The Magnetic Cross - Rev. William Kemp (ret.) in the pulpit

Jeremiah 31:31-34 & John 12: 20-33
5th Sunday of Lent

A couple of Sundays ago, Elizabeth likened the cross to the electric chair. That’s an apt analogy because the cross was the Roman means of execution during the time of Jesus. The state of Florida has had its problems with electric chairs (remember “Old Sparky”?) but now we have a more humane form of execution -- lethal injections. (I hope you don’t miss my sarcasm.) Of course in days gone by and in other cultures, hanging and the firing squad had their day. They all do the same thing, though we would never do with them what we do with the cross.
We decorate the cross and wear it as jewelry. We recently visited my sister and her husband who are wintering in New Smyrna Beach. Since our time coincided with Bike Week in Daytona, we ambled up the road to see what all the excitement was about. We saw more crosses than I ever imagined I would, all on people who would not likely brighten the door of any church. Many of them were very large tattoos. Some, no doubt, would be tattooed in places where we dare not look. The Celtic Cross is commonly found in churches of the Reformed tradition. And you always find a Crucifix in a Roman Catholic Church. And, denominations morph the cross into their contemporary logos.
So why would we wear a cross around our necks, but never an electric chair?
“Jesus said, ‘And I, as I am lifted up from the earth, will attract everyone to me and gather them around me.’ He put it this way to show how he was going to be put to death.”[i]
The cross is like a magnet. As people of faith, we are drawn to it. I suspect, however, that we don’t feel drawn to the electric chair or to a needle dosed with a lethal chemical. Why? Admitting that all analogies break down, let me try this on for size. I think it has to do with polarity. I don’t remember much about my high school physics class, but I do remember as a child playing with two little Scotty dogs that were magnets. Depending on the orientation of the magnetic poles, they would either be attracted to each other or one would run away from the other. Remember, the old adage is that opposites attract and, conversely, likes run away each other.
We run away from other forms of execution because in them we see a reflection of ourselves, and a truth about ourselves that we do not like – we can be very malicious and vindictive. Vengeance may belong to the Lord,[ii] says the scripture, but we want to get our licks in, too.
Does it seem to you, as it does to me, that Since September 11, 2001, the people of our nation have not been as angry as they are now? The media call it “populist rage.” Everybody’s looking for someone to blame for the mess we’re in. Who is it? Wall Street? Big banks? Greedy CEOs? The Congress? The President? The former President? Bernard Madoff? Arthur Nadel? We want them to pay for their misdeeds. We want to get even. No, we wouldn’t seriously consider execution, but some executives of AIG have needed police protection.
There is such a thing as righteous anger. Anger can be healthy, but it depends how you direct it. I talked with a man this past week who was seething with anger over the current economic conditions. At one point it sounded as if he was coming off his hinges. It wasn’t as if he had lost his job or his home. He’s been retired for several years, has a good pension and lives a good life. But his portfolio isn’t what it used to be and the future has become so unpredictable. His misdirected anger is the kind that eats away at one’s insides.
The Dalai Lama and an Indian psychoanalyst held a public dialogue in which the subject of hate arose. The psychoanalyst said that a healthy person should be able both to hate and to transcend hating. The Dalai Lama said that was not the Buddhist view, and he told a story about a man who had been imprisoned in Tibet and tortured by the Chinese. After he got out, the man told the Dalai Lama that on two occasions things had gotten very bad in prison. Had he been close to death? the Dalai Lama asked. “No,” the man responded. “Twice I almost hated the Chinese!”[iii] If hatred is not in the Buddhist tradition, it can hardly be in the Christian tradition.
We are attracted to the cross because we are its polar opposite. Yes, the cross is just as much an expression of our hatred as other forms of execution. Remember we all had our hands on that hammer. We can’t blame the Romans, or the Jews. We all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.”[iv] But on the cross, we see so much more than the reflection of ourselves. Unlike the electric chair, we know the cross is not the end of the story. Therefore, we dare to embrace it or, as the old hymn sings, We cling to the old rugged Cross, an emblem of suffering and shame.
Susan Andrews is a former moderator of our church’s General Assembly. In a recent issue of The Christian Century she reflects on one of her pastorates where the Presbyterian congregation she served shared worship space with a Jewish congregation. They discovered they had much in common, but there was one area where they differed sharply. She writes:
