Glory in the cross
Commentary
Constantine Caesar was advancing his legions through the northern Italian mountains toward Rome. Despite his recent military victories in Europe, this was not some triumphal parade preparing to celebrate in the imperial capital. Indeed, his most recent victory had come against Pompeianus, the chief general defending Maxentius Augustus in Rome. Constantine was embroiled in a brutal civil war against Maxentius, and as he advanced against the heavily fortified city of Rome itself the ultimate outcome was anything but certain. Early one afternoon, Constantine saw a vision of a cross in the sky, accompanied by an inscription that read, "HOC SIGNO VICTOR ERIS" ("by this sign you will conquer").
The early church historian Eusebius, who was personally acquainted with Constantine, recounts how the vision had troubled the Caesar:
What could the vision mean? He continued to ponder and to give great thought to the question, and night came on him suddenly. When he was asleep, the Christ of God appeared to him and he brought with him the sign that had appeared in the sky. He ordered Constantine to make a replica of this sign that he had witnessed in the sky, and he was to use it as a protection during his encounters with the enemy.1
It seems likely that the next morning Constantine hurriedly ordered that at least some of his soldiers have this sign of the cross emblazoned on their shields with paint, chalk, or whatever was available. That day, October 28, 312 A.D., they encountered Maxentius and his army at the Milvian Bridge just two miles outside of Rome. The rest, as they say, is history. Constantine defeated Maxentius, and went on to become the sole emperor of the Roman Empire.
So convinced was Constantine that this victory had been secured for him by the Christian God that he personally and genuinely converted to Christianity. He developed a special military standard which "displayed the Christogram (Chi-Rho: the initial letters of Christos) at the summit of the cross, and which became a magical, miraculous amulet, almost the equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant."2 Christianity soon became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and the cross a symbol of its power and glory and of the glory of the God the people of the empire worshiped.
It is no wonder then that the cross is prominently displayed in architecture and stained glass, worn on neck chains as an emblem of authority or as ornamentation, and that people sing in adoration, "I will glory in the cross."
Yes, it is a simple and direct line from the Milvian Bridge to the glorification of the cross within European culture. But the glorification of the cross as the means to military and political power seems light years removed from the reason for celebration given in 1 Peter: "Rejoice insofar as you are sharing in Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed." What can all this talk about the "eternal glory in Christ" have to do with suffering and being "reviled for the name of Christ"?
Acts 1:6-14
Forty days had passed since the first Easter, and six full weeks to the day since the night on which Jesus had been betrayed to those who would nail him to a cross. The glories of encountering the resurrected Christ had by that time seemingly almost erased the horrors of those dark days from the disciples' memories. As recounted in this opening chapter of Acts, their conversations with Christ during this period between Resurrection and Ascension had focused on "the kingdom of God." What had then been the suffering and anguish associated with deep grief and fear had been transformed into triumphalistic expectation - and perhaps even a bit of impatience.
So it is that the lectionary text appointed for this last Sunday of Easter begins with the disciples' query to Jesus: "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?" The unabashed nationalism of that question is not to be overlooked. We must assume that Jesus' discussions on the topic of the "kingdom of God" with the disciples during this period, like his many teaching sessions during his ministry, had sought to lead them to disavow such narrowly partisan messianic expectation. God's kingdom - or better "the Divine reign" - was to be over all of the world and for the benefit of all nations. The coming restoration was not just about Israel, but about all peoples. The evangelists, writing some 40 years after the events of Passion Week, are clear that the decisive proof of this new understanding of messiahship was the cross; the disciples' question on this occasion makes clear that that insight did not take hold in the first 40 days.
Although their wildest dreams could not have imagined a Roman emperor who worshiped the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus, what these disciples were longing for was Constantine Caesar. What they had was Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen one. They wanted the same power to crush their enemies that they had felt used against them. Jesus promised them the power that comes from receiving the Holy Spirit. They wanted to be conquerors of the world. Jesus called them to be "witnesses ... to the ends of the earth."
The disciples' expectations both regarding the timing and the nature of the full realization of God's reign in the world needed correction, but that corrective did not entail a disavowal of glory and hope. Jesus was once again taken from them, but not this time by death. In the imagery of Stephen's later vision and the language of the much later creed, Jesus "ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty." Here was glory far surpassing what any earthly Caesar could attain. Historical clarity, however, will require us to note that precisely the same claim had been made by partisans of Julius Caesar following his death. They claimed that in dying he had been taken up into the heavens to rule with the gods. An important difference was that Jesus' exaltation came not in death but in resurrection. Unlike Caesar, Christ would return. For that reason, the announcement of the "two men in white robes" promised hope to the disciples.
