The Internet Monk Archives

Such strange grace

April 5 will mark six years since Michael Spencer’s death. We will be devoting next week to some of his most memorable writings, writings that helped many of us survive wilderness journeys akin to his own.

Today, I had lunch with a friend who I was encouraging to write for us. She has had a fascinating (and frightening) journey and I can’t wait until you get a chance to read about it. When she asked me what Internet Monk was about, my answer kept coming back to that word “journey.” I described for her the basic outlines of Michael’s journey until the day when cancer took him from our midst. And I explained how my own journey intersected with Michael’s.

To the best of my recollection, I began reading and commenting on Internet Monk in 2008. Then, in September of 2009 Gail and I had the opportunity to spend a week at a cabin in northern Tennessee, graciously provided by a couple who had renovated several properties and made them available, at no cost, for people in ministry who needed respite. While there, we had made arrangements to meet Michael and Denise for dinner. We spent a day at Cumberland Falls and then followed the winding road over to London, Kentucky, where they met us at an Applebee’s. I distinctly remember Michael ordering a Sam Adams after I had asked for a Diet Coke out of deference to his teaching position at a Baptist school. I guess London was beyond the range of their radar.

We had a wonderful time of getting to know each other. This was after the time when Denise had made her decision to join the Catholic church, and I recall that it was a bit uncomfortable for them to talk about that. In reply, I shared about how we had been attending an ELCA Lutheran church and were being refreshed by the liturgy, but in truth we were still struggling in many ways as well, in the aftermath of my leaving pastoral ministry a few years earlier. At that time, Michael was also completing his book about the struggles he and so many of us have had with church, the book that would have the title Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality. In it he wrote:

As I have come to discover that Jesus’ Kingdom is far more diverse and interesting movement than I realized when I was growing up in narrow fundamentalism, I’ve come to understand that what Jesus is doing in the world is exactly what his parables described: the smallest of seeds growing into a great tree.

Many of us will meet one another on this journey. We may share the same story or the same pain, or we may be so different that we keep looking, again and again, to recognize the family resemblance. It is my hope that the time we have spent together will encourage you to keep pursuing Jesus, no matter where you are in your journey. Don’t neglect the search for authentic, Jesus-shaped spirituality.

We were people on journeys, whose paths had somehow crossed at this roadside restaurant in eastern Kentucky. We didn’t share quite the same story, but we shared much of the same pain about the wilderness called “American evangelicalism” and the “churchianity” it so frequently promotes. Like Rick and Louis in Casablanca, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship — a partnership of rogues and misfits.

A month or so later I called Michael. He had seemed down and troubled about some serious illnesses that were afflicting some key people at the school. He was particularly upset about how many in the Christian community didn’t seem to have a clue about how to face suffering, ambiguity, unanswered questions, and death. I affirmed his responses, which were realistic, sensitive, and grounded in a more thorough absorption of the human honesty of scripture. He asked me to write my first post for IM about pastoral care for the dying.

It wasn’t long before he himself would be tested severely.

Later that fall, Michael sensed that his own health was poor and it turned out he had colon cancer. We visited the Spencers in Lexington at the hospital and prayed with them. Michael asked me to write on days when he couldn’t and those days became more frequent until early in 2010, when he could write no more. He eventually was admitted to hospice care and died at home on April 5, 2010. I visited one last time as he lay in bed and that’s when he asked me to keep the site going, along with Jeff Dunn who had helped him with his book.

The next time we went to Oneida was for Michael’s memorial service.

As I was talking to my friend today about writing for Internet Monk, I became overwhelmed again with the sense that this opportunity has come to me through such strange grace. Never in any of my dreams did I think of writing daily for a blog like IM. How sad I am that it had to come through the loss of someone as gifted and insightful as Michael Spencer. Nevertheless, I am proud that we can attempt to continue his legacy, keep his words alive, and forge ahead on the journey we once walked together.

And what can I say of all the readers and commenters who have stopped by to join the conversation? Simply, thank you.

The journey goes on. So many things have changed in the past six years, but we’re still here, happy to break bread with any who might stop by.

And every day I’m reminded: It’s a wilderness out there. Sometimes it’s damn hard to get your bearings. But whenever you get a glimpse of Jesus, that’s the way to go.

A Lament for Lahore’s Children

Today we weep for Lahore, her children and families, and all who love peace.

The Easter bombing of a playground in Lahore, Pakistan has brought the subject of Christian persecution to the forefront of the world’s attention, because the group responsible for it claimed that they were targeting Christians. The horrific attack is one more event in an increasing tide of persecution faced by those who follow Christ. This from a CNN report in January:

Last year was the most violent for Christians in modern history, rising to “a level akin to ethnic cleansing,” according to a new report by Open Doors USA, a watchdog group that advocates for Christians.

In total, the survey found that more than 7,100 Christians were killed in 2015 for “faith-related reasons,” up 3,000 from the previous year, according to the group’s analysis of media reports and other public information as well as external experts. Open Door’s report is independently audited by the International Institute of Religious Freedom.

