Befriending the Cross

Michael Servetus (1511-1553)

Hidden in the annals of Christian history are stories we’d rather not tell.

The Church of Christ has not always done well at emulating the life and love of its Lord and Savior.  As a matter of fact, we’ve been downright evil for much of the time.  One need only mention the Crusades or the Salem Witch Trials to get an idea of what I’m talking about.  One such example comes from the very roots of our own Presbyterian tradition:

Back in the 1500s, when John Calvin was preaching in the Swiss city of Geneva, a guy named Michael Servetus blew into town.  He was on the run from the Catholic Church after being arrested for heresy and then breaking out of prison.  Servetus was a Unitarian, meaning that he did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity: the belief in one God, consisting of three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The fugitive Servetus made a bad choice in putting Geneva on his travel itinerary.  John Calvin, whose opinions had a powerful influence on city politics, had no more love for Servetus than the Catholic authorities had.  Calvin himself had previously written to a friend, “If [Servetus] comes here… I will never permit him to depart alive.”  And Calvin made good on his threat.  As soon as someone recognized Servetus attending worship at Calvin’s church, he was arrested, tried, and burned at the stake for heresy.  Michael Servetus’ last recorded words were, “Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have mercy on me.”

This is part of the dark side of Presbyterian history.  John Calvin is still remembered as the founder of the Reformed Tradition, of which the Presbyterian Church is a part.  In 1903, Calvin’s spiritual heirs in the city of Geneva erected a monument to the memory of Michael Servetus on the spot where he was burned.  The inscription on that monument condemns Calvin’s error and acknowledges that the true spirit of the Reformation can only exist where liberty of conscience is allowed to flourish.

It’s too little, too late for Servetus, but the gesture acknowledges that we’ve at least made a little progress in half a millennium.

In so many of these cases of heresy trials and stake burnings, there is an oft-repeated label that has been misappropriated from the New Testament and applied to the opponents of established orthodoxy.  That label is: “Enemies of the cross of Christ”.

You might have noticed that very phrase appearing in this morning’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  Paul wrote, “[M]any live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.”

And just who are these “enemies”?  Paul is not clear on that.  At various points in church history, this term has been applied to Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Unitarians, and basically anyone else who’s theological views differ from the person applying the label at the time.  “Enemies of the cross of Christ” is a derogatory epithet used to identify others as “outsiders” and “heretics”.  Most of the time, it has been applied to emphasize doctrinal differences between religious groups.

I believe that such use of this phrase does violence to its original meaning in Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  You see, in that letter, Paul never suggests that one’s religious affiliation or theological orientation are determinant of one’s status as an enemy of the cross of Christ.  For Paul, the truth goes much deeper than that: so deep, I would say, that the essence of this message can be found in the spiritual teachings of every mystic and every sage in every culture, every place, and every period of history.  Paul’s message of the cross is the story of people graduating from their small, self-centered lives to the larger, reality-centered Life.  Some have called it conversion, some salvation, some liberation, and some enlightenment.  For Paul, as for most Christians, the central symbol for this process of transformation is the cross of Christ.

The cross is the single most recognizable Christian symbol in the world.  Historically speaking, it was of course the instrument of torture and execution on which Jesus was killed.  Symbolically speaking, Christians have attached multiple levels of meaning to its significance.  Starting about a thousand years ago, a full millennium after Jesus was born, a British writer named Anselm of Canterbury came up with the idea that theologians now call “substitutionary atonement”.  You might not have heard that phrase before, but you probably have heard some preacher on the radio or television saying, “Jesus died for your sins.”  Substitutionary atonement is currently the most commonly known and accepted interpretation of the significance of the Jesus’ crucifixion, but the idea is only about half as old as Christianity itself.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul presents an entirely different understanding of the cross.  For Paul, the crucifixion event cannot be understood apart from the story of Christ’s resurrection.  According to Paul, these two events form a unified whole.  Neither one makes any sense without the other.

The crucifixion and resurrection, taken together, form the central image of the Christian spiritual journey.  In the process of transitioning from a self-centered to a reality-centered life, every Christian must undergo a kind of death and resurrection.  As Paul himself wrote elsewhere, in his letter to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”  Earlier in his letter to the Philippians, he writes in a similar vein:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

In this early Christian hymn, Paul lays out the path of self-emptying, the path of the cross, which leads to resurrection and exaltation by God.  And this, he says, is not only the journey of Jesus himself, but also of every Christian who claims to bear his name.  Paul begins his hymn with the exhortation: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”.

