Where, In This Hell, Is The Holy?
Sermon
The Lord Is Risen! He Is Risen Indeed! He Really Is!
Gospel Sermons For Lent/Easter
I am convinced that few of us are really convinced that this Good Friday really leads to the first day of a new week and a new day and a new life. That Good Friday gets us anywhere near an Easter Sunday and what the Psalmist calls "The goodness of the Lord in the land of the living" (Psalm 27:13 NRSV).
We call this week "Holy Week." Holy? How so? It was a week of treachery, shallow commitments, following the crowd, betrayal, lying, selling out, broken promises, politics as usual, jealousy, despair, dashed hopes, insecurity, hate, anger, getting even, pain, fear, fraud, fraught with intrigue and murder and the death of an innocent man. Hear anything in that that's holy?
I looked up "Holy Week" in a dozen different references. They all define it this way: It starts with Palm Sunday, and ends with Easter Sunday. In between there's a story that would outdo any afternoon soap opera for twists and turns, but not a word about why it's "holy"! The dictionary says "Holy Week" is the English translation of the Latin, settimanta santa, literally "a holy week."
In my research I did discover a new week: "Bright week," a week of brilliant light. That's what our friends the Russian Orthodox call next week. But what about this week? This "Holy Week"? I can understand calling the week that begins with Easter and resurrection "bright." I find it hard to understand calling the week that begins in the triumph on Palm Sunday and ends in tragedy on Good Friday "holy."
It makes about as much sense as the Palm Sunday hymn:
Ride on! Ride on in majesty!
Hark all the tribes hosanna cry;
O Savior meek, pursue thy road
With palms and scattered garments strowed.
Ride on! Ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die....1
As my kids say these days: "Excuse me?!" That's a little like saying to someone, "Go to hell; you'll like it!"
That is, in fact, where Jesus was going that first Good Friday -- to hell. In the Apostles' Creed there is a phrase, the meaning of which is not entirely clear. In the traditional version it reads: "... He was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell." I once had a Confirmation Class that recited the creed: "He ascended into hell." The creed says that after the resurrection "he ascended into heaven." They got their words wrong, but they got the theology right. Because wherever he went after death, Jesus "ascended into hell" when he ascended the cross. He went up into hell by our hands. And it wasn't gold-leafed; it was blood red.
If that sounds a bit extreme, let me recommend a bit of Holy Week reading. First, read from the Bible the story of Holy Week. Try to read it from the perspective of Jesus' friends; people who lived through it not understanding how it would end. Then read from The Journal of the American Medical Association an article by William D. Edwards, MD, of the Department of Pathology at the Mayo Clinic. The article is titled "On The Physical Death of Jesus Christ." I'm sure you would not want to read it right now. In a later editorial the Journal's editors described Jesus' death as "perhaps the most influential single event of torture in history ..."2
One little bit, though. Dr. Edwards writes: "Jesus of Nazareth underwent Jewish and Roman trials, was flogged, and was sentenced to death by crucifixion. The scourging produced deep stripe like lacerations and appreciable blood loss ... the major patho-physiologic effect of crucifixion was an interference with normal respiration ... death resulted primarily from hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia. Jesus' death was ensured by the thrust of a soldier's spear into his side."3
The medical terms are "hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia." The theological term is "hell." Where, in this hell, is the holy? It's here! The holy has ascended into hell on the cross, and descended into the hell in our lives.
We forget that Palm Sunday is also called "Passion Sunday." The "Passion" is the story of Jesus' suffering and death. It is also the story of God's passionate love for you and me. So passionate that the one who lives forever would die for now for you and me -- would go to hell itself for you and me.
Dick Underdahl-Peirce writes in an article called "The Horror and the Holy," that "the French writer" Paul Claudel once said that "Christ did not come to do away with suffering; he did not come to explain it; he came to fill it with his Holy presence. Christ came to take up human suffering, to identify with suffering in his total being. The horror of Good Friday has been filled with the holy."4 Holiness is not niceness. Holiness is the presence of God, even in a week like that one, and even in a week like this one.