The group’s report defines Christian persecution “as any hostility experienced as a result of one’s identification with Christ.” Open Doors found this persecution ranged from imprisonment, torture, beheadings and rape to the loss of home and assets, the loss of a job, or even rejection from a community.

These deadly Easter attacks serve as another reminder of the costs Christians are paying around the world to follow Jesus, especially in areas where Islamic extremism is prevalent. In an article that gives an overview of the history and current state of persecution against Christians in Pakistan, Kathy Gannon of the AP says:

In predominantly Christian neighborhoods, radical Muslims have carried out attacks based on trumped-up charges of blasphemy, which is punishable by death. Christians are routinely accused by radical Muslims of trying to undermine Pakistan as an Islamic state. There have been reports of forced conversions of Christian girls. In January, a girl was killed and two were injured when they refused the advances of three Muslim men, who ran them over upon learning they were Christian. An Islamabad-based think tank, The Jinnah Institute, called the violence “some of the worst mob attacks against minority communities in Pakistan.” Christian neighborhoods in Punjab and Islamabad “have seen mass attacks fueled by hate speech. These attacks have led to widespread destruction of homes and properties,” he said.

It must be said, however, that the Christian angle should not be overplayed. Though the group claiming responsibility said they were targeting Christians, the majority of those who died were Muslims. If we are going to respond truly as Christian people, we must weep for our Muslim neighbors as well as for the Christ-followers who perished.

We have not focused our attention on writing about persecution much on Internet Monk, and there is a simple reason.

I don’t know what to say. That’s the God’s-honest truth. These kinds of tragedies leave me speechless.

But as I have thought about this subject, and particularly this attack on Easter, I knew I must write something about it.

I concluded that the one appropriate response at this time is for me to practice lament.

Let us express our anger, our frustration, our sense of helplessness, our profound sorrow and grief to God. As Walter Brueggemann writes, “The lament psalm is a Jewish refusal of silence before God. This Jewish refusal of silence is not cultural, sociological, or psychological, but it is in the end, theological. It is a Jewish understanding that an adequate relationship with God permits and requires a human voice that will speak out against every wrong perpetrated either on earth or by heaven.”

For these things I weep;
    my eyes flow with tears;
for a comforter is far from me,
    one to revive my courage;
my children are desolate,
    for the enemy has prevailed.

(Lamentations 1:16)

It is time we lift our voice in honest prayer to God.

No, not there Lord!
Anywhere but there!
Anywhere but in a park with children playing, laughing, running free!

They should be free…
Lord, shouldn’t they be free?
Free and never afraid of such darkness?
Free to show their moms and dads how big and grown up they are?
Big enough to swing, to ride the carousel, to turn a cartwheel
and brush the tousled hair from their eyes?

They are not big enough for this
(Is anyone?)
For blood and body parts and shattered eardrums
For dust and chaos, tears and wide-eyed panic
For black terror like Friday noon to fall on Easter Sunday?

Though you have bid them come,
it is not right that they should come to you like this, Lord.
Not like this.
Never like this!

And we feel helpless.
We have no one to curse.
We cannot look him in the eye,
the stupid coward who blew himself to bits.
What can possibly bring “justice” in a case like this?
God, we are fed up, and we have no idea what to do.

And where are you?
We demand to know!
Of all days, the day when you broke the power of death!
Of all days, when every surprising appearance brought joy and gladness!
Of all days, when you laid aside the graveclothes and walked free,

Why couldn’t they play free?

Another look: Easter is a season, not a day

Many of us in our Christian traditions learned to celebrate Christ’s resurrection on a single day — Easter Sunday.

Easter is the great Lord’s Day, the climax of Holy Week, the high point of the Christian Year, marked by an explosion of color, wafting fragrance of lilies, majestic sounds of organ and baroque trumpets, bright new clothes, formal dinner with the family. A blissful Sabbath! Our little ones receive baskets of candies and toys, hunt for Easter eggs, strap on patent leather shoes, dress up like little ladies and gentlemen. We take their pictures out in the yard framed by the early blooms of spring. Women wear hats to church, white gloves. Even the men adorn themselves in pastels. This is the one Sunday we sing, “Christ the Lord is risen today! Alleluia!” The choir resounds with joyful praise. Everyone smiles. Such a happy day!

And then it’s over.

In the non-liturgical churches I have served as a pastor, the time after Easter was one of the few lulls in the year. For families, it formed the season between spring break and May, which where I live has become one of the busiest months of the year, with spring sports in full swing, summer sports like Little League beginning, end of school and church year programs, graduations, weddings, holidays like Mother’s Day, college students returning home, outdoor projects getting into full swing, and of course, here in Indianapolis we have all “the month of May” – activities leading up to the Indy 500 race. After the Easter event, and before the month of May, we had a period of relative quiet.