The glory of the cross, seen in this context, is not as a magical talisman to protect us from and empower us to destroy our enemies. The glory of the Crucified is that God has resurrected him from death and restored him to full, intimate communion and fellowship with the Divine. The hope of glory for disciples is not in military or political domination, but in the promise that "this Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way" to bring the disciples of every age into that same uninhibited, eternal fellowship and communion with God (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
The concept of the Christian life as imitatio Christi ("the imitation of Christ") is intrinsically linked with suffering in the closing portions of 1 Peter. The letter shows clear signs of being intended to call Christians to continued faithfulness during a period of intense persecution. The author explicitly tells his readers that this "fiery ordeal" should come as no surprise to them. If the Lord and Savior suffered crucifixion at the hands of those who were opposed to God's reign in the world, then why should they have expected anything different (cf. John 17:14 and 15:18-25)?
What is certainly surprising is the author's insistence that "sharing Christ's sufferings" is a reason to "be glad and [to] shout for joy" (1 Peter 4:13b). This rejoicing in suffering is not, however, some kind of perverse spiritual masochism. Rather it is the response to the revelation of Christ's glory. If they have shared in Christ's suffering, then they like him will also experience "the God of all grace ... who ... will restore, support, strengthen and establish" them (5:10). Glory is not something that one can earn or something that one receives in order to exalt oneself over others. It is instead God's action toward those who place themselves in a relationship of complete dependence upon the Divine (5:6-7).
The glory of the cross is then neither power to turn the tables on one's foes nor the honor that might come by showing tremendous endurance and perseverance in the face of suffering. Glory is not to be found within ourselves at all. The glory of cross is that it is the place where God's abiding love and grace are made manifest both to those who are the recipients of this grace and, as the Gospel Lesson for this Sunday makes clear, also to the whole world.
John 17:1-11
Both the themes of glory and suffering in this world come together as well in the Gospel reading. The context is a prayer that Jesus offers for his disciples gathered around the table just minutes, certainly no more than a couple of hours, before he is betrayed. Jesus refers to his impending arrest, trial and execution as the "hour" (that is, the divinely appointed time) for the events that will reciprocally bring glory both to the Son and the divine Father (17:1).
The narrowly historical question of whether Jesus of Nazareth would have actually spoken these precise words in the hours before his death contributes little to the theological application and understanding of this passage. Like the Greek historian Thucydides writing his History of the Peloponnesian War centuries earlier, the evangelist is less concerned with using this "speech" to record a transcript of what was said than with assuring that his readers would have a proper understanding of the significance of what was transpiring. As mentioned above in dealing with the Acts passage, this evangelist writing more than a generation after the fact understands that Jesus' crucifixion is his moment of glory and that God has underscored this truth by the resurrection and exaltation of the Christ (17:5; cf. John 3:13-15). Nor is this glory reserved to Christ alone. The very purpose of this glorification is so that "all people" might share in the "eternal life" that God has thus given to the Son (17:2-3).
Yet as assuredly as the "hour" of the Son's glorification and entrance into the divine presence has arrived, that "hour" has yet to arrive for the disciples. Christ may "no longer [be] in the world, but they are in the world," and their continuing presence there means that they are in need of protection (17:11). The reason they need this protection is made more explicit later in this prayer (17:14-16), but already in the portion assigned for this Sunday it is clear that this gospel presupposes a marked distinction between those who belong to "the world" and those who belong to the Son and to the Father (17:9).
What will be needed to protect them is a unity that matches the shared unity of the Father and the Son. As is made clear by the final section of this prayer, the basis for this unity is two-fold. First, the Father, Son and those who belong to them are united by the word that has come from God (17:6b-8). Like many of the key terms of this prayer, "word" has been used in a variety of senses within this gospel: teaching, "name," and most notably the eternal Word who was "with God, and ... was God" from the beginning of creation (1:1). At times this evangelist expects his readers to carefully distinguish the differing nuances between his use of terms (cf. the "world" for which God gives the Son in 3:16 with the "world" for whom the Son refuses to even pray here in 17:9b), while at other times he clearly intends the nuances to be held in creative tension (for example, "from above"/"again" as meanings of Greek anothen in 3:3-7). The latter is most likely the case here; the unity of teaching and name with the eternal Word who is the Son is the first key to their abiding relationship with God (17:12).
Second, the disciples are united and protected with one another and with God through the divine love (17:23-24). It is God's abiding love that is stronger than even the horrifying death on the cross that is the true glory that the Father and Son share, and that they will share with those who will yet know suffering in this world.