In recent weeks a member of our congregation suffered a tragic and untimely loss and I've been given permission to share this with you. At the service for the one who died, a friend gave the memorial homily. In part the friend said: "It was an untimely death. A death that shouldn't have happened to one so full of life. A death that made no sense. So let me tell you about another death (he said) of the time when the Lord God Almighty lost his own boy in a cruel, untimely, senseless death. A death that shouldn't have happened to one so good and fine and full of life. You see? What that cross means is that God has been there weeping long before we got here weeping. The mystery of the Christian gospel is that any pain we feel, God feels. Any tears we shed fall on God's cheeks. Any agonizing emptiness we experience God has experienced, too. The God we love doesn't just pull strings; he feels pain. God not only cares. He bleeds. Knowing that doesn't take away our pain. It just reminds us we have somewhere to go with it -- to a God who really does lead us through the valley of the shadow of death. And who, as we go, will even let us be angry at him for allowing this death to occur. Who will let us rail and weep and beat his chest 'til it's all out and then will hold us in love 'til we've found our faith again. The one thing we don't have to be is afraid and without hope, for God's arms are too strong, his heart too loving, his experience too like ours, to abandon us to our grief."
I'll not say who wrote that. I'd like to meet him someday. I will say that the one who wrote those words which capture everything this week is about, who so shared the life of his friend that he could share faith in those words, was like the Jew riding into Jerusalem whose name was Jesus who came to share your life and mine and be our friend. Jesus' purpose was to convince us of the always presence of a holy God in the sometimes hell we call life; to save us from our despair; to raise us from our hell.
Underdahl-Peirce describes, in the midst of a horror, a moment of "holy." He says: "A World War II Navy veteran tells of a voyage across the Atlantic in convoy, when suddenly an enemy submarine rose to the surface and they saw a torpedo launched on its deadly mission toward them. There was no time to change course; all the skipper could do was shout through the loudspeaker, 'Boys, this is it!' But a destroyer nearby also saw what was happening and went full speed ahead in order to intercept the torpedo. The destroyer was blown apart, and every one of the crew lost. The veteran, who'd been on the target ship, said, 'The skipper of that destroyer was my best friend.' "5
Jesus on the cross is God being our best friend. Jesus on the cross is God putting himself in front of anything and everything that would torpedo your life. So that in this week and every week, even if it's hell, we might find the holy and say with the apostle Paul, as he wrote to the church in Rome: I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).
Not even Good Friday.
____________
1. Henry H. Milman, "Ride On, Ride On In Majesty," The Presbyterian Hymnal, no. 90, stanzas 1, 2 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press).
2. Dr. William D. Edwards, et al., The Journal of the American Medical Association, June 13, 1986.
3. Dr. William D. Edwards, et al., The Journal of the American Medical Association, March 21, 1986, p. 1455.
4. Presbyterian Survey, April 1987, p. 18.
5. Ibid.
We call this week "Holy Week." Holy? How so? It was a week of treachery, shallow commitments, following the crowd, betrayal, lying, selling out, broken promises, politics as usual, jealousy, despair, dashed hopes, insecurity, hate, anger, getting even, pain, fear, fraud, fraught with intrigue and murder and the death of an innocent man. Hear anything in that that's holy?
I looked up "Holy Week" in a dozen different references. They all define it this way: It starts with Palm Sunday, and ends with Easter Sunday. In between there's a story that would outdo any afternoon soap opera for twists and turns, but not a word about why it's "holy"! The dictionary says "Holy Week" is the English translation of the Latin, settimanta santa, literally "a holy week."
In my research I did discover a new week: "Bright week," a week of brilliant light. That's what our friends the Russian Orthodox call next week. But what about this week? This "Holy Week"? I can understand calling the week that begins with Easter and resurrection "bright." I find it hard to understand calling the week that begins in the triumph on Palm Sunday and ends in tragedy on Good Friday "holy."
It makes about as much sense as the Palm Sunday hymn:
Ride on! Ride on in majesty!
Hark all the tribes hosanna cry;
O Savior meek, pursue thy road
With palms and scattered garments strowed.
Ride on! Ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die....1
As my kids say these days: "Excuse me?!" That's a little like saying to someone, "Go to hell; you'll like it!"
That is, in fact, where Jesus was going that first Good Friday -- to hell. In the Apostles' Creed there is a phrase, the meaning of which is not entirely clear. In the traditional version it reads: "... He was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell." I once had a Confirmation Class that recited the creed: "He ascended into hell." The creed says that after the resurrection "he ascended into heaven." They got their words wrong, but they got the theology right. Because wherever he went after death, Jesus "ascended into hell" when he ascended the cross. He went up into hell by our hands. And it wasn't gold-leafed; it was blood red.