During a seminar, I asked the Jews in the room to suggest images that came to mind when they heard the word cross. They answered, “Pain, prejudice, Holocaust, suffering, hate, punishment.” I then asked the Christians, and their responses were “love, forgiveness, mercy, grace, salvation, rebirth.” We had uncovered the central truth of the gospel: what the world sees as bad, we Christians claim as good because God can transform the blood of passion into the beauty of passion – and life has the last word.[v]
Ernest Hemingway tells the story of a Spanish father who wanted to be reconciled with his son who ran away from home to the city of Madrid. The father misses the son and puts an advertisement in the local newspaper. The advertisement read, “Paco, meet me at the Hotel Montana at noon on Tuesday. All is forgiven! Love, Papa.”
Paco is such a common name in Spain that when the father went to the Hotel Montana the next day at noon there were 800 young men named Paco waiting for their fathers![vi] That’s just how desperate all of us are for forgiveness, the kind that is found only at the cross.
We are also desperate to discover how to find life, real life. Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”[vii] He wasn’t spouting off some esoteric philosophy, nor was he suggesting that we must beat ourselves up. I believe he does mean to suggest that we learn the world doesn’t revolve around ourselves. “It’s not about me!” It is forgetting about me so we can discover the joy of serving others in the name of Christ.
In his classic book, The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen asks: “Who can save a child from a burning building without taking the risk of being hurt by the flames?” Who, indeed? But firefighters take that risk every day.
Perhaps you saw the story on the Today Show this past week. I the city of Boston in November, 1968, a firefighter rushed into a burning house and rescued a little baby and breathed the breath of life into her. What’s the big deal? During the 1960’s racial tensions were about as bad as they ever have been, not only in Boston, but throughout the nation. William Carroll was white, and the baby, Evangeline Harper (now Anderson) was an African American.
Over forty years later, William and Evangeline were reunited and a new friendship has blossomed. What’s the big deal? Morning television was liberated from so many frivolous stories and the world saw a contemporary example of real life. Not only did William risk his physical life in the rescue, he risked whatever false idea he may have had about the superiority of one race over another and discovered the bond of our common humanity. By the way, Evangeline literally means good news.
I must share with you something I discovered on the internet this past week which is rather astounding. As in everything astounding from the internet, I was immediately suspicious. Since it concerns the human body I checked it out with a doctor. He said it was for real.
It concerns a substance called laminin. which is a protein molecule that is a major component of human cells. It’s like the glue that keeps each cell together and binds each cell to others. Laminins are an integral part of the structural scaffolding in humans and almost every animal tissue. Laminin is vital to making sure overall body structures hold together.
When you see laminin under an electron microscope it is shaped like a cross and has four arms that are designed to bind to four other molecules. The three shorter arms are particularly good at binding to other laminin molecules, which is what makes it capable of binding to cells, which helps anchor the actual organs to the membrane. [A picture cannot be included in this format. Readers who are interested should Google laminin and see what I mean.]
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians we read: “[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”[viii]
In Christ Jesus, all things hold together. He is the glue, the laminin that keeps each one of us from coming off our hinges . He is the laminin that binds us together with every other person on the planet. That’s why he is the hope of the world.
The prophet Jeremiah promised that “the days are surely coming when the Lord will make a new covenant with us and write his law upon our hearts.” When will those days come? No one knows, but there is much in scripture to suggest that such new life can begin right now for each one of us. Today we hear Jesus say “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” but just a few chapters earlier when some of his followers urged him to “show yourself to the world,” Jesus said, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here.”[ix] A few chapters before that he tells the Samaritan woman at the well, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.”[x] I think of that every evening when I hear Brian Williams say, “Nightly News begins now.” Our time is always now.
Some years ago a colleague of mine introduced me to a song that seems to fit today’s texts. I invite you to remain seated as you listen to Stephen Iverson sing. As you become comfortable with the tune, quietly sing along and allow the words to be etched upon your hearts. They really are quite simple:
The time has come,
the time is now.
To stop, feel
the pull of the Lord.
O Shepherd, speak to me.


