The Park Road Pulpit

Beneath the God claims made for this Jesus was a person who lived a message announcing that there was no status defined by religion, by tribe, by culture, by cult, by ritual, or by illness that could separate any person from the love of God. If love is a part of what God is or who God is, then it can surely be said of this Jesus that he lived the meaning of God.

“You can’t imagine the frustration, the despair, the hopelessness that comes when you have lived your entire lifetime… waiting.” The man replied in frustration to a perplexed reporter. (She had asked, “Why the futile response of throwing stones at a military force?”) “My generation has known nothing,” he continued, “but the helplessness of occupation. Nothing but the darkness of force, which blots out the light of future, the sparkle of dreams, the possibility of possibility. Nothing but the constraint of freedom and the confinement of soil and soul.”[1]

As a father with hopes and dreams, less and less for himself, and more and more for his children, I can begin to imagine the unimaginable. To think the unthinkable. We are witnesses today to the utter despair of an empty hoping that leads to the unspeakable. It is all around us. We are spectators of the violent, damning, and graphic effects of a waiting that has no resolution. This kind of despair pushes human beings to the brink of sanity. And then, just over the edge. How often have you said, “I would do anything for my child.” Anything?

Hoping with no future. Crying with no comfort. Waiting with no response… good-people-turned-mad strapped eight kilograms of explosives, nails, and bolts to the chest of fourteen-year-old Hussam Abdo, and pushed this reluctant, but would-be child-martyr, into a busy Israeli intersection. They dressed him in his deadly attire, and armed him with a promise: “a river of honey, a river of wine and 72 virgins.”[2] For you. Over there. Your waiting will be over forever!

Now, imagine… waiting ten life-times. Waiting against time. Hoping against hope. Into a crowd, charged with the energy of generations of such waiting, came another young man. But this young man was not pushed. And this young man was not armed with explosives. And this young man was not deluded by hollow hopes of other-worldly gratification. And though a young man named Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, had been raised on the preaching of promise, the pounding of pulpits, which extolled the power of prophecy, this young man stood in the crowded intersection… unarmed. He came to that crowded intersection, to those waiting souls, of his own, free will. He came bringing hope. He came bringing this, simple good news: Your Waiting Is Over. He was a messenger.

For generations, Jesus’ people had awaited the coming of Messiah. This hope for Messiah could not have been unknown by any warm-bodied human being living in Israel in that day, Jew or Gentile. This hope, their waiting, was central to the core of Jewish faith. It was the air they breathed. “One is coming…”[3]

By Jesus’ day, two distinct Messianic ideas had developed. The older, original impulse, from which today’s Psalm was derived, was born in the hope of the return of the Monarchy of King David. A thousand years before Christ, David had solidified Israel’s self-control and had led the nation to an unprecedented prosperity and security. That prosperity and security had dogged Israel ever since. “One day,” they began to preach, “God will return our prosperity. One day, God will give us back our security. One day, Messiah will come.”

But there was a second tradition in Hebrew theology. In this tradition, “Messiah” was no earthly agent at all. Perhaps this theology developed as it became evident to some that the now long-prophecied “coming of Messiah,” even though its language was fully scriptural, was simply not to be. At least not literally. Perhaps they realized that to pin a life-time of waiting, and a Life of hope, on such earthly victory was simply too nationalistic, too narcissistic, too naïve. And in the strange, apocalyptic writings of a prophet named Ezekiel, the Jews began to read of a “Son of Man,” who would come “on clouds.”[4] He would be a divine being, a heavenly Messiah. He would bring revolution, but of a different kind. His would be the revolution of the End of the Age. When the “Son of Man” came, he would do so to usher-in the final age. The destruction of earth. The reign of God.[5]

By the time a young man from Nazareth came to find himself at a crowded intersection in the heart of Jerusalem, a confusing and conflicting set of “Messianic Hopes” filled the minds of an always-confused and an always-too-easily-mislead crowd of the faithful. And for all who had Messianic hopes, either of the earthly variety, or of the other-worldly, apocalyptic kind, Jesus was nothing short of a disastrous disappointment.

It is Palm Sunday. Again we stand at a crowded intersection. I mean, today. And the boisterous crowed is our “global community.” And nothing short of Hope (capital “H”– that is, our survival) is at stake. And our crowded intersection is even more complex and more dangerous than it has ever been, because not only are there still religious zealots lining these streets, armed with old and new theories of Messiah, these zealots now come from many different religions, and bring exclusive and, therefore, competing claims. And we have zealots, religious if only by their commitments, who come to the intersection armed not with hopes of paradise, but with more violent means than we ought to be able even to dream in our darkest nightmares.

Jesus, the messenger… sat on a hillside and said, “Let the children come …” (Matthew 19.14). When no one else would have them, Jesus was all-smiles and giggling-embrace.

Jesus, the messenger… knelt to scribble in the sand, and the stones of hypocrisy and hatred, of fear and superstition, of religion and right, fell one by one, all around him. The woman, whose life those stones would have gladly taken, stood. Trembling. But free. “Neither do I condemn you,” he said. “Go” (John 8.11).

Jesus… stretched out his hand. He touched the leprous skin, broken and tender, yet calloused by the alienating cruelty of his condition in that day, and he spoke: “Be made clean” (Mark 1.41). And in a message, one with no home and no future and no faith in the world ran, screaming the joy of new-life at the top of his lungs.

