You May Have To Die First
Sermon
And Then Came the Angel
Gospel Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany
"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any [man]. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."1
Those words, spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr., the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, still haunt us. To this day, they generate speculation and debate. Some are convinced that King knew he would be killed. With the kind of turmoil King was creating and the general upheaval that was being witnessed from courthouse squares to college campuses, it doesn't require much imagination to envision a scenario wherein King would be gunned down. King noted on that very night that the "... nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around."2 Others are equally certain that King did not have a premonition about his own death. John Cartwright, who holds the professorship at Boston University which bears King's name, believes that King was not predicting his own death. Rather, according to Cartwright, Dr. King was only aware that the arc of justice is long and that significant changes only happen over an extended period of time. In other words, King knew that his words might articulate the dream, but the reality of the dream might not be experienced until generations later.3
We have debated the same issue with Jesus. Did Jesus know he was going to die? Did God send Jesus to earth to die? Or, as events evolved and pressure mounted, did it then become evident to Jesus that his faithfulness to God may bring about his own death? There are those who believe that Bethlehem and Calvary were interwoven into Jesus' life from the beginning. When John the Baptist declared that Jesus was the Lamb of God, it sounded like Jesus' crucifixion was certain from the outset. In a culture that sacrificed lambs twice a day in the temple, those words are a kiss of death. "Here is the Lamb of God" can be loosely understood to mean, "Hey, look here, everyone, here's the one that is going to be sacrificed." This Lamb of God imagery says something very different from "light of the world" or "bread of life" imagery. Jesus as the light of the world illumines and brings warmth. Jesus as the bread of life satisfies our deepest spiritual and physical hunger. Jesus as the Lamb of God speaks of one who was on his way to the cross.
Leslie Weatherhead disagreed with those who believe Jesus was destined to die on the cross from the beginning, saying that God's plan was for people to follow Jesus, not kill him.4 The purpose of Jesus, from this point of view, was for Jesus to reveal the love of God, teach about God's ways, and proclaim God's rule in the world. The problem with assuming that Jesus was sent to die is that we don't take seriously the subversive nature of Jesus' ministry. Jesus railed against established practices and comfortable people. In the end, Jesus was killed by religious and political leaders who were threatened by his presence. We tend to forget or ignore those parts of the story which show Jesus in trouble. We are more attracted to the feeding of the five thousand than we are to the hometown folks who tried to stone Jesus after he preached a sermon. We are more fond of the woman who pressed through the crowd to touch the hem of Jesus' garment than we are of those who told Jesus to go away.
The arc of justice is long, indeed. Some problems don't seem any closer to being solved now than they ever were. Even when the changes are for the good, there is resistance and opposition from those who are making a huge profit from things being the way they are now. Do you remember that story Luke tells of Jesus healing a demon-possessed man (Luke 8:26-39)? The demons left the man and went into a herd of pigs who proceeded to run over a cliff. Apparently the townspeople were more concerned about who was going to pay for the pigs than they were about the man who had been delivered from his illness. After all, they didn't thank Jesus or have a parade for him. They ran him out of town! Things were changing and people were becoming very frightened. The solution was to get rid of the person behind the changes.
The same thing happened to Paul and Silas. A woman was possessed by some kind of spirit that supposedly gave her psychic powers. Paul and Silas were preaching in the area and this woman became a nuisance. Paul turned to the woman and ordered the spirit to come out of her, and it did! Now, wasn't that good news? No, their actions landed Paul and Silas in jail and nearly got them killed. The people who were making money of this fortune-teller didn't appreciate Paul's healing powers very much (Acts 16:16-24).
We see it everyday. Somebody tries to change the way state government contracts are awarded and before the sun goes down the person has been run out of the capital by those who benefit from the way contracts presently are awarded. We may not be able to find a telephone number to call if we have a problem with a health insurance claim, but when a proposal is on the table to revamp the healthcare system we can bet the insurance companies will be calling us for our support. Everyone wants more facilities to treat troubled children, but when one comes to our neighborhood and threatens to lower our property taxes, we may not favor the facility as much as we once thought we did. It is hard to stomach the fact that not everybody wants people healed and families strengthened and communities restored. Not everybody wants racial harmony and economic equality and matching opportunities.
Some difference is made by our efforts. A foster family welcomes a troubled child into their home and one less child is left to survive our violent streets. A church does ministry with Hispanic migrant workers and at least some strangers are welcomed and loved. A youth group takes part of its summer vacation to rebuild homes and playgrounds among Appalachia's poor. Christians of all races work together to stop the burning of black churches. Men and women gather weekly in Bible study to discern the mind of Christ and to appropriate it for their own lives. Some of our efforts bear fruit. Some positive changes occur. We may never see other changes. The arc of justice, after all, is long, and we are left to decide how important these causes are. Are they important enough for us to give our efforts to them even though we may never benefit from them or see their completion?