As an evangelical (and an American), it seems to me that I was always taught to think in terms of events. Events can be strategized, planned, advertised and marketed, organized, staffed, set up, prayed for, executed, cleaned up after, reviewed and evaluated, and followed up. It is a typically business-like approach. A well-run event can make a big splash, leave a lasting impression, and play a crucial role in forming a group of people into a community.

However, as I have more seriously considered the practice of the liturgical year, I have been challenged to think more in terms of seasons than simply in terms of events. Seasons force us to face the “dailyness” of life rather than simply its special points.

It is like the difference between a wedding and a marriage. Or the birth of a baby and learning to care for an infant.

We love Christmas, but it is in Advent that we learn to long and pray day by day for Christ to come. And it is in Christmastide (the days following Christmas) that we take time to gaze with wonder into the face of the incarnate baby Jesus, to do as Mary did, “treasuring all these things in her heart.”

And so it is with Easter. Easter is a season, not just a day. On the Christian calendar, the period that begins on Easter Sunday is called “The Great Fifty Days,” “Pascha,” or “Eastertide.”

Writing in The Complete Library of Christian Worship V, Marjorie Proctor-Smith says,

Celebrating Easter for fifty days is a Christian practice almost as ancient as the annual observance of Easter. …The term Pentecost was first used by Christians to refer to this seven-week period as a unit: “the Pentecost,” or the fifty days. It was only later that the term was applied to the fiftieth day, at which time then the fifty days was called the Easter season.

The importance of this period for the ancient church is reflected in the language used by early writers wen speaking of it, and the practices which their comments reveal. Tertullian refers to the period, which he called the Pentecost, as a laetissimum spatium, a “most joyous space” in which it is especially fitting that baptisms take place. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, write an annual “Festal Letter” to the church in which he announced the date of Easter, which “extends its beams, with unobscured grace, to all the seven weeks of holy Pentecost.” In every letter Athanasius emphasizes the centrality of the Easter observance for Christians, speaking of the fifty days especially as a time of joy and fulfillment: “But let us now keep the feast, my beloved, not as introducing a day of suffering but of joy in Christ, in whom we are fed every day.” It was, quite simply, a “Great Sunday” which lasted for seven weeks, a week of Sundays, wherein the church celebrated on a large scale the resurrection of Christ. “All of Pentecost,” writes Basil of Caesarea, “reminds us of the resurrection which we await in the other world.”

Seeing Easter as a season rather than a day might help us grasp more fully the meaning and implications of Christ’s resurrection.

What a wonderful season in which to study the post-resurrection appearances! The ascension! The promise of the Spirit! The new covenant!

To lavishly decorate our sanctuaries and celebrate Christ’s resurrection with exuberance for seven Sundays rather than just one!

To have “Emmaus Road” Bible studies that show how all the Scriptures point to Jesus and his finished work.

To celebrate the Lord’s Supper more often with a specific focus on Christ’s promise that we will share it new with him in the coming kingdom.

To teach sound eschatology that grounds people in the Christian hope and the coming of the new creation.

To explore the “Great Commission” the risen Christ gave to us and to practice “going and telling” the Good News of our risen Savior in various ways throughout our communities.

To regularly celebrate baptisms and hear testimonies of those who have experienced new life in Christ.

To hold special meetings for prayer as the disciples did, asking for God to fill us anew with his Holy Spirit that we might become more fully and joyously engaged in his mission in the world.

Many Christians assume that Easter is commemorated on just one day. It is an event. After it is over, we move on to something else.

But this cannot be. We are Easter people! The first Sunday of Easter is the beginning, not the climax of the season.

As the disciples grew in their understanding and love for the risen Christ over the great fifty days when he arose, appeared to them, ascended into heaven, and poured out the Holy Spirit upon them, may we too experience Easter throughout the entire season to come!

✞

P.S. Another thing evangelicals miss, which is an important part of the liturgical tradition, is that every Sunday is a “little Easter.” Each Lord’s Day, when the church gathers for worship, the liturgy reenacts the gospel story, ending by meeting with the risen Lord at the Table, where we remember his death, resurrection, and living presence that nourishes his people. In this way, the central events of our faith are commemorated weekly throughout the year, no matter what season it is.

First published April 4, 2010

Sermon: Easter at Ground Level

Easter at Ground Level
Easter Sermon: March 27, 2016

Luke 24:1-12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in, they did not find the body. 4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 5 The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. 6 Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” 8 Then they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. 10 Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 12 But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

☩ ☩ ☩

Preachers always face a dilemma on Sundays like Easter. On Resurrection Sunday we celebrate an event so monumental and theological truths so rich and profound that it is hard to find language that will do justice to the significance of this day.

We are also trying to talk about something that happened that is completely foreign to our experience: Jesus, who died by crucifixion, was raised from the dead; a fact attested by many witnesses. Let me say that again: Jesus, who died by crucifixion, was raised from the dead; a fact attested by many witnesses.