[i] John 12:33, The Message
[ii] Deuteronomy 32:35 and Romans 12:19
[iii] Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Winter – quoted in Christian Century, 3/24/09, p8
[iv] Romans 3:23
[v] March 24, 2009, p. 21
[vi] Told by Tom Tewell, excerpted from a 30 Good Minutes broadcast in 2003
[vii] John 12:24-25
[viii] Colossians 1:15-17
[ix] See John 7:1-13
[x] John 4:23

"The Risk of Separating Faith and Works" - Rev. Elizabeth Deibert

John 3:16-21 & James 2:14-18 4th Sunday of Lent

(A Dialogue Sermon By Elizabeth M. Deibert and Richard I. Deibert.)

Does it really matter how you live?

Just as long as you’ve put your faith in Jesus Christ, you’re okay, you’re saved,
you’re promised eternal life – now and forever. Once saved, always saved.
Unconditional love of God. It’s all good. You’ve got faith. God forgives. We
Protestants have always emphasized, “sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura (faith
alone, grace alone, scripture alone). Some of you can even remember the day you
committed your life to Jesus. Others of you have had a growing commitment since
childhood. Some of you could sing a Christianized version of the song the
Monkees made famous: “Then I saw Christ’s face... and I’m a believer. Not a
trace.... of doubt in my mind.” I’m a believer. I’ve invited Jesus into my heart.
I’m forgiven. No worries. Life is good. Got my ticket to the afterlife.

Wait a minute! That’s not only ridiculous, it’s heretical. Just mouth the right
words and — POOF! — instant salvation. Nothing required by the believer. No
work involved in your salvation. Just say something simple about Jesus and
eternal life is yours. That’s a rationalistic Protestant distortion of God’s grace.

I was wondering how long I could go on before you interrupted. I just love
getting your theological goat.

But this is serious stuff. We’ve turned salvation into a cheap flea market barter:
just ask Jesus into your life and your sins are cleansed for eternity. It’s that cheap.
Nothing else is necessary. No sorrow, no self-examination, no surrender, no hard
work, no obedience.

But Paul the Apostle, whom you studied for six years says, in chapter 3 of Romans
(NLT Romans 3:28), “So we are made right with God through faith and not by
obeying the law.” He says (NLT Romans 3:20), “No one can ever be made right
with God by doing what the law commands.”

But Paul’s the one who commands us to “Work out — bring about, produce —
your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2.12). And earlier in
your favorite letter to the Romans, Paul says, “Do you not realize God’s kindness
is meant to lead you to repentance ... God will judge everyone according to what
they have done. God will give eternal life to those who keep on doing good”
(NLT, Romans 2:4,6-7).

Now that you mention eternal life, we’d better get on with reading my text for
today – John 3:16 and following. I mean this is it: the most popular, most quoted
single verse in all of scripture – John 3:16. The power of believing. Though I do
wish people who are so quick to judge others, so eager to take credit for their faith,
which is a gift from God, would remember verse 17, because Christ came to save
the whole world – not just them. Christ did not come to condemn us.
John 3:16-21

Faith and works. Which is most important? Maybe it’s like the chicken and the
egg. Which comes first? There are a lot of chickens in that scene and only one
egg. Sometimes it seems like there’s a lot of professed faith around and not so
much work to support the words. You gotta walk the talk. I gotta practice what I
preach, and sometimes that doesn’t work out so well.

Yep, sometimes you preach a lot better than you practice.

And sometimes you talk it better than you walk it. Same is true for them. Faith
and works. Works and faith. It’s been debated since the beginning of
Christianity. I think John casts a vote for faith. Don’t you think?