We should realize that sometimes in the course of this long arc of justice there is death. Some black preacher from the South, equipped with an advanced degree from one of the North's premier schools, begins preaching and everybody is okay with that. Then the preacher's words lead to bold actions on the part of the people. Established boundaries are challenged. Traditional ways of doing things are questioned. Demands are made. Changes are planned. People don't like what's happening. Maybe they all didn't want Dr. King dead, but those who didn't still wanted to construct obstacles enough to suppress the dream and silence the dreamer.
One minister surrounded himself at the church chancel with children during worship and began to talk to them about the upcoming holiday. When asked whose birthday would be celebrated, the well-informed group responded, "Martin Luther King, Jr." The minister inquired further by asking what kind of work King did. How much prompting it took is not certain, but the answer being fished for was given. "Martin Luther King, Jr., was the minister of a church."
In an attempt to draw an obvious parallel, the minister reminded the gathered faithful that was also his life's work. At that point, with a straightening of the necktie and some posturing which made him look a bit taller and a lot more distinguished, the minister wondered aloud about the possibility of a holiday being named for him. Across a couple of rows of pews came an innocent whisper that must have sounded like Jesus himself: "You have to die first."5
Who knows whether Jesus thought he would die for what he said and did, but either way it didn't seem to get in the way of his faithfulness. There is a price to pay for a faithfulness that challenges corrupt systems and crooked policies, but Jesus didn't flinch from that price. Walter Brueggemann once said that there are two kinds of losers -- those who have given up hope and those who don't want things to be any better than they are right now.6 Those who have given up hope have lost, but often for reasons beyond their control. People who don't want things any better than they are right now know that any change may disrupt the comfortable lifestyles they have built for themselves. Those are the two kinds of losers -- those who have given up hope and those who don't want things to be any better than they are right now. Jesus came for the first kind, offering comfort, peace, and hope. Jesus was killed by the second kind.
Jesus talked about his own suffering, but there is some question whether Jesus saw his death as an intentional sacrifice. Especially in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus' prediction of his own demise seems to have more to do with "what the world does to those who follow God's way ... The world does not love you if you question its ways. It may even kill you...."7 That is not speculation, but a summary of the evidence. Consider those whose lives have been cut short by the assassin's bullet and then ask why.
The Lamb of God has shown us what selfless acts look like, and it is his example that calls us to lose sight of our own lives so that we and all of God's children might know a greater life. We wouldn't expect the call from the Lamb of God to be about anything other than taking up crosses, even when we know that means the death of many things in our lives that we have learned to love. We wouldn't expect the call from the Lamb of God to be about anything other than a painstaking faithfulness that dismisses the popularity we have worked so hard to cultivate over the years. People concerned with remaining popular rarely find time to carry crosses. Dr. King reminded us that we are not fit to live until we have discovered something that we would die for.8
All this seems terribly extreme, especially to those of us who have found the church to be one of the few comfortable places left in the world. In fact, this call to risk it all in the making of a better world will not register with most of us. Yet, in the end, the extent to which love is known in the earth and peace reigns on the earth is directly related to the extent to which we open our lives to the possibility that we too have to die to certain things. God works in the lives of all those who allow it, but our hands and hearts are full of things which get in the way. Sometimes we are the ones who resist and oppose the good that God offers. We must die to those things which nurture a divided devotion. We must refuse to keep company with distracting options.
There is a promised land where people live in peace and fairness with one another. Yet, without a willingness to sacrifice, the best we will ever do is see it from a distance.
____________
1. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 3, 1968 speech, quoted by Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, Codename "Zorro": The Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1977), pp. 116-117.
2. Lane and Gregory, p. 114.
3. John Cartwright, Lecture at Lexington Theological Seminary, Lexington, Kentucky, January, 1996.
4. Leslie Weatherhead, The Will of God (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1944), p. 12.
5. My thanks to Jeff Bell for sharing this personal experience, which I first retold in a sermon published in Biblical Preaching Journal, Summer, 1993.
6. Walter Brueggemann, Leslie R. Smith Lectures in Preaching, Lexington Theological Seminary, Lexington, Kentucky, April, 1992.
7. Joanna Dewey, "An End to Sacrifice," Christianity and Crisis, July 15, 1991, p. 213.
8. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted in James Cone, Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or A Nightmare (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1991), p. 288.