Application
Suffering certainly was not alien to the cross, not the real crosses of rough-hewn lumber on which the Romans publicly executed those who had committed crimes against the state. Not even the agonizing and gory details of Jesus' own death on the cross - usually now only heard in our churches during the last days of Holy Week - can express the true horror of this means of execution. Jesus, after all, died after only a few hours; the usual course was that death by scourging and crucifixion took several days as the condemned slowly succumbed to the effects of exposure and increasing asphyxiation. Such a death was filled with unimaginable suffering, and totally empty of glory. Can you imagine the gallows or the electric chair as an emblem of authority or a decoration for jewelry?
Yet we have seen in John's Gospel for this Sunday where Jesus himself insists that the hour of his suffering on the cross is the moment of divine glory. "Glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you." How is it possible that God could draw any glory from anyone's suffering on a cross? One answer, classically stated by the medieval theologian Anselm, was that the cross was the means by which the one righteous person was able to satisfy God's just demand for restitution in response to human evil and sin. In this view, God is glorified by upholding divine justice and honor by demanding that the price of death be exacted, and Jesus is glorified by his obedience to God's demand even as he suffered punishment for all in personal innocence.
Such a view of divine glory and justice is not very comforting to us in the modern world, and fortunately it is not the only understanding of the glory of the cross presented to us in the scriptures. The Apostle Paul suggested the glory of the cross resided in the fact that there "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to the divine self" (2 Corinthians 5:19). In this view, God is not standing back demanding that someone satisfy the divine wrath; rather, God in Christ on the cross experiences the depths of human evil and transforms it into redemption. The glory of the cross is that even in what would seem to be the most God-forsaken of all possible deaths, God is in fact present. As Dermot Lane expressed it, "The cross is a kind of 'sacrament of darkness' revealing at one and the same time the depths to which humanity can descend in its orientation towards destruction and the heights to which God can soar in God's capacity to redeem."3
It was not that long ago that some other crosses on a hillside were in our news. Newsweek magazine reported that following the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, "scores of people vented their grief in front of 13 wooden crosses erected on a hill near the school. In a gesture of forgiveness, someone put up two more crosses for the killers. Then a woman scrawled, 'Evil Bastard,' on [one of the shooter's] memorial, and a scuffle broke out. Later, a victim's father removed the two crosses altogether."4 Until we recognize and accept that God suffers not only with the families of the victims but also with the families of the perpetrators, we can never truly understand the glory of the cross.
An Alternative Application
Acts 1:14 concludes with the interesting note that in the days following Jesus' Ascension that "Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers" were among those who were "constantly devoting themselves to prayer" along with the disciples. Their involvement with the first disciples stands in marked contrast to the few mentions of the response of Jesus' immediate family to his ministry as recorded in the Gospels (cf. Mark 3:20-21, Matthew 12:46-50, and John 7:1-10 as examples). On this Mothers' Day, observed as the "Festival of the Christian Home" in some churches, it might be interesting to consider what it takes to hold modern families together in the faith. Some of the gospel passages suggest that it was the very familiarity with Jesus that presented an obstacle to accepting his ministry for his family and neighbors in Nazareth. Apparently it took Jesus' resurrection and glorification at the Ascension to establish his family as believers. Could it be that familiarity with our inconsistency in Christian faithfulness is the obstacle to belief in some of our homes? If so, then we too need to regain the disciplines of waiting for the Spirit and constantly devoting ourselves to prayer that were practiced by these first Christians.
____________
1. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, I.28, cited in Michael Grant, Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993) 140.
2. Ibid., 141.
3. Dermot Lane, Christ at the Center: Selected Issues in Christology (New York: Paulist, 1991) 77.
4. T. Trent Gegax and Matt Bai, "Searching for Answers," Newsweek (133.19; May 10, 1999) 34.
First Lesson Focus
Acts 1:6-14
Perhaps most noteworthy in this particular text is the presence of two divine promises. In verse 8, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you." And in verse 11, "This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." So we have in two verses, God's assurance of two events. First, those who are followers of Jesus Christ and who trust in him, will receive the Holy Spirit, which will furnish them with the power and ability to be his witnesses "to the ends of the earth." We will discuss in next Sunday's exposition how we receive that Spirit. But note that there is no hesitation in the risen Christ's promise. The disciples and we who follow in their faith will receive his Holy Spirit. No doubt about it, no hedging of the assurance, no "maybe" about the assurance. The Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son will be given to us.
Second, the two men in white robes, in verse 10, who are intended in Luke's writings to be messengers from God and whom we commonly call angels (cf. Luke 24:4), promise that Christ will return to his followers as mysteriously as he is taken up from them. In short, the Lord Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, and to establish his kingdom on earth. As Jesus himself predicted (Luke 21:27; cf. Matthew 16:27; 27:64), the kingdom will come and Christ's second coming will inaugurate it. Again, there is no hesitation in the promise. Christ will return. At the end of human history, the kingdom of God will be established. And the whole goal of God's creation and work of salvation is the worldwide founding of that kingdom. As a result, the entire New Testament looks forward to that eschatological event, and the Book of Revelation pictorially portrays its realization.