The controversial Bishop, John Shelby Spong, who is castigated by a segment of the Christian community blinded by its own “Messianism,” has rejected many traditional theological assertions. But listen to how the Bishop speaks of Jesus:

It was as if time stood still inside the total attentiveness of this Jesus. He was able to give himself to others… One has to possess himself… very powerfully in order to give one’s being away to another… so totally. That was yet another aspect of his humanity that did not escape notice. It was a significant part of who Jesus was, and thus it had to be interpreted. In these interpretations people suggested that perhaps this quality of his life revealed that he somehow possessed the infinite depths of the life of God.”[6]

From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is calling for Elijah.” At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (Matthew 27.45-54)

Please do not be distracted by the strange, apocalyptic language, which was a common genre in Matthew’s day. What the Gospel writer affirms, that Christians for two millennia have experienced and echoed in their own voices, is that Jesus so lived the message he proclaimed, as Spong says, he so completely “Lived the Meaning of God,” that he can no longer simply be regarded as a messenger.

Long ago, standing before an angry mob with blood in its eyes, Pilate asks: What shall I do with this Jesus?[7] Well-meaning people, tired of waiting, but unwilling to work, have always tended to answer in one of two extremes. “Crucify Him!” Or, “Let’s make of him a god.” The sad thing is that we seek both extremes for the same reason – that is, so we can still be in control! Kill something, and it can no longer trouble us. Or, more cleverly, if we can make of it a god, elevate it, worship the idea of it, alone, then we can still manipulate it to ease our own burdens.[8] In that regard, I love what my iconoclastic friend, the late Dr. Gene Owens asks…

Could it be that Christians have done precisely what Jews feared might be done, idolized Jesus of Nazareth? Have Christians supplanted God by deifying Jesus, which is actually the opposite of incarnation? Have Christians taken the way to God and made him a dead end, leading nowhere beyond himself? Has this been done because Christians refuse to live with the holy mystery that is God? Finding it so much easier to get our minds around this Jesus, have we settled for a sentimentalized version of God? Remember, Jesus did not come to found a religion; he came to awaken faith in God.[9]

Jesus’ central message was simple: our waiting has come to an end. Already. The kingdom of God… is at hand…(Luke 17.21) “Living with the Meaning of God,” means that there is no waiting. The good life won’t come, one day. It is here. Heaven isn’t a reward for a future life, it is earth at full potential. Jesus is the Message whose time has come.

Unfortunately, too many, are still waiting. Jesus is the message. But he is no Messiah. Jesus will not “come again” – unless his spirit of love and compassion comes into your own life. Jesus will not usher in the Kingdom from on High. For the kingdom, as he said… is already among us.[10]

So, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. (He who no longer waits for God to change the world.) Blessed is she who comes in the name of the Lord. (She who “Lives the Meaning of God” in her own life.) Blessed is the Christ-follower who comes in the name of the Lord. (The one who truly puts on Christ (Romans 13.14), who follows Jesus’ way (Mark 8.34).) Blessed is the Muslim and the Jew and the Buddhist who comes in the name of the Lord. (For Jesus said, Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother (Mark 3.35).) Blessed is the rich and the poor, the gay and the straight, the old and the young, the American and the Iraqi… blessed are all who come in the name of the Lord. (For Jesus said, anyone who is not against me is for me (Mark 9.40).)

Why are Hussam Abdo – and desperate children all around the world – still waiting?

[1] This dialogue is completely (and very loosely) paraphrased from a recent NPR report, following an eruption of violence in Jerusalem.

[2] I am quoting Jonathan Gurwitz’s April 2 editorial, “Do some lives matter less?” in the Charlotte Observer.

[3] See, for example, Isaiah’s prophecy of a coming one, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. (7.14) … For a child has been born for us, a son given to us… (9.6),” and the words of Malachi, “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight – indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming…” (3.1-2).

[4] Actually the “on clouds” quotation is from the, equally strange, prophet Daniel: “As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being (also, ‘one like a son of man’) coming with the clouds of heaven” (7.13).

[5] Contemporary, Evangelical Christianity retains both of these images for Jesus as “Messiah,” even though in his living, Jesus expressly rejected such images. The disciples came to understand Jesus as a completely different kind of “Messiah” – one whose “reign” was in our hearts. To call Jesus “Messiah” is to do so only by completely re-defining this word. For effect, then, I have chosen in this sermon to claim he is “no Messiah.”

[6] Why Christianity Must Change or Die, p. 126.

[7] “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the messiah?” (Matthew 27.22)

[8] John Calvin commented that the human mind was a “perpetual factory for making idols.” Anything can become “a god.” Even God. See my sermon from our series on the Ten Commandments: “Becoming Like What We Worship.”

[9] Gene Owens, Confessions of a Religionless Christian, p.27

[10] Conservatives will no doubt take issue with my suggestion that Jesus “will not come again,” for this diametrically opposes one of the doctrinal “fundamentals” of faith: the literal, second coming of Christ. I believe in the “second coming,” but in what theologians have referred to as a “realized eschatology,” and not an “apocalyptic eschatology.” Luke’s words in 17.21, “the kingdom of God is among you,” can also be translated “within you.” My own “realized eschatology” comes, in part, from scriptural insights such as this. I prefer the latter translation, because I believe a “realized” perspective leads to a more ethical and more practical faith; it is also more dangerous in its implications (which is only to say it sounds more like Jesus to me than the more antiseptically removed variety!) – God is not “out there,” Jesus will not come “from on high” for the Kingdom is (and always has been) within!