A Christian then, in Paul’s eyes, is one who walks the path of the cross, who dies to the old, self-centered life and rises to the new, reality-centered Life.  One could say that a Christian is a “friend of the cross of Christ”.

By contrast, those who are “enemies of the cross of Christ” are those who refuse to walk this path of metaphorical crucifixion and resurrection.  The Buddha might call them “unenlightened”.  Muhammad might call them “infidels”.  Harry Potter would probably call them “muggles”.

What can we learn about these “enemies of the cross of Christ”?  Well, since this status has more to do with one’s way of life than with one’s religious affiliation, I think we can say that they might belong to any tradition or no tradition at all.  We’re just as likely to find them in pews as in bars.

Here’s what Paul has to say about them: “Their end is destruction; their god is the belly”.  This is an interesting way of putting it.  When Paul says, “their god is the belly” he obviously doesn’t mean their physical abdomens.  The belly is where one’s food goes after it is consumed.  The belly, in this sense, is the seat of desire.  The people who refuse to let go of their small, self-centered lives are worshiping their own desires and addictions.  What they want/need is most important to them.

For them, the primary concern is “my food, my money, my country, my church.”  Everything is all about I, me, my.  There is no big picture or larger context in which they see their lives.  That which benefits them is universally good.  That which hinders them is universally bad.  In every story, these folks never fail to cast themselves as either the heroes or the victims.  They’re always on the side of right.  They have all the answers.  Anyone who disagrees with them is a heretic who deserves to be burned at the stake.  This is what self-centered worship looks like.  These folks are what Paul refers to as “enemies of the cross of Christ.”  There is no self-sacrifice for them.  There is no denial of desire for the greater good.  There is no responsibility beyond one’s responsibility to one’s own self.  Self-centered existence.

What is the end result of this way of life?  Paul says it quite clearly: “Their end is destruction”.  This self-centered way of thinking and living can only lead to pain and death.  This is not some mysterious, mystical idea.  Think about it: what kind of world would this be if neighbors never went out of their way to help each other?  What if friends and family never forgave each other?  What if no one answered the call of charity or the obligation of justice for those who suffer?  I don’t know about you, but that’s not a world I would want to live in.  That selfish mentality can only lead to destruction, as Paul warns us.

The way of the cross is the way of sacrifice.  Jesus could have called upon his mass of followers to rise up and fight if he so desired.  Instead, he chose to walk the path of nonviolence.  He chose to suffer pain, rather than cause it.  He chose to die, rather than kill to protect what was rightfully his.  In so doing, Jesus set himself apart from every other revolutionary movement leader of his time.  His selfless sacrifice did not go unnoticed or unremembered.  He left his followers with a symbol and an image that would change the way they look at the world.

Christ’s willing submission to crucifixion, according to Paul, is the basis for his sovereignty over all creation.  For his followers, it is the model we follow for living our lives in the world.  The end-result of crucifixion is not death, but resurrection.  “Humiliation”, according to Paul, is transformed into “glory”.  Followers of the way of Christ must befriend the cross because it is the only way into the “abundant life” that Jesus intended for us to have.

Paul’s warning about the “enemies of the cross of Christ” is not a wholesale condemnation of those who hold different theological views from Paul’s, or John Calvin’s, or mine.  Paul’s warning applies to all of us, no matter what religion we espouse.  With tears, Paul is pleading with us to realize that our little lives, ruled by our own selfish desires and preferences, lead only to destruction.

The flip side of Paul’s warning is that those who befriend the cross, who walk the path of self-sacrifice for the greater good, like Jesus did, are sure to receive resurrection, salvation, and enlightenment.  These are the true saints, the blessed ones who discover the meaning of life.  These are the real Christians: the friends of the cross of Christ.

May it be so for you, for me, and for all who seek the greater good, the life abundant, in the name (or the spirit) of Jesus Christ.

How Important is the Afterlife?

Ok class,

My classes will never be as cool as this guy's.

Time to sit up and pay attention.  I’m asking YOU a question today, so I want to see lots of answers and comments down below!

This is a question that my philosophy students at Utica College are pondering and discussing this week and I thought it would be fun to put it before you.

I was having lunch at a cafe yesterday when someone walked up and handed me a religious pamphlet that asked whether I knew for sure that I was going to heaven when die.  This is an interesting question.

It’s even more interesting that so many in the fundamentalist camp choose to start their evangelistic pitch with this question.  If one’s faith is based on fear for the ego’s survival in an unknown afterlife, then it doesn’t seem to be qualitatively different from the dog-eat-dog drive for survival in this world.

