“History’s Outcome,” Mark 15:1-39
The
brand-new—and far too young—widow of a state trooper knew something about her
now-deceased husband, Drew, that most of the world yet did not: that he had
planned to one day, after retirement, attend seminary and become an ordained
minister. And so within a year of his
death, she had, in turn, enrolled in seminary part-time whilst also raising
their four children so that she might one day become an ordained minister
herself.
While
at seminary, she had a conversation with one of her classmates that went
something like this, as written by Rev. Kate Braestrup in her 2007 memoir, Here If You Need Me:
I admitted that if Drew hadn’t died, I
probably would never have become a minister.
“You see!” she responded brightly. “God knew what He was doing!”
This is the sort of remark that, however
common, makes me despair of Christianity’s ability to respond in any helpful or
sensible way to the reality of death.
“Surely, God was not so urgently in need
of Unitarian Universalist ministers that He needed to kill a father of four in
order to make one?” I retorted in what was probably an unnecessarily icy voice.
Death alters the reality of our lives;
the death of an intimate changes it completely.
No part of my life, from my most ethereal notions of God to the most
mundane detail of tooth brushing, was the same after Drew died.
Death
alters the reality of our lives. It’s
hard to arrive at a simpler truth. It’s
almost on the level of saying that one plus one equals two. Death changes things. And yet, though our Christian faith is
fundamentally influenced by the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, Pastor Kate has a
very real truth for us: We are not always equipped to respond well to death’s
reality. And that’s what I want to talk
with all of you about for a little bit: how we can respond to the reality of
the death that Good Friday places right in front of our eyes, and how our
response can redeem us.
I
would like to extend my deep gratitude to our hosts, the people of Community
Christian Church, and especially to their pastoral staff, Pastors John
Williams, Phil Rushton, and Chris Lyons, all of whom do amazing ministry in our
community. I would also like to thank
Pastor Jerry Dalhke of Northgate City Church for introducing me, and to thank
Pastor Mark Schmutz of Northlake Baptist Church, who, in wearing the hat of
president of the local ministerial association, invited me to deliver the
message at this year’s Good Friday service.
When
Pastor Mark invited me to do so, he said that there was a hope to hear a
younger voice and perspective on the Crucifixion of our Lord. And I warned Mark, “You do realize that I
don’t have any hair, right?” And on top
of that, I’m nearsighted, with a back and knees that do not always cooperate. You know that awful Jennifer Garner movie from
several years ago, “Thirteen Going on Thirty?”
Well, I’m twenty-seven going on seventy.
But
I have noticed that my age is a factor in my ministry. I serve a Messiah who was not much older than
I am now when He ministered, taught, healed, and, ultimately, died. It helps put things in perspective. And perspective is a tricky thing in
church. One of my favorite Christian
writers is the blogger Jon Acuff, who wrote a book called, simply, “Stuff
Christians Like.” And one of those
things he wrote about that Christians like is, “tuning out if the minister is
younger than you.” And part of what he
says is, “Please don’t use that phrase that all young ministers bust out. Please don’t say, oh no, you just did. You just said, ‘When I was growing up.’”
Well,
when I was growing up—way, way back in the early 90’s—I had a particular children’s
Bible that had a picture of the Crucifixion that just scared the dickens out of
me (see, I told you I was old at heart.
Who under the age of thirty uses that expression anymore?). It was a vivid, harrowing picture of the
Crucifixion that really does mess with your little-kid imagination.
And
so began a series of nightmares in which I dreamt that Jesus was being
crucified every night on the other side of our garage. I know that sounds. But it terrified me as a kid, this
possibility that I would round that corner of my parents’ house and I’d find Jesus
there, dying and crucified.
Maybe
that’s when I should have known that was fated to be a preacher.
It’s
a remarkable thing, though, the imagination—it can inspire us to dream dreams,
and it can wreak havoc with our psyches by causing us to think up the absolute
worst case scenario.
And
it’s hard to come up with a worse-case scenario than this if you’re a disciple
of Jesus, because while we have the benefit of seeing the light at the end of
the tunnel, they don’t. Yes, Jesus does
prophesy His death and resurrection repeatedly.
But think if you were actually there, a part of His roadshow, and sure,
you have seen healings and exorcisms and public debates and heard sermons and
parables galore, but all of that is small potatoes compared to a resurrection.
For
we know the disciples probably this sort of skepticism or reluctance—it is
Jesus’ first prediction of the Passion in Mark 9 that prompts Peter to protest,
and for Jesus to famously respond with the words, “Get behind me, Satan!” We know that there’s something about this
whole crucifixion-followed-by-resurrection scheme that the disciples just
aren’t on board with.
So,
again, imagine being there—you have followed this itinerant Messiah-slash-carpenter-slash-rabbi
for up to three years, and he has been captured, and fearing for your safety,
you have fled. If we continued in Mark’s
account, we would see that many of Jesus’ female followers very bravely
remained with Him to the very end, but by this point in the story, the Twelve
have abandoned Him—Mark writes in 14:50 that at Gethsemane, they deserted Jesus
and fled.