This may seem like a fairy tale or science fiction to many of you. If anyone here has met someone who has actually been raised from the dead, I’d like to talk to you after the service and ask why you aren’t up here giving the sermon this morning! This is way above my pay grade.

Normally, when trying to help folks understand the scriptures, I might tell a story that relates to the theme of the text. But I have no stories that shed any light on resurrection. Or, I might try to find an illustration that will connect a difficult theological truth to something in nature or life experience. The problem is: there aren’t any. The resurrection of Jesus is a singular event, utterly unique, unlike anything ever seen before or since.

So that’s our dilemma this morning. It’s like we’ve all been blind from birth and here we are, trying to grasp what a beautiful sunset looks like. It’s like we’ve all been deaf from birth and we are trying to wrap our minds around the glorious sounds and movements of a Bach cantata. I’m just not sure I can help anyone understand.

But maybe that’s not what I should be trying to do anyway.

Maybe we need to just be ourselves and try to experience the resurrection the way the first disciples in the Gospels did. If we do that, we find that the Bible is actually quite helpful when it comes to the stories of Jesus’ resurrection. Take this morning’s text for example. Except for where we meet two mysterious strangers dressed in “dazzling clothes,” this resurrection account is as down-to-earth and human as they come. This is Easter at ground-level.

Today’s Gospel starts with grief, and there are few things more basic and human than that. A group of women come to Jesus’ tomb to weep over him and provide care for his dead body. I’m a hospice chaplain, and I see people mourning and grieving like these women almost every week. I can see their expressionless faces, blank and numb. I can see their slumped shoulders, their slow, plodding steps. I can hear their sighs and see their tears. They are so sad they seem weak and disoriented as they stumble along in the darkness toward the cave in which their loved one is laid.

As they get to the tomb, they find the stone rolled away and something doesn’t seem right. They look inside the cave and the body’s gone! Now they are perplexed, the text says. Their minds are in no condition to solve riddles or figure out mysteries. Perhaps they try to shake the cobwebs out of their heads. Perhaps they rub their eyes to make sure they are seeing what they think they see. Perhaps they look around at each other and back and forth and in and out of the cave in confusion. These are entirely human and understandable reactions. Something is not right and they are stunned by bewilderment.

So there these women are. It’s early morning, they are filled with grief, and then, when they get to the tomb, they are confused by what they find. That’s Easter at ground level.

Next, out of nowhere they see two strangers in dazzling clothes. The women are startled, caught off guard. These remarkable figures were so impressive and intimidating that the women fell right on the ground and the text says that they were terrified. Frightened out of their minds! Utterly paralyzed by terror.

We are to understand, I think, that these strangers were angelic messengers, and it seems clear to me that the women thought they were. I have never been confronted by an angel, but there have been times when I have felt a sense of awe and danger that almost overwhelmed me, so I can begin to relate to this falling-down fear that the women had. Fear is one of the most common responses people have when they are faced with a situation that is way beyond their comfort level. Fear is a ground-level emotion.

It is at that point that these women, these grieving, confused, frightened women, get their Easter sunrise service sermon. The two men proclaimed the good news of Easter to them. They say:

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”

I’m not sure they were ready to hear any sermon at that point. But imagine hearing this for the first time! This is good news that I can’t imagine these women grasped immediately. The text says they remembered that Jesus had said these things, but it doesn’t say they “got it.” It doesn’t say they digested this message. How could they possibly have understood such an announcement?

So they did something that makes complete sense. These women went to tell Jesus’ closest friends, his disciples, what had happened. When something amazing happens to you and you don’t get it, you tell someone else and discuss what it might mean. However, when they reached the apostles, the report sounded so unbelievable to them that the text says it sounded like a made-up mess of wishful thinking. But it was clear that something must have happened, and it definitely got their attention. So Peter, who was always, it seems, the first to speak and the first to act, went running to the tomb to check it out.

The Gospel says that when Peter looked in, he not only saw that the tomb was empty, but he also saw Jesus’ grave clothes lying folded off to the side. This must have seemed very strange. If grave robbers had stolen the body, do you think they would have taken the time to unwrap it from its grave clothes and make sure they were neatly put in the corner? Yet that’s how it looked — the body was gone, and the tomb was straightened up! Peter, it says, went home amazed — astounded, stunned — at what he had seen.

And that’s where this morning’s Gospel text leaves us: with a bunch of people who are utterly human, utterly unprepared for what they experience, utterly incapable of explaining anything. They move from grief to fear to hearing an unbelievable message to talking about it with others to checking it out and then going home amazed and stunned by it all. It’s Easter at ground level.

And somehow, that is the message of Easter I have for you this morning.

