May Easter be your glad surprise Let Him Easter in us, Be a day-spring to the dimness of us, Be a crimson-cresseted East. Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland, 1876 There are surprises that are shocking, startling, frightening and bewildering. But the glad surprise of Easter is different from all of these. It carries with it something over and beyond the surprise itself. It has to do with the very ground and foundation of hope about the nature of life itself. This is the resurrection! It is the announcement that life is bottomed by the glad surprise. Howard Thurman, For the Inward Journey, 1984 ____________________________ WERE YOU THERE IN JERUSALEM? April 14, 2006, Good Friday Rickey Sain Last Palm Sunday was rich in meanings for many. Today on Good Friday, go with me please, on this final journey into Jerusalem with Jesus. Leading to Easter Sunday, the journey begins in certitude and, following confusion and brutality and despair, it ends in a certain sense of renewed hope. I invite you to join with me on these travels through a theological path—a path through cycles of birth, death, and rebirth—to God through Jesus. I am still traveling on the path, as perhaps we all are. As I share this pilgrimage into Jerusalem, and beyond, I too will have to listen carefully to my own words here, going a little deeper, with a bigger hope of finding new understanding and a brighter light. Let us say Amen. A long time ago, a cherished friend told me that humility is at the heart of the spiritual life. Now that really made sense to me, because I was PROUD to think of myself as humble. But the friend didn't say that the path to humility sometimes goes through humiliation, like that of Jesus. He enters Jerusalem in celebration with palms and alleluias and hosannas. By Friday he is crucified as a criminal, an enemy of the people. Humiliation means we are brought low, rendered powerless and weak, stripped of our defenses, and left feeling empty and useless, dead to the world and ourselves. How awful it's been this year—suffering through deaths, different "dis-eases" and cancers, life-threatening and major surgeries, depression, unspeakable genocide in Uganda and Darfur and elsewhere in the world, the desperate longing for peace in the land. There also has been brokenness in our communities from abject poverty and from under- and unemployment. It's the humiliation, however, that has allowed me to re-group, to come back to life with a new sense of purpose. But this time, to start over by being grounded in the everydayness of life, both bad and good. As a troubled teen in the early 1970s, I was searching for certitude, that sure thing, that clear reason for living and laughing. I found what seemed like certitude, the answer, when I thought of God as a negotiator. At the age of 14, I was introduced to the so-called truth at my church. That "Truth" consisted of this ideology: That Jesus, through his death on the cross, had negotiated with God for our salvation. Therefore if we did what God commanded, and only what God commanded, we would get happiness and eventually eternal life. That dogmatist or rigid ideology stayed with me and eventually became the absolute foundation for the theological training leading to my ordination in the early 80s. Once I heard the "Truth," then in prayer I negotiated the following deal with God: God, Jesus, here, you, take away my sins, all my troubles, all the bad things. Take them away from me and then, in return I will glorify, praise, and serve you by studying, teaching, and preaching your Word. With a capital W. That deal was a quid pro quo—Latin words, meaning this for that. If you give me this, then by the terms of our negotiated letter-of-the-law contract, I will give you that. Standing on a fundamentalist theological ground for my salvation, that basis of a negotiated deal, I preached that many are called but only a very few are among the chosen. I was one of the chosen and others were not. The others were children of the devil, and destined for hell and eternal damnation, a place filled with fire and brimstone, endless suffering, and all the other horrid descriptions of hell outlined in the bible. Yet, anyone was "welcomed" to be saved through the "Truth," one further delineated in three "keys" to salvation: Key Number 1: Identity. Accept membership as one of a chosen few. Key Number 2: Live as chosen people. Live according to the letter of the law of God, not really by the spirit of the law. Key Number 3: Be the living word of God. Memorize the King James Bible—the only true version of the "real" scriptures. As the chosen few, we must stand tall for these "truths" and slay evil wherever it reared its head, immediately, decisively, holding the power to determine what was truth and what was evil, and therefore who was worthy to receive God's love, and who was not. Our idea of justice was for Just Us. In those early years the God I encountered in church, and still hear about here and there, runs around like an anxious