So
your Lord and Savior is captive. You
know that at least one of the Twelve in your inner circle is a mole. You may have had doubts about this whole
Passion thing to begin with. And you’re
on the lam. You’re probably feeling like
this is absolute rock bottom for you, and if your faith was at an all-time low,
I certainly would not blame you. Your
imagination is probably running haywire right now, fueled by paranoia and fear
of what might happen to you, and probably running through all of the worst-case
scenarios like those little yellow survival books that became so popular. But unfortunately for you, there’s no an
entry in any of those books entitled, “How to Survive When Your Messiah Has
Just Been Captured and Hastily Sentenced to Crucifixion.”
There
is no how-to guide, there is no manual on how to spiritually survive Good
Friday.
And
if I’m honest, I think it’s because we aren’t supposed to. Like I said at the very beginning, we are not
always equipped to respond well to the reality of death.
And
just because we know what lies around the corner does not mean that we can hit
the fast-forward button to get there quicker.
Because just as Jesus physically died, so too did His followers, I am
sure, spiritually die. Their hearts
broke, their souls ached, their lives longed for who—and what—had just been
forcibly and violently taken from them.
So
think of those who maybe weren’t aware of Jesus’ teaching of the Resurrection
and of what is about to happen—or those who were there to hear it but in the
midst of trying simply to survive have all but pushed aside those
teachings. Try to put yourself in the
eye of that hurricane.
The
University of Colorado religious historian Richard Wunderli puts it thus: “As
participants in our own history, we cannot know its outcome or how it will be
explained in the future.”
We cannot know history’s outcome. We cannot know the outcome any more than a well-meaning seminary classmate trying to comfort a widow by pretending to know the outcome.
And
deep in the maelstrom of a betrayal and an arrest and a show trial and finally,
a public execution, how many of the people affected by this singular event
could not possibly know of its ultimate outcome? And not just the disciples, either—but the
Pharisees. The scribes. The Sadducees. Governor Pilate. Caiaphas.
Annas. Herod. Anyone.
Mark
tells us that there is one. He was not
one of Jesus’ followers. He has no
name. We know him only by his military
rank: the centurion. Our portion of Mark’s
Gospel with his exclamation: “Surely this man was God’s Son!” If you flip through the rest of Mark’s
Gospel, you’ll notice that he is the first person to correctly refer to Jesus
as God’s Son aside from Jesus Himself.
Not even the Twelve speak of Jesus in such a way in Mark’s telling of
the Gospel.
The
weight of the centurion’s perspective is perhaps best stated by the Bible
scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan:
(The centurion) is the first human in
Mark’s Gospel to call Jesus “God’s Son.”
Not even Jesus’ followers speak of Him this way in Mark’s story.
That this exclamation comes from a
centurion is very significant. According
to Roman imperial theology, the emperor was “Son of God”—the revelation of
God’s power and will for the earth.
According to the very same theology, the emperor was Lord, Savior, and
the one who had brought peace on earth.
But now, a representative of Rome affirms that this man, Jesus, executed
by the empire, is the Son of God. Thus,
the emperor is not. In the exclamation
of the centurion responsible for Jesus’ execution, who saw Him up close, empire
testifies against itself.
In
other words, everything about the world that conspired to kill Jesus—the
earthly power it took to shamefully dispose of a man whose teachings threatened
everything about the way this broken little world is—a representative of that sinfulness
recognizes its own culpability in Jesus’ death.
It
is where our redemption begins.
Our
redemption begins with the anonymous centurion.
And precisely because anonymity is his name, he can be anyone. He can even be us, if we let ourselves, like
him, recognize what has truly happened on this day, with the bravery and
courage difficult for us to fathom today.
After all, this is a centurion speaking treason against his
emperor. This is a centurion believing
despite probably being taught to despise this God on whose behalf Jesus is. This is a centurion believing while almost
certainly NOT knowing for sure what comes next.
This is a centurion believing despite what consequences he might be able
to imagine comes next. That can be us as
well!
It
is where our redemption begins.
We
cannot know history’s outcome. And we
cannot know how it will be explained in the future.
I
am almost certain that this centurion, even with his sudden recognition, could
have known how all of this would turn out, or just how Christianity would be
explained in the future, as a faith adhered to by literally billions of people. He has no incentive to be on the right side
of history’s outcome, and yet he is because he lets this experience trump what
he had surely been taught.
We
cannot know history’s outcome. And we
cannot know how it will be explained in the future.
But
what we can know is the outcome of our own redemption.
We
can know it because the centurion knows what the outcome is.
We
can know it because the church can teach us what the outcome is.
And
we can know it because God calls each of us to that outcome of our own
redemption—a right relationship, built upon and strengthened by love, and
grace, and mercy with our Creator, who gave us His only Son and when we threw
that gift away by killing Him, forgave us for it.
And
what is at long last recognized here, at the cross, by an anonymous, faceless,
soldier, is that there is an outcome of grace that is present.
I
can imagine God, even whilst grieving Jesus’s death, saying, “At last, someone
understands!”
At
last, at last, at last, may we understand the depth of God’s grace as well. May it be so.
Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview,
Washington
March
29, 2013
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