If that sounds a bit extreme, let me recommend a bit of Holy Week reading. First, read from the Bible the story of Holy Week. Try to read it from the perspective of Jesus' friends; people who lived through it not understanding how it would end. Then read from The Journal of the American Medical Association an article by William D. Edwards, MD, of the Department of Pathology at the Mayo Clinic. The article is titled "On The Physical Death of Jesus Christ." I'm sure you would not want to read it right now. In a later editorial the Journal's editors described Jesus' death as "perhaps the most influential single event of torture in history ..."2
One little bit, though. Dr. Edwards writes: "Jesus of Nazareth underwent Jewish and Roman trials, was flogged, and was sentenced to death by crucifixion. The scourging produced deep stripe like lacerations and appreciable blood loss ... the major patho-physiologic effect of crucifixion was an interference with normal respiration ... death resulted primarily from hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia. Jesus' death was ensured by the thrust of a soldier's spear into his side."3
The medical terms are "hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia." The theological term is "hell." Where, in this hell, is the holy? It's here! The holy has ascended into hell on the cross, and descended into the hell in our lives.
We forget that Palm Sunday is also called "Passion Sunday." The "Passion" is the story of Jesus' suffering and death. It is also the story of God's passionate love for you and me. So passionate that the one who lives forever would die for now for you and me -- would go to hell itself for you and me.
Dick Underdahl-Peirce writes in an article called "The Horror and the Holy," that "the French writer" Paul Claudel once said that "Christ did not come to do away with suffering; he did not come to explain it; he came to fill it with his Holy presence. Christ came to take up human suffering, to identify with suffering in his total being. The horror of Good Friday has been filled with the holy."4 Holiness is not niceness. Holiness is the presence of God, even in a week like that one, and even in a week like this one.
In recent weeks a member of our congregation suffered a tragic and untimely loss and I've been given permission to share this with you. At the service for the one who died, a friend gave the memorial homily. In part the friend said: "It was an untimely death. A death that shouldn't have happened to one so full of life. A death that made no sense. So let me tell you about another death (he said) of the time when the Lord God Almighty lost his own boy in a cruel, untimely, senseless death. A death that shouldn't have happened to one so good and fine and full of life. You see? What that cross means is that God has been there weeping long before we got here weeping. The mystery of the Christian gospel is that any pain we feel, God feels. Any tears we shed fall on God's cheeks. Any agonizing emptiness we experience God has experienced, too. The God we love doesn't just pull strings; he feels pain. God not only cares. He bleeds. Knowing that doesn't take away our pain. It just reminds us we have somewhere to go with it -- to a God who really does lead us through the valley of the shadow of death. And who, as we go, will even let us be angry at him for allowing this death to occur. Who will let us rail and weep and beat his chest 'til it's all out and then will hold us in love 'til we've found our faith again. The one thing we don't have to be is afraid and without hope, for God's arms are too strong, his heart too loving, his experience too like ours, to abandon us to our grief."
I'll not say who wrote that. I'd like to meet him someday. I will say that the one who wrote those words which capture everything this week is about, who so shared the life of his friend that he could share faith in those words, was like the Jew riding into Jerusalem whose name was Jesus who came to share your life and mine and be our friend. Jesus' purpose was to convince us of the always presence of a holy God in the sometimes hell we call life; to save us from our despair; to raise us from our hell.
Underdahl-Peirce describes, in the midst of a horror, a moment of "holy." He says: "A World War II Navy veteran tells of a voyage across the Atlantic in convoy, when suddenly an enemy submarine rose to the surface and they saw a torpedo launched on its deadly mission toward them. There was no time to change course; all the skipper could do was shout through the loudspeaker, 'Boys, this is it!' But a destroyer nearby also saw what was happening and went full speed ahead in order to intercept the torpedo. The destroyer was blown apart, and every one of the crew lost. The veteran, who'd been on the target ship, said, 'The skipper of that destroyer was my best friend.' "5
Jesus on the cross is God being our best friend. Jesus on the cross is God putting himself in front of anything and everything that would torpedo your life. So that in this week and every week, even if it's hell, we might find the holy and say with the apostle Paul, as he wrote to the church in Rome: I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).
Not even Good Friday.
____________
1. Henry H. Milman, "Ride On, Ride On In Majesty," The Presbyterian Hymnal, no. 90, stanzas 1, 2 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press).
2. Dr. William D. Edwards, et al., The Journal of the American Medical Association, June 13, 1986.
3. Dr. William D. Edwards, et al., The Journal of the American Medical Association, March 21, 1986, p. 1455.
4. Presbyterian Survey, April 1987, p. 18.
5. Ibid.