Significantly, Jesus' ascension to the Father takes place on the Mount of Olives, which is the high hill to the east of Jerusalem that rises some 230 feet above the Temple Mount in the Holy City. Jesus prayed there in its Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36; Mark 14:32; Luke 22:39-46), and he lodged in Bethany on its lower eastern slope (Matthew 21:17). But most important in relation to the Ascension is that the Mount of Olives formed Jerusalem's watchtower. Every approach to the city from Transjordan or from north or south could be seen from it. It was on the mount that the prophet Ezekiel portrayed the glory of the Lord resting, before departing from a sinful Jerusalem (Ezekiel 11:23), but it was from the same mount on the east that both Second Isaiah and Ezekiel saw the Lord's return (Ezekiel 43:2; Isaiah 40). And accompanying that return both Second Isaiah and Zechariah envisioned the leveling of the mount (Isaiah 40; Zechariah 14:4, 10). God's exit from and return to Jerusalem occurred or would occur, according to prophecy, in connection with the Mount of Olives, a fact perhaps not unmarked by Luke as he wrote his Acts account.
So that little band of 11 apostles, on the Mount of Olives, who witnessed the risen Lord's ascension to the Father, had two promises on which to found their lives and hope. They would receive the Holy Spirit of power, equipping them for their mission of evangelism. And Christ would return in the future to establish the Kingdom of God.
Their reaction to the ascension and to those promises is therefore most noteworthy for us. They returned to Jerusalem from the mount, as their Lord had commanded them (Acts 1:4) and dwelt together in an upper room. There they devoted themselves to prayer and waited.
Luke carefully lists the 11 apostles' names for us - 11 only because Judas Iscariot betrayed his Lord and died. (In 1:15-26, Judas will shortly be replaced by Matthias, to bring the number of apostles again to 12). Noteworthy, however, with the disciples is the presence of "the women" who had been the first witnesses of the resurrection (Luke 24:1-11), and Jesus' mother Mary, plus his brothers. The first circle of those who are to receive the Holy Spirit and who are to be Christ's witnesses "to the end of the earth" is not limited to 12 male apostles. It includes females, who we are told by Paul, became leaders of some of his churches (cf. Romans 16), and it includes all of the little group who number themselves among Jesus' followers, even Peter who denied his Lord on the eve of the Crucifixion (Luke 22:54-62). That gives us hope, does it not, that you and I also might be recipients of the Spirit of power?
But note what that little group of Christ's faithful followers are doing, according to our text. First, they have formed a company, a community, the forerunner of the first Christian church. They are not individuals, each pursuing his or her religious experiences and vocation on their own. They are bound together by their common faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, as we in our church are bound together. The Christian faith is lived in community with our fellow Christians or it is not lived at all.
Second, that little group, our forerunners in the faith, devote themselves "with one accord" to prayer. That is, they turn their hearts and thoughts to God. They open themselves to whatever God will do with them. And they expect God to act. They cling to the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit from Christ, and they wait in certainty to receive him. There is no notice of their pleading for that gift, no mention of any petition. Instead there is just openness and expectation, built on the promise of God.
Well, you and I have received many promises from our Lord, and one of them is the promise of the Spirit. In faith, in openness, in expectation, let us be ready to receive him.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
At first reading, this psalm presents a scattering of themes. Some scholars think it wasn't a psalm at all, but a listing of headings to a number of liturgical pieces. Most, however, see in Psalm 68 an underlying theme of the victory and reign of God, the Divine Warrior, the God who was with the people of Israel in the wilderness (v. 7). Psalm 68 calls the kingdoms of the world to acknowledge that God is the warrior king who reigns over all and presents God as the power and strength of his people.
A preaching entry point may be found in verse 4, the God who "rides upon the clouds." This idea is repeated in verse 33, "O rider in the heavens, the ancient heavens," and together the two verses serve to bracket the content of this psalm. This title of cloud-rider represents a giant step away from idolatry for Israel, for according to cuneiform tablets from the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit, that title usually belongs to Baal, the storm-god, who does battle with primal forces to restore fertility to the earth. But in this psalm, the people of Israel assert that Elohim is in control of even that function. From God, not Baal, comes "rain in abundance," which is "showered abroad" (vv. 8-9), but the rebellious live in a parched land (v. 6). Thus as worshipers of Elohim, the people of Israel had no need for lesser gods to care for matters of fecundity. Regrettably, they did not always live up to the high concept of this psalm, but some at least, the psalm shows us, understood it.
