So what’s happened is that for most churchgoers, the services that they attend – the standard Sunday services – jump from Palm Sunday - the excitement of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, the crowds cheering and laying palm branches and their own cloaks in the road to usher him into the city as the Messiah finally come to set things straight; right to the joy of Easter Sunday and Jesus’ resurrection. In the rush to get from “All Glory, Laud, and Honor” to “He Lives” and the Hallelujah Chorus, most Christians completely sidestep “What Wondrous Love Is This” and “The Old Rugged Cross.” Many Christians could go to church for years without hearing the actual story of Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion, and death as the text for a sermon.

That’s wrong. To do that removes us from a very important reality that underlies our faith, that our very divine, very human Lord lived, and breathed, and in the process of his faithfulness to God, and his reconciling us to God, he submitted to being unjustly and brutally killed by people interested only in preserving secular power and the religious status quo; and in the process, completely missing God’s good news for humanity that Jesus showed us. In order to not have most Christian worshippers miss this gut-wrenching but important lesson, many churches will observe this particular Sunday not only as Palm Sunday, but also as Passion Sunday – a Sunday set aside to have Christians focus on Christ’s passion – not the romantic notion of passion that we’ve come to assign to that term, but the original meaning of the word, his pain and suffering. That’s what we’re doing here today.

Focusing on Jesus’ suffering helps us to remember that we can expect to suffer opposition too, as we try to serve as Christ’s disciples in the world. Jesus suffered greatly, terribly. Most of us have probably seen the movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” You probably remember that lots of people complained about it when it was first released. They were appalled by the blood and violence in the film, saying it went over the top, and that it wasn’t necessary to be so graphic in its treatment. I always thought the opposite. If people hadn’t ever before, that movie forced people to focus on the brutality endured by Jesus. We need to understand that brutality; considering what Jesus really endured shapes our own faith. So if it was disturbing for some people, I say good. This was a particularly, I’d even say uniquely, disturbing event in human history. We should all be disturbed by it. That’s part of understanding Jesus.

We have absolutely no right to think that just because we’re Christians, it’s God’s will that we wouldn’t have to endure difficulties in life. In fact, it’s just the opposite. If we commit our lives to living as Christ’s disciples, we are very likely going to face rejection and pushback. In fact, if we aren’t encountering some kind of opposition as we try to be the face of Christ in the world, we’re probably doing something wrong. In the midst of trying to live spirituality and morality taught by Christ, we’ll face scorn, sometimes ridicule. While we’re trying to help someone in Jesus’ name, they’ll be ungrateful and all but spit in our face. While we’re sincerely trying to do the right thing as we go about the mission that Christ has given to all of us – to share God’s love with others in word and deed – We’ll encounter hostility, and pettiness, and hurt. The Christian faith isn’t all about the Passion of the Christ. It’s also about the Passion of Bob, the Passion of Sue; the Passion of Joe, the Passion of Betty.

When Jesus faced all that and more, he accepted it and kept faithful and true to God’s will. He didn’t give in to the temptation of saving himself through his own power, because humanity had shown itself to be completely ungrateful for what he was doing for them. Jesus committed the ultimate act of radical love through the gaping ugliness of the cross, without once demanding to be appreciated or respected for what he was doing. It’s so tempting for us to be more conditional in our love - to expect more appreciation and gratitude for what we’re doing.

There’s a very good book, written in the 1960’s by Shusaku Endo titled “Silence.” It’s based on the true story of the persecutions faced by Christians in seventeenth-century Japan. The story follows a Jesuit missionary, Father Rodrigues, who is sent to Japan to investigate the situation. Rodrigues quickly learns that the reports of persecution were true. Christians were being forced to step on small, crudely carved images of Jesus, as a sign of their rejection of the faith. Those who refuse to do so are thrown in jail and executed by being hung upside down over a pit and allowed to slowly bleed to death. The Christians who do step on the images are forever shamed by their actions. Eventually, Father Rodriques is captured and he’s commanded to step on the carved image of Christ. He refuses to do so, but rather than killing him, his captors proceed to kill other Christians each time he refuses to trample on the little carved image. Several Christians go to their death as Rodrigues is torn between his compassion for them and his unwillingness to deny his faith in Christ. Finally, he looks down on the image of Christ, and it has become alive. Christ’s face is haggard, hollow, exhausted. And in sorrow, Christ looks up at him and says, “Trample on me! Trample on me! It is to be trampled upon by you that I am here.”

As we try to be the face of that same Christ to the same broken world, that’s sometimes why we’re here, too.

Thanks be to God.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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Aqua Letifer
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ZOOOOOM!
When my uncle moved into his new parish, the church had one of those friendly 60s crosses behind the altar. Jesus wasn't suffering, he was holding his hands out pleasantly, as if announcing a touchdown. That's what he called it too, "touchdown Jesus."

It was the first thing to go when he started doing renovations. He replaced it with a very traditional cross. Some people complained, saying it was a little graphic for them.

He just said, "good."
I cite irreconcilable differences.
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Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
That's always a point of friction between Catholics and Protestants. The Protestants felt that the Catholic crucifix focused too much on Jesus' suffering, which diminished his ultimate place of resurrection. Of course, over the years of employing the empty cross instead of a crucifix in Protestant worship, they/we have often not focused enough on the significance of his suffering. Here, as in so many other aspects, we need one another for balance and to get a fuller appreciation of the reality.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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Frank_W
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Resident Misanthrope
I've often thought that if/when Jesus comes back, the last thing He's going to want to see is a frickin' CROSS! :D

(Sorry... I don't mean to be sacrilegious or offensive...)
Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin."
Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!"
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