I’m not trying to disparage eternal hope for anyone, but during Holy Week, Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Jesus was willing to sacrifice himself.  His vision and ultimate concern was much larger than his drive for egoic survival.  He embraced death willingly and so became the primary model by which Christians measure their faith.

There is an extent to which I believe we Christians are called to do the same.  Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.”  Christians like to remind each other that Christ died for us, but there is also a very real sense in which we are called to die with Christ.  We are participants, not merely consumers, in the unfolding drama of eternity.

Friedrich Schleiermacher said it like this in On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799):

Religion is the outcome neither of the fear of death, nor of the fear of God. It answers a deep need in man. It is neither a metaphysic, nor a morality, but above all and essentially an intuition and a feeling. … Dogmas are not, properly speaking, part of religion: rather it is that they are derived from it. Religion is the miracle of direct relationship with the infinite; and dogmas are the reflection of this miracle. Similarly belief in God, and in personal immortality, are not necessarily a part of religion; one can conceive of a religion without God, and it would be pure contemplation of the universe; the desire for personal immortality seems rather to show a lack of religion, since religion assumes a desire to lose oneself in the infinite, rather than to preserve one’s own finite self.

The question I am putting before you, superfriends and blogofans, is taken from chapter 9 of William Rowe’s Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction.

How important to religion is the belief in personal survival after death?  Do you think that religion must stand or fall with this belief?  Can you imagine a viable religion which accepts the view that death ends everything?  What would such a religion be like?  Explain.

Post your answer in the comments below!

My September 11th Sermon

Bulletin cover from this morning's service. Presbyterian bulletin covers are not usually this cool.

I normally wait until after church to post my sermon, but I’m doing it early today, given it’s time-sensitive nature.  The recording will be up later.

My text is Matthew 18:21-35.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve been dreading this sermon all year, ever since I learned that today’s date would fall on a Sunday and I would have to get up into this pulpit and say something meaningful.  I wasn’t sure whether I should just ignore the day and preach the lectionary text from Matthew or cut whatever else we had planned for today and just focus on what I know is on everyone’s mind.  After agonizing over it all year, I can’t really think of any other way to begin except by coming right out and saying it:

Today’s date is the 11^th of September.  And we’ve come together this morning to remember something important that happened.  Some of us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when the news of this event first struck us speechless while others have simply grown up hearing about it.  It was a great injustice.  It was a horrifying spectacle that still leaves us in shock and awe.  For days afterward, people could do little else than huddle together behind closed doors and drawn curtains.  They held each other and sobbed, knowing that, whatever else they had hoped their future might be, it had now changed forever.  It was a watershed moment that defined who we are as people.  The very worst in the human race came face to face with the very best in the human race.  The events of that day brought us together as a community like nothing else ever could.  More than any other before or after it, this event taught us to admire and respect and love those individuals who lay down their lives and make the ultimate sacrifice for the benefit of others.  Because of that which we remember this morning, none of us will ever be the same ever again.

The event that I am describing here is not the attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 that took place ten years ago today.  The event that I’m describing here is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Before I go on, I feel like I should pause and tell you that I’m not trying to be flippant or witty about the events of September 11, 2001.  Nor am I trying to disrespect the memory of a national tragedy by twisting it into an opportunity for religious proselytism.  What I’m trying to do is reflect on who we are as Christians and human beings on this particular day.  I want to take the smaller events of our personal stories and understand them in the larger context of God’s big Story.

The cross is one of the most universally recognizable symbols in the world.  Ask almost anyone, regardless of their religious affiliation, to name one Christian symbol and most people will probably mention the cross.  More than any other event in history, what happened on the cross shows us who we are as followers of the way of Christ.

On the night of his wrongful arrest, Jesus assured Peter that he had the power to call down legions of warrior angels to annihilate the world in his defense.  However, we know that Jesus didn’t do that.  Instead, Jesus looked down from the cross at his executioners and prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

Most of us who read that story with the benefit of two thousand years’ distance find this gesture admirable but also pitiful.  “It’s a generous sentiment,” we say, “but you can’t live that way.  It wouldn’t work!  People would walk all over you!”  We don’t believe there is any actual power in Jesus’ prayer, so we dismiss this noble gesture as a product of his divinity and proceed to hide behind a comfortable curtain of systematic theology in which we benefit from the effects of that forgiveness without ever actually having to experience it.