Spring Mix Here we are, just a group of ordinary, everyday people, living at ground level, going about our business, trying to take care of ourselves and our families, doing our work, experiencing all the normal ups and downs of life. Then we come to church on March 27, 2016 and some guy stands up front and tells us Jesus has been raised from the dead and is alive! That a man who lived and taught and healed and proclaimed the coming of God’s Kingdom, who was arrested and tried and executed by crucifixion and laid in a grave rose up from that grave in a new resurrection body and is alive forevermore.

When we hear a message like that, are we any different than these women? Than these disciples? Than Peter? Can we begin to grasp what has happened here?

I’m telling you that, if we are going to live in the reality of Easter, if we are going to get a handle on Jesus’ resurrection, if we are going to believe that he is alive and present and reigning in our lives and in our world today, and if we are going to participate in his risen life, if we are going to experience the presence and power and love of the risen Lord in and through us today, then we’re only going to experience them in the context of our very ordinary and common human lives.

We’re going to be surprised. We’re going to be startled. It’s going to take us a while to get it. So much of it will seem confusing and bewildering. Resurrection and resurrection life is just not something we can process that easily. It may take us an entire lifetime to even begin to understand it.

Because this is from God! This is God’s doing, and not ours. When the living Christ makes himself real to us, it is not because we originate it or anticipate it. We do not and cannot control the surprising things God does!

I’m just me, and you are just you, and we just stumble along in the darkness most days. Some of our days are ordinary, some are graced with joy and celebration, and others are filled with intense grief and sorrow. Then, out of the blue, something happens and all of a sudden we realize that God is trying to get our attention. We hear his words but can’t quite grasp them. We come to church, we gather with our friends, we talk to each other about what we’ve heard and experienced, and we hope to get more clarity. We study our Bibles and pray and look deeply into the empty tomb and try to figure out what happened.

Most days, honestly though, we walk home scratching our heads.

But let me encourage you today. This is just the first story of Easter, and early morning on Easter Sunday is just the beginning. Jesus rose from the dead and he lives in our midst. He will not always leave us in confusion. He has more appearances to make! He has more to say, more to do to prove to us that he is alive and at work in our lives and in our midst. The risen Lord will come to you and me and transform our lives, bit by bit, piece by piece, day by day.

So today, on Easter, don’t worry if you don’t quite get it or that you can’t explain it.

Jesus is alive, and nothing will ever be the same for you and me again.

A Prayer for Resurrection Sunday

The Morning of the Resurrection, Burne-Jones, — The Morning of the Resurrection, Burne-Jones

A Prayer for Resurrection Sunday

Hail thee, festival day!
Blest day to be hallowed forever;
Day when our Lord was raised, breaking the kingdom of death.

All the fair beauty of earth from the death of the winter arising!
Every good gift of the year now with its master returns.

Rise from the grave now, O Lord, the author of life and creation.
Treading the pathway of death, new life you give to us all.

Praise to the giver of good! O Lover and Author of concord,
Pour out your balm on our days; order our ways in your peace.

From a prayer by St. Venantius Fortunatus, 6th century

A Prayer for Holy Saturday

A Prayer for Holy Saturday

God of light and healing, we come seeking wholeness.
Jesus, the Light of the World, rests in the tomb.
We wait for the coming of the Rising Sun to show us the way.
Hear our prayer for his coming!

Indeed, saving God, all creation waits with groaning
and longing for the salvation promised to our ancestors
and revealed in the resurrection of your Son Jesus.
Teach us how to wait for the bursting forth of your saving power
when all will be reconciled to you in Christ Jesus.

We wait in hope, O God.
We wait in the company of all the angels and saints of heaven.
Through their intercession may we have the power to say:
Holy, Holy, Holy is our God.

Amen.

Adapted from Holy Saturday, Morning Prayer
Mercy Prayer Book

A Good Friday Prayer by Michael Spencer

Master, this day is our day to stand and look.

To be amazed and disturbed.

This is a day to put away glad songs, and to see the terrible cost of our salvation.

This is also a day to believe and to know what is demanded
in the Great Exchange at the heart of the Gospel.

Forgive me for living in the shadow of this bloody execution
as if it were religious art or a cultural symbol or the inspiration for music or preaching.

This is my life, my death, my sin and your love.

This is the beating of the heart of a Christian.

Give me grace to pause and look.

To see, feel, weep and above all, believe and keep on believing.

Through Jesus. Amen.

Crux probat omnia

I have begun reading Fleming Rutledge’s outstanding new book, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, just in time for Good Friday.

She notes that the contemporary church tends to neglect the crucifixion in favor of emphasizing the resurrection. This cannot be done! Rutledge insists upon “the unique significance of the crucifixion at the heart of the Christian faith.” We can only understand these events in relation to one another. “Understanding the cross and resurrection as a single event, undertaken from within the Trinity itself, is of utmost importance…,” she asserts.

In the words of Luther: Crux probat omnia — The cross is the test of everything.