Perhaps, but wait a minute. None of us truly practices what we preach. The works
never quite measure up to the faith. And what gets me is that we just waltz along
falling short of God’s glory. Rarely do we have deep sorrow for our empty faith.
Did you happen to notice that John speaks about deeds too?

I did see that. He said, “Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it
may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” So there is a
connection even in John between deeds and believing.

Careful now, aren’t you beginning to slip into that dreaded black hole of “works-righteousness.” Aren’t you beginning to say that God saves us because of our
good works?

Of course not, the great Apostle Paul claims in Romans, “If it is by grace, it is no
longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (NRS
Romans 11:6). And don’t forget our opening scripture today from Ephesians at
the beginning of worship: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and
this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that
no one may boast” (NRS Ephesians 2:8-9).

Don’t forget that the very next verse of Ephesians says, “For we are what God has
made us, created in Christ Jesus FOR GOOD WORKS, which God prepared
beforehand to be our way of life” (Ephesians 2.10). Didn’t you have a second
scripture reading today from James, which speaks about Christian faith AS good
works? Did you hear that? Believing in Jesus IS good works. James says that
there’s no such thing as “sola fidei.” He thinks “faith alone” is ridiculous.

Yea, but tell that to Martin Luther and John Calvin, the Great Reformers. Martin
Luther called James the “straw epistle.” He put the book of James in the appendix
to his Bible, considered it inferior to the rest of scripture. Kind of the way I feel
about some of the laws in Leviticus and those verses from Paul telling women to
keep silent in church and obey their husbands.

But Luther was a Catholic monk and Calvin was a Catholic priest; and they were
reacting to the Catholic Church of the 1500s — the Medieval Catholic Church —
that was abusing the theology of sanctification, forcing people to pay their way to
holiness so the church could build its wealth out of people’s guilt. This is not the
Catholic Church we know today.

So, in this Medieval context of self-interested works righteousness, the Reformers
were emphatic about the power of simply believing in Jesus. And 500 years later,
we have many Christians who have a shallow understanding of salvation –
believers who think that their good works have nothing to do with their salvation.
We have Christians who feel no obligation to connect with a Christian community
that holds them accountable — and notices when they are present and involved,
and expects good deeds from them, and asks them to hunger and thirst for
righteousness, and to obediently share their time and skills and money.

We have a lot of people who are schizophrenic about salvation: they have
completely divided creed from deed, belief from action, what they believe from
how they live. EITHER they call themselves “Christian” because one day they
“accepted Jesus” OR they call themselves “Christian” because they pay their taxes
or donate to Goodwill, or worse, because they are nice to others. It’s amazing that
their salvation has little to do with obedience or prayer or worship or loving
enemies or sacrificing for the poor. They so easily call themselves “saved” yet
think nothing of being unkind, impatient, greedy, unforgiving, and selfish.

Yes, people call themselves Christian but are making no attempt to live like
Christ, to listen to the prophets, or to obey the commandments, especially the great
commandment of Christ – to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength
and to love neighbor as you love yourself.

The sad thing is that we’re all a lot like this: quick to profess faith, slow to live it.
So we need a good word from James: [text]

I think we can all agree that faith is more than just “Asking God to forgive you”;
more than simply saying, “I believe in Jesus Christ.” It’s more — a whole lot
more — than just a soft spot in my heart for the Lord or a mental ascent to the
teachings about Jesus.

Yes, I just read a helpful description of true Christian faith that holds both words
and actions together. The writer says that if we want to have faith as the New
Testament defines it, we must hold both faith as belief and faith as trust. In other
words, one side of faith is made up of words and concepts and convictions and the
other side of faith is made up of actions and daily discipline and concrete sacrifice.
Take away either belief or trust, and you no longer have Christian faith.

Today we will exercise our faith (BOTH our BELIEF and our TRUST) by
making concrete promises of our time and talent. We will not sit back idly,
leaning on undeveloped beliefs. We will bear fruit. We will deepen our trust by
a disciplined involvement in the church, where we know there will be
expectations. This means we will have less time and less energy for some things
in life. Because we will be taking that time and spending that energy to grow as
disciples of Jesus Christ, to build a community of peace, and to care for needs of
others.