schoolmaster, measuring peoples' actions and words with a moral yardstick, always telling us what we ought to be rather than telling us how to live in God's never-ending love for all God's children. But three weeks ago I was privileged to hear some Sunday-school children tell of God's constant love. Among the very bright and awe-filled statements we heard from all of them, one stood out. A ten-year old, named Serlicia, saw the light and she said, "My church is a special place to be in. They teach me goodness. God put love around the world and Jesus helps us when we need him." Out of the mouths of the blessed children, indeed! Well, I felt as if I had a sense of certitude, living in an exclusionary theological framework, wherein a mere few only are worthy of God's goodness. I had not yet met the Sunday school children and their wonderful teachers. Perhaps that church has said Amen. All the while I grew increasingly uncertain about the parts that identified God as negotiator, and about those chosen few who had the power to determine who was worthy, and who would not be saved. I thought that if God were basically a negotiator, then human beings would always end up with a raw deal. For one thing, God doesn't need anything we have to offer. God can walk away from any proposition. And as any negotiator knows, it is nearly impossible to strike a good deal under such conditions. So if we see God through Jesus as negotiator, we might experience the law of Jesus love as an even heavier burden than the Law of Moses. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, Jesus intensifies Old Testament commands. He interprets them to refer to inner states, not just to outward acts. Prohibition against murder is intensified into the command not to be angry and not to cause harm or do violence to anyone, both physical and psychological harm. The injunction against murder becomes the command not to be angry without a cause and not to call someone a fool. The command to love one's neighbor is expanded to include the call to love one's enemies. Some just don't see how that expansion of thought and purpose calls for a revolutionary new revolution, based genuinely in compassion and forgiveness. It is true that the scripture seems to portray God relating to people in ways remarkably similar to the image of God the negotiator. In the Old Testament we read, for instance, "If you will only obey the Lord your God...all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God." Yet the God of scripture is not a negotiator God. Before God gave commandments to the people of Israel, God delivered them from slavery in Egypt. Why? To get something out of them? God delivered them because God had heard their cry of affliction, kept the promises made to their ancestor Abraham and, through deliverance and faithfulness, wanted to manifest divine glory in the world. Why did God give the commandments to the people who were delivered? To gain their obedience so as to be able to reward them in return? The commandments themselves are rewards, given not for God's sake, but for the sake of our well-being and safety. Christians are taught (and Christianity teaches) that following the way of Jesus leads to great joy and hope, and also to tremendous suffering and pain. Now our youth—they’re pretty smart. They watch carefully whether and how we live out the way of Jesus. They observe how we treat them and our neighbors around us. Our youth know what's up. For nearly every one of us, both young and old, it's not easy making a decision to follow Jesus. Today it seems countercultural to preach Jesus through actions, meaning through demonstrations of compassion and understanding toward each other. Let us say Amen. In a newsletter last week from a local congregation, the pastor tells how Jesus faces down his great fear of losing out, of being defeated. Jesus brings a new understanding of God's presence in our lives. The newsletter says, "After all these years we still seem to want something grander for Jesus than the cross. But that is not the Gospel we have been given." The newsletter says, in part, that what draws us to worship this week—from Palm Sunday through Good Friday—is “Jesus the suffering servant of God.” As often happens on a real journey of honesty and integrity, each time a door closes, the rest of the world lays opens before us in new hope. We might not see it right away, but eventually we usually see how that new hope is there for the taking. There is a beautiful anthology of poignant yet very painful poetry called Black Outloud. In the anthology the idea of hope for the taking is expressed by a still-little-known but compelling poet, Henry Dumas, who taught the humanities at Southern Illinois University. He talks in one of his most heartbreaking poems of "the painful yet grand dance that is at the wondrous heart of the world's creation." It is a paradox that while Dumas (pronounced due-MAHS) was writing about the loss of hope when one door closes, and about the resurgence of hope when another