Those words, spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr., the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, still haunt us. To this day, they generate speculation and debate. Some are convinced that King knew he would be killed. With the kind of turmoil King was creating and the general upheaval that was being witnessed from courthouse squares to college campuses, it doesn't require much imagination to envision a scenario wherein King would be gunned down. King noted on that very night that the "... nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around."2 Others are equally certain that King did not have a premonition about his own death. John Cartwright, who holds the professorship at Boston University which bears King's name, believes that King was not predicting his own death. Rather, according to Cartwright, Dr. King was only aware that the arc of justice is long and that significant changes only happen over an extended period of time. In other words, King knew that his words might articulate the dream, but the reality of the dream might not be experienced until generations later.3
We have debated the same issue with Jesus. Did Jesus know he was going to die? Did God send Jesus to earth to die? Or, as events evolved and pressure mounted, did it then become evident to Jesus that his faithfulness to God may bring about his own death? There are those who believe that Bethlehem and Calvary were interwoven into Jesus' life from the beginning. When John the Baptist declared that Jesus was the Lamb of God, it sounded like Jesus' crucifixion was certain from the outset. In a culture that sacrificed lambs twice a day in the temple, those words are a kiss of death. "Here is the Lamb of God" can be loosely understood to mean, "Hey, look here, everyone, here's the one that is going to be sacrificed." This Lamb of God imagery says something very different from "light of the world" or "bread of life" imagery. Jesus as the light of the world illumines and brings warmth. Jesus as the bread of life satisfies our deepest spiritual and physical hunger. Jesus as the Lamb of God speaks of one who was on his way to the cross.
Leslie Weatherhead disagreed with those who believe Jesus was destined to die on the cross from the beginning, saying that God's plan was for people to follow Jesus, not kill him.4 The purpose of Jesus, from this point of view, was for Jesus to reveal the love of God, teach about God's ways, and proclaim God's rule in the world. The problem with assuming that Jesus was sent to die is that we don't take seriously the subversive nature of Jesus' ministry. Jesus railed against established practices and comfortable people. In the end, Jesus was killed by religious and political leaders who were threatened by his presence. We tend to forget or ignore those parts of the story which show Jesus in trouble. We are more attracted to the feeding of the five thousand than we are to the hometown folks who tried to stone Jesus after he preached a sermon. We are more fond of the woman who pressed through the crowd to touch the hem of Jesus' garment than we are of those who told Jesus to go away.
The arc of justice is long, indeed. Some problems don't seem any closer to being solved now than they ever were. Even when the changes are for the good, there is resistance and opposition from those who are making a huge profit from things being the way they are now. Do you remember that story Luke tells of Jesus healing a demon-possessed man (Luke 8:26-39)? The demons left the man and went into a herd of pigs who proceeded to run over a cliff. Apparently the townspeople were more concerned about who was going to pay for the pigs than they were about the man who had been delivered from his illness. After all, they didn't thank Jesus or have a parade for him. They ran him out of town! Things were changing and people were becoming very frightened. The solution was to get rid of the person behind the changes.
The same thing happened to Paul and Silas. A woman was possessed by some kind of spirit that supposedly gave her psychic powers. Paul and Silas were preaching in the area and this woman became a nuisance. Paul turned to the woman and ordered the spirit to come out of her, and it did! Now, wasn't that good news? No, their actions landed Paul and Silas in jail and nearly got them killed. The people who were making money of this fortune-teller didn't appreciate Paul's healing powers very much (Acts 16:16-24).
We see it everyday. Somebody tries to change the way state government contracts are awarded and before the sun goes down the person has been run out of the capital by those who benefit from the way contracts presently are awarded. We may not be able to find a telephone number to call if we have a problem with a health insurance claim, but when a proposal is on the table to revamp the healthcare system we can bet the insurance companies will be calling us for our support. Everyone wants more facilities to treat troubled children, but when one comes to our neighborhood and threatens to lower our property taxes, we may not favor the facility as much as we once thought we did. It is hard to stomach the fact that not everybody wants people healed and families strengthened and communities restored. Not everybody wants racial harmony and economic equality and matching opportunities.
Some difference is made by our efforts. A foster family welcomes a troubled child into their home and one less child is left to survive our violent streets. A church does ministry with Hispanic migrant workers and at least some strangers are welcomed and loved. A youth group takes part of its summer vacation to rebuild homes and playgrounds among Appalachia's poor. Christians of all races work together to stop the burning of black churches. Men and women gather weekly in Bible study to discern the mind of Christ and to appropriate it for their own lives. Some of our efforts bear fruit. Some positive changes occur. We may never see other changes. The arc of justice, after all, is long, and we are left to decide how important these causes are. Are they important enough for us to give our efforts to them even though we may never benefit from them or see their completion?