This psalm could be the basis of a sermon on our image of God and the lesser "gods" (fate, luck, deservedness) we sometimes credit with good outcomes in our lives. All good comes from the Lord God, this psalm insists, and nowhere else.
The early church historian Eusebius, who was personally acquainted with Constantine, recounts how the vision had troubled the Caesar:
What could the vision mean? He continued to ponder and to give great thought to the question, and night came on him suddenly. When he was asleep, the Christ of God appeared to him and he brought with him the sign that had appeared in the sky. He ordered Constantine to make a replica of this sign that he had witnessed in the sky, and he was to use it as a protection during his encounters with the enemy.1
It seems likely that the next morning Constantine hurriedly ordered that at least some of his soldiers have this sign of the cross emblazoned on their shields with paint, chalk, or whatever was available. That day, October 28, 312 A.D., they encountered Maxentius and his army at the Milvian Bridge just two miles outside of Rome. The rest, as they say, is history. Constantine defeated Maxentius, and went on to become the sole emperor of the Roman Empire.
So convinced was Constantine that this victory had been secured for him by the Christian God that he personally and genuinely converted to Christianity. He developed a special military standard which "displayed the Christogram (Chi-Rho: the initial letters of Christos) at the summit of the cross, and which became a magical, miraculous amulet, almost the equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant."2 Christianity soon became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and the cross a symbol of its power and glory and of the glory of the God the people of the empire worshiped.
It is no wonder then that the cross is prominently displayed in architecture and stained glass, worn on neck chains as an emblem of authority or as ornamentation, and that people sing in adoration, "I will glory in the cross."
Yes, it is a simple and direct line from the Milvian Bridge to the glorification of the cross within European culture. But the glorification of the cross as the means to military and political power seems light years removed from the reason for celebration given in 1 Peter: "Rejoice insofar as you are sharing in Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed." What can all this talk about the "eternal glory in Christ" have to do with suffering and being "reviled for the name of Christ"?
Acts 1:6-14
Forty days had passed since the first Easter, and six full weeks to the day since the night on which Jesus had been betrayed to those who would nail him to a cross. The glories of encountering the resurrected Christ had by that time seemingly almost erased the horrors of those dark days from the disciples' memories. As recounted in this opening chapter of Acts, their conversations with Christ during this period between Resurrection and Ascension had focused on "the kingdom of God." What had then been the suffering and anguish associated with deep grief and fear had been transformed into triumphalistic expectation - and perhaps even a bit of impatience.
So it is that the lectionary text appointed for this last Sunday of Easter begins with the disciples' query to Jesus: "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?" The unabashed nationalism of that question is not to be overlooked. We must assume that Jesus' discussions on the topic of the "kingdom of God" with the disciples during this period, like his many teaching sessions during his ministry, had sought to lead them to disavow such narrowly partisan messianic expectation. God's kingdom - or better "the Divine reign" - was to be over all of the world and for the benefit of all nations. The coming restoration was not just about Israel, but about all peoples. The evangelists, writing some 40 years after the events of Passion Week, are clear that the decisive proof of this new understanding of messiahship was the cross; the disciples' question on this occasion makes clear that that insight did not take hold in the first 40 days.
Although their wildest dreams could not have imagined a Roman emperor who worshiped the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus, what these disciples were longing for was Constantine Caesar. What they had was Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen one. They wanted the same power to crush their enemies that they had felt used against them. Jesus promised them the power that comes from receiving the Holy Spirit. They wanted to be conquerors of the world. Jesus called them to be "witnesses ... to the ends of the earth."
The disciples' expectations both regarding the timing and the nature of the full realization of God's reign in the world needed correction, but that corrective did not entail a disavowal of glory and hope. Jesus was once again taken from them, but not this time by death. In the imagery of Stephen's later vision and the language of the much later creed, Jesus "ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty." Here was glory far surpassing what any earthly Caesar could attain. Historical clarity, however, will require us to note that precisely the same claim had been made by partisans of Julius Caesar following his death. They claimed that in dying he had been taken up into the heavens to rule with the gods. An important difference was that Jesus' exaltation came not in death but in resurrection. Unlike Caesar, Christ would return. For that reason, the announcement of the "two men in white robes" promised hope to the disciples.