But Jesus doesn’t let us off the hook that easily.  Teaching about forgiveness in today’s gospel reading from Matthew 18, Jesus assures us that the only way to remain assured of God’s forgiveness is to give forgiveness away.  “Blessed are the merciful,” Jesus says, “for they will receive mercy.”

The passage begins with a legitimate question from Peter about the reasonable limits of forgiveness.  He says, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?  As many as seven times?”  Jesus’ response is ridiculous and shocking, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”  He then tells a cautionary tale about two people: one with an impossibly large debt and another with a trivial one.  The first debtor owes ten thousand talents to the creditor.  How much is that in today’s terms?  Well, a “talent” is a term of measurement.  The parable doesn’t tell us exactly what was being measured but, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that we’re talking about talents of gold.  Let’s use today’s gold price ($1,855.15 per ounce) times 16 ounces in a pound times 71 pounds in a talent times ten thousand talents, and we end up with a debt of $21,074,504,000.  That’s how much this first person owed.  That’s how much debt the creditor forgave!

The second debtor owed one hundred denarii.  A denarius was equivalent to a day’s wages for a laborer.  Let’s put that in today’s terms using New York state’s current minimum wage.  That’s $7.25 an hour times eight hours in a workday times one hundred days, and we get $5,800.  This person’s lending firm received a twenty-one billion dollar bailout yet foreclosed on a debt of less than six thousand dollars.  According to Jesus, those are some messed up priorities.

The unmerciful servant in this parable was a person who was adamantly unwilling to look at the smaller issue of the debt he was owed in relation to the massive debt he was forgiven.  He would not understand the smaller events of his personal story in the larger context of God’s Story.  Forgiven people have an obligation to spread their amnesty over as wide a field as possible.  Otherwise, they are only robbing themselves.  The paradoxical irony of heaven’s economy is that those who keep forgiveness for themselves will lose it while those who give it away will keep it forever.

But forgiveness is also a dangerous business.  It is demonstrably true that one cannot guarantee economic security or national defense on a consistent doctrine of forgiveness.  Just look at Jesus himself.  When he prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” he did not speak from the comfort of heaven’s glorious throne.  No, he forced those words out as he hung from the cross, bleeding and dying.  Jesus was a failed revolutionary who was branded as a “terrorist” by those who were fighting to protect their own national security and traditional family values.  One can imagine the Centurions and the Pharisees laughing at Jesus when they heard him say this.  His position at the time would have served as incontrovertible proof that forgiveness “does not work” as a strategy.  A few may have admired him for it, but everyone still walked away shaking their heads after this forgiving Messiah finally fell silent.

But you and I know that’s not the end of the story.  That night, they laid his body in a tomb and rested on the Sabbath.  Then, on the first day of the week, early in the morning, a few brave women made their way to Jesus’ tomb and when they got there, they couldn’t believe their eyes!  The stone had been rolled away from the entrance, the soldiers had passed out from fright, and angel stood in the entrance and asked, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here.”

Why not?  “He is risen.”  Today is the day that everything changes.  Death itself has begun to work backwards.  The dead come alive.  The blind see.  The deaf hear.  The mute sing.  The lame dance.  The weak are strong.  The foolish are wise.  The first are now last and last are now first.  The whole world is turning upside down.  Or is it right side up?

We know for a fact that forgiveness does not work.  Yet we believe in the truth beyond the facts.  We believe it when the Bible says that “mercy triumphs over judgment” and “love covers a multitude of sins.”  We believe it because that failed revolutionary who died in disgrace with forgiveness on his lips is now hailed as the most influential person in human history.  His ridiculous message of forgiveness outlasted the culture that gave it birth and the Roman Empire that tried to suppress it.  That message of forgiveness has now reached the shores of every continent on this planet and continues to spread as people like you and I choose to take our smaller personal stories and understand them in the larger context of God’s big Story.  We take the small debts that we must forgive and hold them up next to the huge debt that has been forgiven us.

It is true that September 11, 2001 changed us.  It was a horrifying spectacle and a tragic injustice.  It brought us together as a community.  We saw the very worst and the very best of humanity in action on that day.  Our future will never be the same because of it.  But September 11 does not dictate who we are.  If we take the events of that one story and look at them in the context of God’s big Story, then we will be able to see that it is the cross of Jesus Christ, seen and understood in the light of his Resurrection, that shows us who we really are.  As we move from our smaller stories to God’s big Story, which is what we do each week here in church, we will find all the strength we need for healing and yes, even forgiveness.