door opens, he was killed at 34 years of age. In a controversial case of mistaken identity reported around the world, he was shot to death in Harlem by a New York subway policeman, just six weeks after Dr. King was assassinated in April of 1968. Now you may understandably wonder how a personal journey of hope has something to do with any universal truth of doors opening and closing for any of us, or with someone losing the light of life through alienation or even death. The bottom line is this: No deal had been made between us and God. God really doesn't take me up—or anyone else really—on a this-for-that negotiated prayer of intercession. Why? Because God hanging on the cross for the salvation of all our weary, suffering world is not a negotiating God. On the cross, God is not setting up terms of a contract that humanity needs to fulfill. God isn't saying: "I died for you, now you've got to do what I tell you to do." Instead the greater truth might be this: God is giving God's own self, in the person of Jesus, for all of humanity. Perhaps in any personal or institutional process of discernment toward a better future, we often look for practical ways to make the giving of self more obvious through a deeper, more visible sense of outreach to our neighbors and the larger community. Let us say Amen. Alice Walker's evocative writings tell in a number of different places that no matter what terrible things happen to any of us, we know that Jesus has been there before us, dying for us, offering himself up as a suffering servant. She speaks of this clearly awkward truth as the expression of God's splendor and love of our life together as God's children. She is profoundly honest at the same time in showing us how that splendor and love arise from our "lifelong baptism in the stuff of outcry and the blues." A pastoral colleague describes this stuff as lamentation arising from "the very vicissitudes of life"—the daily ups and downs, life's highs and lows. God is a giver, hardly a negotiator. There is no deal to be made! Throughout the ages and among many other writers on spiritual matters in the last 1,000 years, Julian of Norwich, Rumi, Teresa of Avila, John Woolman, Thomas Merton, Zora Neale Hurston, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Joseph Campbell, and Ken Wilber—all these writers on the human condition variously reveal how God (or the Great Cosmos) loves us not necessarily because we are good. God loves us eternally because God is eternally good. And we always have the example of love and the actions of Jesus, God's anointed—the Christus—to guide us daily along the way. While perhaps we've suffered and been broken, we have also experienced great joys and healings from the births of our babies, from heartfelt vows of marriage and re-committed love and a renewed sense of the promise in social and personal partnerships of different kinds; from a resurgence here and there of better health and well-being; from genuine and purposeful outreach activities that bring people together in goodwill and renewal. It's impossible not to note the many many great joys and blessings reported. People will often take time to give thanks with a grateful heart. To that we can say Amen. How then are we in historical relation to Jesus, who has continued always to give himself for all humanity? There are a lot of ways to answer that difficult question. Here are some thoughts that I'm wrestling with right now, as I continue journeying into Jerusalem: First, I have met the enemy and it is I, especially when I ignore and forget the potentials we all receive as birth-right gifts. Yes, one very real obstacle to my living as I say I want to live in the light of Jesus, is me. Second, I'm trying to live everyday in the knowledge, as Dr. King said, that we are "all bound together in an inescapable garment of mutuality." That brilliant idea of our profound interconnectedness as human beings has been communicated down through the ages by other great and ordinary thinkers and doers. All of us suffer, indeed. And all of us experience joy and happiness. Only God knows why, really, that mix of circumstances seems to be so. Third, the Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey—on a beast of burden otherwise known as an ass—offers up himself for all humanity, friend and foe alike. He wants us to know and see that we are all of one spirit. That one spirit is the inescapable garment of mutuality. We need each other in our sorrow and joy. When we walk in the light of the too-often-elusive understanding that we each are expressions of the same one spirit, then things sometimes get clearer. We come to see that our spiritual interdependence is unmistakably paramount. Our human well-being comes through connection with each other. All are in need of affirmation, and of forgiveness. That is to say, I cannot be free to be all that I am meant to be unless you are free to be all that you are to be. In the poem "Hope is the Thing with Feathers," 19th Century American poet Emily