The glory of the cross, seen in this context, is not as a magical talisman to protect us from and empower us to destroy our enemies. The glory of the Crucified is that God has resurrected him from death and restored him to full, intimate communion and fellowship with the Divine. The hope of glory for disciples is not in military or political domination, but in the promise that "this Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way" to bring the disciples of every age into that same uninhibited, eternal fellowship and communion with God (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
The concept of the Christian life as imitatio Christi ("the imitation of Christ") is intrinsically linked with suffering in the closing portions of 1 Peter. The letter shows clear signs of being intended to call Christians to continued faithfulness during a period of intense persecution. The author explicitly tells his readers that this "fiery ordeal" should come as no surprise to them. If the Lord and Savior suffered crucifixion at the hands of those who were opposed to God's reign in the world, then why should they have expected anything different (cf. John 17:14 and 15:18-25)?
What is certainly surprising is the author's insistence that "sharing Christ's sufferings" is a reason to "be glad and [to] shout for joy" (1 Peter 4:13b). This rejoicing in suffering is not, however, some kind of perverse spiritual masochism. Rather it is the response to the revelation of Christ's glory. If they have shared in Christ's suffering, then they like him will also experience "the God of all grace ... who ... will restore, support, strengthen and establish" them (5:10). Glory is not something that one can earn or something that one receives in order to exalt oneself over others. It is instead God's action toward those who place themselves in a relationship of complete dependence upon the Divine (5:6-7).
The glory of the cross is then neither power to turn the tables on one's foes nor the honor that might come by showing tremendous endurance and perseverance in the face of suffering. Glory is not to be found within ourselves at all. The glory of cross is that it is the place where God's abiding love and grace are made manifest both to those who are the recipients of this grace and, as the Gospel Lesson for this Sunday makes clear, also to the whole world.
John 17:1-11
Both the themes of glory and suffering in this world come together as well in the Gospel reading. The context is a prayer that Jesus offers for his disciples gathered around the table just minutes, certainly no more than a couple of hours, before he is betrayed. Jesus refers to his impending arrest, trial and execution as the "hour" (that is, the divinely appointed time) for the events that will reciprocally bring glory both to the Son and the divine Father (17:1).
The narrowly historical question of whether Jesus of Nazareth would have actually spoken these precise words in the hours before his death contributes little to the theological application and understanding of this passage. Like the Greek historian Thucydides writing his History of the Peloponnesian War centuries earlier, the evangelist is less concerned with using this "speech" to record a transcript of what was said than with assuring that his readers would have a proper understanding of the significance of what was transpiring. As mentioned above in dealing with the Acts passage, this evangelist writing more than a generation after the fact understands that Jesus' crucifixion is his moment of glory and that God has underscored this truth by the resurrection and exaltation of the Christ (17:5; cf. John 3:13-15). Nor is this glory reserved to Christ alone. The very purpose of this glorification is so that "all people" might share in the "eternal life" that God has thus given to the Son (17:2-3).
Yet as assuredly as the "hour" of the Son's glorification and entrance into the divine presence has arrived, that "hour" has yet to arrive for the disciples. Christ may "no longer [be] in the world, but they are in the world," and their continuing presence there means that they are in need of protection (17:11). The reason they need this protection is made more explicit later in this prayer (17:14-16), but already in the portion assigned for this Sunday it is clear that this gospel presupposes a marked distinction between those who belong to "the world" and those who belong to the Son and to the Father (17:9).
What will be needed to protect them is a unity that matches the shared unity of the Father and the Son. As is made clear by the final section of this prayer, the basis for this unity is two-fold. First, the Father, Son and those who belong to them are united by the word that has come from God (17:6b-8). Like many of the key terms of this prayer, "word" has been used in a variety of senses within this gospel: teaching, "name," and most notably the eternal Word who was "with God, and ... was God" from the beginning of creation (1:1). At times this evangelist expects his readers to carefully distinguish the differing nuances between his use of terms (cf. the "world" for which God gives the Son in 3:16 with the "world" for whom the Son refuses to even pray here in 17:9b), while at other times he clearly intends the nuances to be held in creative tension (for example, "from above"/"again" as meanings of Greek anothen in 3:3-7). The latter is most likely the case here; the unity of teaching and name with the eternal Word who is the Son is the first key to their abiding relationship with God (17:12).
Second, the disciples are united and protected with one another and with God through the divine love (17:23-24). It is God's abiding love that is stronger than even the horrifying death on the cross that is the true glory that the Father and Son share, and that they will share with those who will yet know suffering in this world.
Application
Suffering certainly was not alien to the cross, not the real crosses of rough-hewn lumber on which the Romans publicly executed those who had committed crimes against the state. Not even the agonizing and gory details of Jesus' own death on the cross - usually now only heard in our churches during the last days of Holy Week - can express the true horror of this means of execution. Jesus, after all, died after only a few hours; the usual course was that death by scourging and crucifixion took several days as the condemned slowly succumbed to the effects of exposure and increasing asphyxiation. Such a death was filled with unimaginable suffering, and totally empty of glory. Can you imagine the gallows or the electric chair as an emblem of authority or a decoration for jewelry?