The crucifixion is the touchstone of Christian authenticity, the unique feature by which everything else, including the resurrection, is given its true significance. The resurrection is not a set piece. It is not an isolated demonstration of divine dazzlement. It is not to be detached from its abhorrent first act. The resurrection is, precisely, the vindication of a man who was crucified. Without the cross at the center of the Christian proclamation, the Jesus story can be treated as just another story about a charismatic spiritual figure. It is the crucifixion that marks out Christianity as something definitively different in the history of religion. It is in the crucifixion that the nature of God is truly revealed. Since the resurrection is God’s mighty transhistorical Yes to the historically crucified Son, we can assert that the crucifixion is the most important historical event that ever happened. The resurrection, being a transhistorical event planted within history, does not cancel out the contradiction and shame of the cross in this present life; rather, the resurrection ratifies the cross as the way “until he comes.”

…The resurrection is not just the reappearance of a dead person. It is the mighty act of God to vindicate the One whose very right to exist was thought to have been negated by the powers that nailed him to a cross. At the same time, however, the One who is gloriously risen is the same One who suffered crucifixion. It is not an insignificant detail that “doubting Thomas” asks to see the marks of the nails and the spear in the Lord’s resurrected body (John 20:25). The book of Revelation is an extended hymn to the risen Christ, but he is nevertheless the “Lamb standing, as though it had been slain,” the One whose wounds still show, the One by whose blood the robes of the redeemed have been cleansed for all eternity (Rev. 5:6-7)

The reason Paul said to the Corinthians, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2), is not that he considered the resurrection to be of lesser importance. The reason Paul insisted on the centrality of the cross in polemical terms was that the Corinthian Christians wanted to pass over it altogether. This tendency persists in the American church today. H. Richard Niebuhr put it unforgettably in The Kingdom of God in America: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” When this happens, we may have spirituality, but we do not have Christianity.

• pp. 44, 64f

Another Look: Jeff Dunn – Circle or Cross?

Note from JD: This essay owes much to the thoughts of G. K. Chesterton from his classic work, Orthodoxy.

⎈

This is an interactive essay, one that requires your participation. You will need a piece of paper, a pencil or pen or crayon or some sort of marker, and a compass or something you can trace around to make a circle, such as a soup can. Go gather your materials. I’ll wait.

No, really. Go get your things. You need will need them in order to “get” what I will be talking about.

Got them? Good. Mmmm…Campbell’s Chunky Chicken and Noodle. Good choice.

Now, on your nice white piece of paper, I want you to draw a circle. If you have a compass (the kind you used in geometry, not the type you use in the woods when you want to find your way), you can spread it out to make it as big as the paper will allow. If you are tracing, well, your circle will only be as large as the can. Any size circle will do, actually. Are you done? Do you have a perfectly round circle? Good.

The circle is the basis for most all mathematics. It led to what we now know as geometry and calculus. From the circle we get the wheel which, along with gears (also circles), puts the world around us in motion. The circle, if drawn properly, is a perfect shape. There are 360 points, or degrees, in your circle, each one equidistant from the center point. If you draw a straight line from the center point to the any point on the circle, you have the radius. A line that goes from one point on the circle to another while passing through the center point is the diameter. Â The distance around the circle is called theÂ circumference. The ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is measured as pi, an irrational number, meaning its digits never repeat and never end. It short form, pi is equal to 3.14159. Modern computers have been able to measure pi in digits exceeding a trillion without the sequence repeating.

Have I lost you yet? Hang in there—our lesson in math is just about over.

The circle is about as perfect of a shape as you will find. But it is a finite shape. It cannot grow larger or smaller. Look again at the circle you drew on your paper. In order to make it even one degree larger, you will have to recreate the entire circle. You can’t just stick another dot in there and make it bigger. A circle is 360 degrees period. If you want a circle with a larger diameter, you have to start over. Circles may be a perfect shape, but they cannot change. They are stuck being what they are.

Many of us want our Christian lives to be like the circle. We have Jesus as our center, and everything revolves around him. What is wrong with that? We use the Bible as the radius, checking and rechecking verses in the Bible to be sure we are staying in proper orbit around the center, Jesus. Each point in our lives, all 360 of them, must stay in the proper place, otherwise we might become warped in our thinking. Then we will not be able to turn like a circle should. We will be “out of round.” If that happens, get the Bible and find out where we have gone wrong. Our goal is to stay a perfect circle. There is no growth, of course. We can’t make our circle any larger–we would have to deconstruct it first, and that would involve great pain, great stress, incredible turmoil. No, that is not what we want at all. Peace–that’s what a circle is. Perfect and peaceful. Why mess with that?

Let’s make another drawing on your paper. You can do it on the same side at as the circle if you like, or you can turn your paper over. Ready? Draw one vertical line–a line up and and down. It doesn’t have to be perfectly straight. As a matter of fact, it will be more real if it isn’t straight. Now, starting about a third of the way from the top of this line, draw a horizontal line through the vertical line. Make it as large or small as you like. You have just drawn a cross. A cross is not a perfect shape. Euclid did not use a cross when he developed our modern theories of geometry. A cross is a coarse object, not perfect in any sense. Just two lines that intersect somewhere.