Let us now spend some time in silent prayer.

"The Risk of Appearing Foolish and Weak"

1 Corinthians 1:18-31
3rd Sunday in Lent

The teacher asks the fourth graders to write an essay about their favorite place to
go. Carlita wrote that her favorite place to go was the library, where she could
check out books and use a computer. As she read her essay aloud some of the
kids scoffed and said, “The library!? I’d rather go to Disney or Sea World,”
places Carlita’s family cannot afford to go.

The middle school boy is being taunted by his friends, who stole his baseball cap.
If he chases after them and cannot catch them or if he tells the teacher, he will
probably get even more ridicule, so he just lets them go, feeling impotent to do
anything about his situation.

The thirty-five year-old man has just lost another job – the third one in this year’s
terrible recession. Should he tell his parents, his friends, his sister? They will
blame him, like they always do. They will think he is at fault, but this time, it
really had nothing to do with him.

The seventy year-old woman cannot remember anything anymore. She cannot
even remember whether she’s told someone she can’t remember. She’s scared
and confused by her own mental status, but she doesn’t want her family to put her
in assisted living – not yet.

Nobody at any age wants to appear foolish or weak. That’s why it is getting
harder and harder to be a Christian. Because Christianity in our post-modern
culture is much weaker institution. CNN.com reports that America is a less
Christian nation than it was 20 years ago, and Christianity is not losing out to
other religions, but primarily to a rejection of religion altogether, a survey
published last week found. Seventy-five percent of Americans call themselves
Christian, that’s down from eighty-six percent 20 years ago, according to the
American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College in Hartford,
Connecticut.

Many agnostics and secular relativists think we are crazy, foolish to keep
proclaiming Christ, in a pluralistic world. How dare we make such a claim!
We’re just narrow-minded, arrogant Christians. Foolish and weak. Stuck in a
first century world of substitutionary atonement. Most of you have family
members who have drifted away from Christian faith. Don’t need that
foolishness. Don’t want to be associated with the 1/3 of American Christians who
call themselves Evangelical – co-opting a very good adjective which could and
should be used for all of us who follow Jesus and believe that the Gospel is good
news for all people. Instead it has been narrowly defined.

So here I am, standing in front of you trying to say something intelligent about the
message of the cross. Foolishness to Greeks and to many Americans. How many
of us don’t talk about our faith to others for the simple fear of looking foolish or
narrow-minded? How can we talk about sacrificial love which inspires us to give,
which gives us life in ways that doctrines of atonement cannot sufficiently outline.

Struggling to understand the mystery of a sacrificial death and miraculous
resurrection, is not a new thing. This “foolishness” connects us to the early
church, the pre-Constantinian church.

Hear the struggle of the Apostle Paul in convincing the power-brokering, leader-worshiping church in Corinth that this message of the cross was God turning
the world upside down. 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

There is something inherently paradoxical about the cross. At the heart of the
gospel is a "sense of absurdity—an instinct for paradox—a conviction that truth is
never bland but lurks in contradiction." (William Stringfellow, A Simplicity of
Faith) To lose your life is to save it. Unless a grain of wheat dies, it can not bring
life. To take up the cross is to embrace the power of God. It doesn't make sense;
it's foolish—unless you see it from the eyes of faith, from the converted heart. For
believers, it is the very power that transforms lives.

After describing the foolishness of the cross in verse 18 of 1 Corinthians, Paul
goes on to quote from the end of Isaiah 29:14. Hear verses 13 and 14 from that
chapter:

The Lord God said: Because these people draw near to me with their mouths and
honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of
me is a human commandment learned by rote; so I will again do amazing things
with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish,
and the discernment of their discerning shall be hidden. When following God
becomes rote lip action without any heart, then get ready for God to shock.