Yet we have seen in John's Gospel for this Sunday where Jesus himself insists that the hour of his suffering on the cross is the moment of divine glory. "Glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you." How is it possible that God could draw any glory from anyone's suffering on a cross? One answer, classically stated by the medieval theologian Anselm, was that the cross was the means by which the one righteous person was able to satisfy God's just demand for restitution in response to human evil and sin. In this view, God is glorified by upholding divine justice and honor by demanding that the price of death be exacted, and Jesus is glorified by his obedience to God's demand even as he suffered punishment for all in personal innocence.
Such a view of divine glory and justice is not very comforting to us in the modern world, and fortunately it is not the only understanding of the glory of the cross presented to us in the scriptures. The Apostle Paul suggested the glory of the cross resided in the fact that there "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to the divine self" (2 Corinthians 5:19). In this view, God is not standing back demanding that someone satisfy the divine wrath; rather, God in Christ on the cross experiences the depths of human evil and transforms it into redemption. The glory of the cross is that even in what would seem to be the most God-forsaken of all possible deaths, God is in fact present. As Dermot Lane expressed it, "The cross is a kind of 'sacrament of darkness' revealing at one and the same time the depths to which humanity can descend in its orientation towards destruction and the heights to which God can soar in God's capacity to redeem."3
It was not that long ago that some other crosses on a hillside were in our news. Newsweek magazine reported that following the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, "scores of people vented their grief in front of 13 wooden crosses erected on a hill near the school. In a gesture of forgiveness, someone put up two more crosses for the killers. Then a woman scrawled, 'Evil Bastard,' on [one of the shooter's] memorial, and a scuffle broke out. Later, a victim's father removed the two crosses altogether."4 Until we recognize and accept that God suffers not only with the families of the victims but also with the families of the perpetrators, we can never truly understand the glory of the cross.
An Alternative Application
Acts 1:14 concludes with the interesting note that in the days following Jesus' Ascension that "Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers" were among those who were "constantly devoting themselves to prayer" along with the disciples. Their involvement with the first disciples stands in marked contrast to the few mentions of the response of Jesus' immediate family to his ministry as recorded in the Gospels (cf. Mark 3:20-21, Matthew 12:46-50, and John 7:1-10 as examples). On this Mothers' Day, observed as the "Festival of the Christian Home" in some churches, it might be interesting to consider what it takes to hold modern families together in the faith. Some of the gospel passages suggest that it was the very familiarity with Jesus that presented an obstacle to accepting his ministry for his family and neighbors in Nazareth. Apparently it took Jesus' resurrection and glorification at the Ascension to establish his family as believers. Could it be that familiarity with our inconsistency in Christian faithfulness is the obstacle to belief in some of our homes? If so, then we too need to regain the disciplines of waiting for the Spirit and constantly devoting ourselves to prayer that were practiced by these first Christians.
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1. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, I.28, cited in Michael Grant, Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993) 140.
2. Ibid., 141.
3. Dermot Lane, Christ at the Center: Selected Issues in Christology (New York: Paulist, 1991) 77.
4. T. Trent Gegax and Matt Bai, "Searching for Answers," Newsweek (133.19; May 10, 1999) 34.
First Lesson Focus
Acts 1:6-14
Perhaps most noteworthy in this particular text is the presence of two divine promises. In verse 8, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you." And in verse 11, "This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." So we have in two verses, God's assurance of two events. First, those who are followers of Jesus Christ and who trust in him, will receive the Holy Spirit, which will furnish them with the power and ability to be his witnesses "to the ends of the earth." We will discuss in next Sunday's exposition how we receive that Spirit. But note that there is no hesitation in the risen Christ's promise. The disciples and we who follow in their faith will receive his Holy Spirit. No doubt about it, no hedging of the assurance, no "maybe" about the assurance. The Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son will be given to us.
Second, the two men in white robes, in verse 10, who are intended in Luke's writings to be messengers from God and whom we commonly call angels (cf. Luke 24:4), promise that Christ will return to his followers as mysteriously as he is taken up from them. In short, the Lord Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, and to establish his kingdom on earth. As Jesus himself predicted (Luke 21:27; cf. Matthew 16:27; 27:64), the kingdom will come and Christ's second coming will inaugurate it. Again, there is no hesitation in the promise. Christ will return. At the end of human history, the kingdom of God will be established. And the whole goal of God's creation and work of salvation is the worldwide founding of that kingdom. As a result, the entire New Testament looks forward to that eschatological event, and the Book of Revelation pictorially portrays its realization.