Yet for the Christian, the cross is where our lives end, and where they begin. You cannot be a Christian without the cross. Let me say that again: You cannot be a Christian without the cross. And the place where the two lines intersect? That we can call the paradox of Christianity. An intersection of two ideas that don’t go together.

God becoming man. Now really–how can the God who created the entire universe shrink himself to become a newborn baby?

God the man suffering and dying. Again, how can that be? How can God, who is the creator of life, succumb to death?

There are many other paradoxes that form the teaching Christians are to follow. To be rich, you must become poor. To live, you must die. The weak person is the strongest. You want to get even with an enemy? Love him. These are the paradoxes we find at the intersection of the cross.
Then there is the whole thing about faith. We are to believe something before we see it. We are to have faith in something we don’t understand. This faith makes up the biggest paradox of all. Parker Palmer puts it well in his book, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. He says:

The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure;
the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair;
the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring:
these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings.
If we refuse to hold them
in hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain,
we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.

Great. So in order to have the Christian virtues we all want to display—faith, hope, and love—we have to endure doubt, despair and pain. Let me get back to my circle. It is peaceful. I just keep myself at the same distance from Jesus, using verses in the Bible to check and be sure I am “in round.” The cross causes too much confusion. I don’t understand these contradictions. Lose my life in order to find it? Believe before I understand? That is much too hard.

I cannot grow in my circle. It is finite. It cannot be other than what it is. But look at the cross you drew. Use your pencil and extend one of the lines, any one you like. Draw it to the edge of the paper. Then onto your table, across the floor, out the window, across your lawn to your neighbor’s house. The lines of the cross are infinite. They can go on forever.

And they do.

So this day you must choose. Do you live in your safe, perfect circle? Or do you embrace the cross of paradox and contradiction? There is safety and predictability in the circle. You get to be in control. And when people look at you, they see symmetry. A circle is nice and neat and tidy. People will look at you and see a good person. The circle is a place where you can have a nice, safe life.

Or do you choose the cross? Two lines, unevenly drawn, that intersect in inconsistencies. There are challenges to what you think is right. Things are turned upside down from what you think they should be. You are called to believe when you can’t see. You are told to trust when it doesn’t make sense. And here is the kicker. The cross means your death. It is the death of you being in charge. Death of you controlling what is right and what is wrong. It means you are dead—and the life you now live is Christ Jesus living through you.

He is not a tame lion, you know. He won’t do as you please. He will lead you to places you didn’t think you should go. He will not stay nice and round. If you go the way of the cross, you will be a misshaped misfit in this world. People, especially people of the circle, will tell you just how wrong you are to be doing what you do.

The only consolation you have is that you will walking the way of the cross with Jesus. And really, what else is there to consider?

Rob Grayson: The cross: religious self-projection or radical discontinuity?

The cross: religious self-projection or radical discontinuity?
By Rob Grayson

Most Christians agree that the central, defining feature of Christianity is the cross. I think it’s fair to say that no other religion has such a universally recognised identifying symbol.

However, when it comes to what we understand the cross to mean, things get more complicated. And what we understand the cross to mean is of huge importance, because it shapes our entire understanding of God and what it means to be a Christian.

If I were to put it to a roomful of Christians that God is most perfectly revealed in the crucified Christ, I’m pretty sure I’d get a lot of hearty amens. But the fact that we could all agree that God is most perfectly revealed in Christ upon the cross emphatically does notmean that we have a shared understanding of the cross or what it tells us about God and our relationship to him.

Let’s try to unpack this a bit by exploring two alternative understandings of the cross.

Understanding 1: Crime and punishment

If asked to explain how they understand the cross, a great many Christians – probably most – would answer using language something like this: Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our sins so we could be saved from the curse of death and hell and spend eternity with God. Of course, the actual words used may be different, but the underlying understanding of the significance of the cross would, in most cases, be something along these lines.

Now, if this is how we understand the cross, and if we believe that God is most perfectly revealed in Christ crucified, what does this understanding tell us about what we believe about God?

The most important thing to note is that little phrase paying the price. This is the language of commerce and exchange. What it usually indicates is that the event of the cross was a kind of transaction: some sort of divine deal was done in which the punishment due to us for our sins was transferred onto Jesus so that we could be released from our guilt. This has two major implications for what we believe about God.

First, this understanding requires us to believe that God deals with us on a transactional basis. After all, if that is how God is seen to operate at the central event of the cross, why should we expect him to behave differently in any other situation (unless, that is, we believe he’s fickle and unreliable)? If a price was paid at the cross, an important question to ask is who it was paid to – and there is only logical answer: it was paid to God. What we have here is the God of the quid pro quo, who insists that something must always be given before anything can be received. The something that must be given could be many things – obedience, time, money, evangelistic fervour… I could go on. (I note in passing that this is clearly the God of Deuteronomy 28, who doles out blessings in return for obedience to a set of prescribed rules and punishment in return for missteps.)