We should realize that sometimes in the course of this long arc of justice there is death. Some black preacher from the South, equipped with an advanced degree from one of the North's premier schools, begins preaching and everybody is okay with that. Then the preacher's words lead to bold actions on the part of the people. Established boundaries are challenged. Traditional ways of doing things are questioned. Demands are made. Changes are planned. People don't like what's happening. Maybe they all didn't want Dr. King dead, but those who didn't still wanted to construct obstacles enough to suppress the dream and silence the dreamer.
One minister surrounded himself at the church chancel with children during worship and began to talk to them about the upcoming holiday. When asked whose birthday would be celebrated, the well-informed group responded, "Martin Luther King, Jr." The minister inquired further by asking what kind of work King did. How much prompting it took is not certain, but the answer being fished for was given. "Martin Luther King, Jr., was the minister of a church."
In an attempt to draw an obvious parallel, the minister reminded the gathered faithful that was also his life's work. At that point, with a straightening of the necktie and some posturing which made him look a bit taller and a lot more distinguished, the minister wondered aloud about the possibility of a holiday being named for him. Across a couple of rows of pews came an innocent whisper that must have sounded like Jesus himself: "You have to die first."5
Who knows whether Jesus thought he would die for what he said and did, but either way it didn't seem to get in the way of his faithfulness. There is a price to pay for a faithfulness that challenges corrupt systems and crooked policies, but Jesus didn't flinch from that price. Walter Brueggemann once said that there are two kinds of losers -- those who have given up hope and those who don't want things to be any better than they are right now.6 Those who have given up hope have lost, but often for reasons beyond their control. People who don't want things any better than they are right now know that any change may disrupt the comfortable lifestyles they have built for themselves. Those are the two kinds of losers -- those who have given up hope and those who don't want things to be any better than they are right now. Jesus came for the first kind, offering comfort, peace, and hope. Jesus was killed by the second kind.
Jesus talked about his own suffering, but there is some question whether Jesus saw his death as an intentional sacrifice. Especially in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus' prediction of his own demise seems to have more to do with "what the world does to those who follow God's way ... The world does not love you if you question its ways. It may even kill you...."7 That is not speculation, but a summary of the evidence. Consider those whose lives have been cut short by the assassin's bullet and then ask why.
The Lamb of God has shown us what selfless acts look like, and it is his example that calls us to lose sight of our own lives so that we and all of God's children might know a greater life. We wouldn't expect the call from the Lamb of God to be about anything other than taking up crosses, even when we know that means the death of many things in our lives that we have learned to love. We wouldn't expect the call from the Lamb of God to be about anything other than a painstaking faithfulness that dismisses the popularity we have worked so hard to cultivate over the years. People concerned with remaining popular rarely find time to carry crosses. Dr. King reminded us that we are not fit to live until we have discovered something that we would die for.8
All this seems terribly extreme, especially to those of us who have found the church to be one of the few comfortable places left in the world. In fact, this call to risk it all in the making of a better world will not register with most of us. Yet, in the end, the extent to which love is known in the earth and peace reigns on the earth is directly related to the extent to which we open our lives to the possibility that we too have to die to certain things. God works in the lives of all those who allow it, but our hands and hearts are full of things which get in the way. Sometimes we are the ones who resist and oppose the good that God offers. We must die to those things which nurture a divided devotion. We must refuse to keep company with distracting options.
There is a promised land where people live in peace and fairness with one another. Yet, without a willingness to sacrifice, the best we will ever do is see it from a distance.
____________
1. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 3, 1968 speech, quoted by Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, Codename "Zorro": The Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1977), pp. 116-117.
2. Lane and Gregory, p. 114.
3. John Cartwright, Lecture at Lexington Theological Seminary, Lexington, Kentucky, January, 1996.
4. Leslie Weatherhead, The Will of God (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1944), p. 12.
5. My thanks to Jeff Bell for sharing this personal experience, which I first retold in a sermon published in Biblical Preaching Journal, Summer, 1993.
6. Walter Brueggemann, Leslie R. Smith Lectures in Preaching, Lexington Theological Seminary, Lexington, Kentucky, April, 1992.
7. Joanna Dewey, "An End to Sacrifice," Christianity and Crisis, July 15, 1991, p. 213.
8. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted in James Cone, Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or A Nightmare (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1991), p. 288.