Significantly, Jesus' ascension to the Father takes place on the Mount of Olives, which is the high hill to the east of Jerusalem that rises some 230 feet above the Temple Mount in the Holy City. Jesus prayed there in its Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36; Mark 14:32; Luke 22:39-46), and he lodged in Bethany on its lower eastern slope (Matthew 21:17). But most important in relation to the Ascension is that the Mount of Olives formed Jerusalem's watchtower. Every approach to the city from Transjordan or from north or south could be seen from it. It was on the mount that the prophet Ezekiel portrayed the glory of the Lord resting, before departing from a sinful Jerusalem (Ezekiel 11:23), but it was from the same mount on the east that both Second Isaiah and Ezekiel saw the Lord's return (Ezekiel 43:2; Isaiah 40). And accompanying that return both Second Isaiah and Zechariah envisioned the leveling of the mount (Isaiah 40; Zechariah 14:4, 10). God's exit from and return to Jerusalem occurred or would occur, according to prophecy, in connection with the Mount of Olives, a fact perhaps not unmarked by Luke as he wrote his Acts account.
So that little band of 11 apostles, on the Mount of Olives, who witnessed the risen Lord's ascension to the Father, had two promises on which to found their lives and hope. They would receive the Holy Spirit of power, equipping them for their mission of evangelism. And Christ would return in the future to establish the Kingdom of God.
Their reaction to the ascension and to those promises is therefore most noteworthy for us. They returned to Jerusalem from the mount, as their Lord had commanded them (Acts 1:4) and dwelt together in an upper room. There they devoted themselves to prayer and waited.
Luke carefully lists the 11 apostles' names for us - 11 only because Judas Iscariot betrayed his Lord and died. (In 1:15-26, Judas will shortly be replaced by Matthias, to bring the number of apostles again to 12). Noteworthy, however, with the disciples is the presence of "the women" who had been the first witnesses of the resurrection (Luke 24:1-11), and Jesus' mother Mary, plus his brothers. The first circle of those who are to receive the Holy Spirit and who are to be Christ's witnesses "to the end of the earth" is not limited to 12 male apostles. It includes females, who we are told by Paul, became leaders of some of his churches (cf. Romans 16), and it includes all of the little group who number themselves among Jesus' followers, even Peter who denied his Lord on the eve of the Crucifixion (Luke 22:54-62). That gives us hope, does it not, that you and I also might be recipients of the Spirit of power?
But note what that little group of Christ's faithful followers are doing, according to our text. First, they have formed a company, a community, the forerunner of the first Christian church. They are not individuals, each pursuing his or her religious experiences and vocation on their own. They are bound together by their common faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, as we in our church are bound together. The Christian faith is lived in community with our fellow Christians or it is not lived at all.
Second, that little group, our forerunners in the faith, devote themselves "with one accord" to prayer. That is, they turn their hearts and thoughts to God. They open themselves to whatever God will do with them. And they expect God to act. They cling to the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit from Christ, and they wait in certainty to receive him. There is no notice of their pleading for that gift, no mention of any petition. Instead there is just openness and expectation, built on the promise of God.
Well, you and I have received many promises from our Lord, and one of them is the promise of the Spirit. In faith, in openness, in expectation, let us be ready to receive him.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
At first reading, this psalm presents a scattering of themes. Some scholars think it wasn't a psalm at all, but a listing of headings to a number of liturgical pieces. Most, however, see in Psalm 68 an underlying theme of the victory and reign of God, the Divine Warrior, the God who was with the people of Israel in the wilderness (v. 7). Psalm 68 calls the kingdoms of the world to acknowledge that God is the warrior king who reigns over all and presents God as the power and strength of his people.
A preaching entry point may be found in verse 4, the God who "rides upon the clouds." This idea is repeated in verse 33, "O rider in the heavens, the ancient heavens," and together the two verses serve to bracket the content of this psalm. This title of cloud-rider represents a giant step away from idolatry for Israel, for according to cuneiform tablets from the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit, that title usually belongs to Baal, the storm-god, who does battle with primal forces to restore fertility to the earth. But in this psalm, the people of Israel assert that Elohim is in control of even that function. From God, not Baal, comes "rain in abundance," which is "showered abroad" (vv. 8-9), but the rebellious live in a parched land (v. 6). Thus as worshipers of Elohim, the people of Israel had no need for lesser gods to care for matters of fecundity. Regrettably, they did not always live up to the high concept of this psalm, but some at least, the psalm shows us, understood it.
This psalm could be the basis of a sermon on our image of God and the lesser "gods" (fate, luck, deservedness) we sometimes credit with good outcomes in our lives. All good comes from the Lord God, this psalm insists, and nowhere else.