Dickinson says in consolation and reconciliation that of all things, we are allowed to hope. The good news, she seems to say, is that hope can't be taken away from us. While it is good that we can be clear in words that all are welcome, the truly hard work is in living the hopeful courage to do what we can to be welcoming and to improve things. We have to grow that habit in us. Today in courage we might offer to do the best we can to make life better—at work, in our neighborhoods, within our families. By that action we open ourselves to—we affirm—the wonderful gifts of stewardship that we are and can be to each other. We can renew the pledge to take care of each other. So today on a dark Good Friday it's only natural that we are hopeful as we look to a brighter future. Whether our being welcoming, open, and affirming is received or not, we must keep offering ourselves and our gifts, showing the way with more light, just as Jesus did in hope—and in humility. And we have to do that, even to becoming obedient to the pain that comes from suffering on behalf of others—or as a result of the suffering that comes to us from others: Suffering even, as Paul says to the Philippians, to death on the cross, the cross that we all must take up and carry, in one way or another. Such is the life God gives us. Certainly we wish things were easier, better, and for longer periods of time. Today in prayerfulness and meditation, we might ask of our God, as Francis of Assisi did: Make us instruments of your peace. Wherever there is hatred, let us bring forth your love in us; where there is injury, let us bring forth your pardon; where there is doubt, let us show out your faith by standing on the faithful promises of God, in whom we already have victory through obedience to death on the cross. In the name of Jesus a master teacher, please God deliver us. Where there is despair, let us bring your hope. Help us to be strong in reminding others and ourselves that the kingdom of God is within us. We have from God what we need. Where there is darkness and shadows, let us bring forth from within ourselves some of the light that can help swallow up some of the darkness. Where there is sadness, let us bring forth God's joy, however we might be able to do that. The joy that God gives? Oh yes, the world can never, NEVER take that joy away. Hope is an essential element in our freedom as human persons. In hope, then, let us say Amen. Dear God, lead us so that we can remember that every time we offer consolation, we are consoled. Lead us as we travel together to Jerusalem to remember that we can come into greater acceptance and understanding of ourselves through our efforts to accept and understand others. Guide us, so we'll know better that when we love others with the love that Jesus gave us and showed, we ourselves are then loved. Good Friday is a reminder over and over again that it is in forgiving that we are forgiven. In giving of ourselves as completely as we can, from moment to moment, it may be possible that we receive the All of All. As I bring this Good Friday message to a close, I am reminded that the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, said this: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who are we to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are we not to be?" If not absorbed gradually of course, the truth can dazzle and make us go blind. It does take time, yes, to adjust to the radiant light of God in the suffering Jesus. It's when we're prepared to follow the light—doing so by loving completely as best we can—that we can reach fulfillment in these times when so much seems so empty, so dead, so lacking in hope, so dark sometimes. Besides Jesus as my friend, I have a treasured friend and guide of many years who, through great love for me, has taught me that once we get a glimpse of the brilliant kingdom of God within us, nothing else ever really satisfies. And Mandela tells us again and again that we are children of God. He says, "Our playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the Glory of God within us. It's in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we welcome ourselves. We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others." Let us remember today and throughout the journey that we are brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous, and potentially powerful instruments—in the glorious hands of God. Just like Jesus in the everlasting arms of God—that Jesus who rode into Jerusalem on that day which we now call Palm Sunday—may we have the eyes to see each other, and the ears to hear God through each other. Each one of us is God's beloved, children of a God in whom good God is well pleased. That hopeful message is there now on Good Friday, and certainly beyond today. So then, borrowing one last time from Francis, let us get going. Let us preach the gospel everywhere we go, as best we can. And then only when necessary, let us use words to preach that gospel. However we can, truly let us say Amen. Back