Søren Kierkegaard, the great Danish theologian, addresses this point beautifully.
"Christianity," he writes, "has taken a giant stride into the absurd. Remove from
Christianity its ability to shock and it is altogether destroyed. It then becomes a
tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing
them. It's when the absurd starts to sound reasonable that we should begin to
worry." He goes on to name a few of Christianity's shocking, absurd assertions:
"Blessed are the meek; thou shalt not kill; love your enemies; go, sell all you have
and give to the poor."

The life of Christ was a paradox. He had all the power of God, yet he chose to
align himself with the weakness of humanity, emptying himself, giving up his life
for the sake of others. To whom did Jesus show special attention but those who
were the outcast of society – the poor and sick, the cheating tax collectors, the
unclean lepers, the lowly of society then – women and children. Jesus’ life was
offensive, even shocking to those in power because he did not play by their rules.
Even among his closest companions, Jesus was mysterious and unpredictable. “If
any of you would be great, then you must be the servant of all.... If you want to
save your life, you’ll lose it, but if you lose it for the sake of the Gospel, then you
will save it.... The first will be last, and the last, first.”

“The message of the cross discloses that God is deeply and lovingly involved with
humanity and with humanity predicament. When God becomes one of us, God’s
freedom looks very different from aloofness and autonomy.” (Texts for
Preaching, Brueggemann, et al.)

If I’m honest with myself—perhaps if we are all honest with ourselves—there are
ways in which we, each in our own way, resist the foolishness of the cross. The
cross, Paul says, seems like foolishness to the part of us that is attached to the
world, the part of us that is perishing. The cross is God's foolishness and is wiser
than our wisdom. The cross is God's weakness and is stronger than our strength.
Yet to the part of us that is inculcated with the assumptions and values of our
culture, the cross doesn't make sense. Rarely do we choose to be foolish or weak.

Will Willimon has asked some good questions about this foolishness of the cross.
What kind of sense does it make to worship a God who, instead of rescuing us out
of trouble, rescues us by entering into the trouble with us? A God who, instead of
helping us to avoid pain, heals us from our pain by entering the depths of our pain
with us? A God who, instead of fixing things for us, addresses them by becoming
weak with us in our weakness?

But this is the foolishness of the cross. All of us know pain and grief and
disappointment in our lives. Our human wisdom wants a God who will heal us and
make us feel better. The foolishness of the cross is a God who enters into our pain
and bears our pain with us. To the part of us that is human and perishing, this is
incomprehensible and we want something more. But to the part of us that is being
saved, it is the very power of God.

And even more foolishly, God expects us to do the same with each other: to enter
into each other's pain, to bear each other's burdens and those of the world around
us. To the world, that is an utterly foolish way to live, but to those who embrace
the cross, who take up their cross and follow Jesus, and who are ready to lose their
lives to save their lives, it is the only way to live. It is the power of God within us.

It’s like the little four year-old who won a contest for the most caring child: The
little boy had an elderly gentleman living next door who had recently lost his wife.
Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed
onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the
neighbor, the little boy said, "Nothing, I just helped him cry." It is a Christ-like
thing – to suffer with, to have compassion.

If we want to take Jesus seriously, if we want to go deeper in our discipleship, we
must follow in the way of God's foolishness. That's where God calls us to be.
Living generously even in a recession. Reaching out to people with invitation to
church, with a message about Christ that they might think is narrow-minded but
instead is the most broad, deep, and wide message of love there is. Loving
beyond the boundaries of what is socially acceptable and makes common sense.

As Frederick Buechner writes: "In terms of human wisdom, Jesus was a perfect
fool. And if you think you can follow him without making something like the
same kind of fool of yourself, you are laboring not under the cross, but a
delusion." I pray we all risk being fools for the love of Christ, embracing
weakness – both ours and others’ enough for God’s strength to shine through us.

(I am indebted to a Sojourners article by Joe Roos, then head of religious
education department at Kodaikanal International School in India for the quotes
from Stringfellow, Kierkegaard, Willimon, and Buechner in this sermon.)