Second, central to this understanding of the cross is the notion of punishment, and central to that notion is the idea that the one meting out punishment is God. Within this paradigm, God is quite unmistakably a God who requires us to follow rules and who is compelled – nay, obliged – to punish us if we infringe them. And when I say punish, I’m not talking about a slap on the wrist. We know what the required punishment for transgression is, because it’s the punishment Jesus supposedly took in our place: death. And not just any old death, but the most gruesome, shameful death imaginable.

If this is how we understand the cross, then, the implication is that God opts to deal with his troublesome children on a transactional basis and decrees death to those who fail to keep their part of the bargain by living up to his impossibly high standards (which is what is usually understood by sin). The only escape is to believe (by which we mean rationally agree) that Jesus took our due punishment at the cross. If we accept that, it’s all good and we’re guaranteed a place in heaven.

I may be caricaturing a little here, but if I am then I’m only doing so to make a point: whether we’re aware of it or not, what we believe about the cross really does have clear, logical implications for what we believe about God. You can wrap it up in warm, fluffy language about love and forgiveness, but make no mistake: what’s inside the wrapper can be deadly.

There are other troubling implications we could draw out of this understanding of the cross, but for the sake of time we’ll confine ourselves to just these two. Let’s move on to briefly consider an alternative understanding of the cross.

Understanding 2: Submission and forgiveness

I used to understand the cross pretty much in the way I’ve described above. Now, however, I see it very differently.

First, for me, the cross is no longer the place where Jesus paid the price for my sin to God in the form of his life. Rather, the cross is the place where Jesus suffered the effects of humanity’s collective besetting sin – the sin of scapegoating violence. The wrath he assuaged by his death was ours, not God’s. The price he paid was the consequence of consistently speaking and living out the truth and refusing to play ball with the religious powers. And he paid it not at God’s hands but at the hands of humanity.

Second, where I used to believe that God’s required default response to sin was punishment, avoidable only by entering into the transaction of believing in Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross, I’m now passionately convinced that God has only one response to sin: forgiveness, full and free. Think about it. Humanity commits the worst possible atrocity, the apogee of violence: it murders God, and it does so in the most shameful and denigrating way possible. And how does God respond? Even as the nails are being driven into his flesh, Jesus responds by praying “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing”. And when Jesus takes everyone by surprise by returning from the grave, he announces not vengeance and the threat of punishment, but shalom. Peace. He absorbs the worst of our sin and recycles it into forgiveness and peace.

The God we see revealed here, then, is a God who, in the words of Brian Zahnd, would rather die than kill his enemies. And he’s a God who would rather freely forgive even the very worst of our inhumanity and brutality than risk seeing us alienated and separated from him.

Do you see how beautiful this is, and how radically opposed it is to the first, more common understanding of the cross we looked at above?

Concluding thoughts

In the title to this post, I posed the question of whether the cross represents religious self-projection or radical discontinuity. I’d like to wrap up by explaining what I meant.

We are a violent race. You only have to look at history, or even at the world today, to see that. And we are hopelessly, thoroughly embedded in a transactional, exchange-based paradigm in which we demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. For all our talk of grace, we are generally so enmeshed in a transactional worldview that we can’t even see it.

This is why I contend that the crime and punishment view set out under Understanding 1 above doesn’t at all reflect what God is actually like. Rather, it is the projection onto God of what we are actually like. The God who engineers and oversees the payment of Jesus’ body and blood to divert his wrath away from his wayward children is not the Abba of Jesus: it is humanity on steroids. That’s what I mean when I say that, understood this way, the cross is a case of religious self-projection.

Conversely, the submission and forgiveness paradigm set out under Understanding 2 looks very different from how we humans typically think and act. It’s a view in which there’s no place for legal transactions; the only exchange on offer is one where we inflict violent death on God and he stubbornly insists on forgiving us and announcing peace to us in return. Far from being a picture of humanity on steroids, this conception of the cross represents a radical departure from the conventional human order of things. The God we see here is one of whom we can truly say that his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).

If we have ears to hear and eyes to see, the cross is the one place where all our false and misleading ideas about both God and ourselves are brought to naught. This can be a painful experience, especially when those ideas are ones we’ve held onto tightly for a long time. But isn’t it better to experience the pain of letting go than to stubbornly hold onto false ideas just because they’re familiar? Only by being prepared to risk letting go of such misconceptions can we gain the fresh ears we need to hear the wondrous news of just how good God really is.

So as Easter slowly approaches and the events of Jesus’ betrayal, suffering and death begin to come into focus, I encourage you to give some serious thought to how you understand the beautiful catastrophe that is the cross of Christ. And as you do so, ask the Father to show you whether you’ve really been seeing his tender, forgiving heart of love, or simply a reflection of your own very human inclinations.