Text on Good Friday April 2, 2010
John 13: 1-17
Will Christianity pass away? Will some other religion or philosophy take its place? You hear such questions from time to time. The so-called “new atheists” like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins try to inspire readers with hope that all religion might soon follow the mastodon into extinction. On the other extreme, television preachers will fill your ears with their bombast, declaiming that the glory of their “true church” will never pass from the earth. I don’t know about that. The scripture says “nothing will be impossible with God.” We might rather err on the side of caution on the question whether God will keep God’s savings in the church “forever.”
Yet it seems to me that the power of the Cross of Christ will never pass away from the earth. Here is why. Most symbols celebrate success. Think of logos for Coke, Nike, Microsoft Windows. The evidence of the success of these enterprises fairly dances in our heads; at the sound of the name, the logos’ colors and typography fly instantly into the mind’s eye. Think of the American flag. Talk about brand-name recognition! These symbols proclaim a message we are always hungry for, namely, that more is better. Every symbol that dazzles our eye—even the dollar sign on our weekly paycheck, if we like our check; even our home address embossed on stationery, if we like our address, signifies that something has succeeded—climbed over— something else, with power. It is more, it is bigger, it is sweeter, it is quieter, it is higher. Now, this condition isn’t bad. I am not preaching “Ain’t it awful?”—just: Ain’t it so? We’re creatures, and creatures are bound—yes, bound; and determined, in the sense of behavioral psychology, by forces we do not control—bound and determined to look for more. That’s life. It is not freedom, but it is life in the flesh.
However high things climb, though, two conditions always hold: 1) something will always surpass our more with its more; and 2) eventually, we will fall. You cannot forever improve your position with more power. You simply don’t have it, or won’t have it. Every greatest athlete will hang up his shoes. Coke will get cooked. Windows will close. Promotions will cease. Even the United States of America will tumble down. And all these logos will fade. Is this awful? People may make the passage through these rapids awful—we often do, for others as well as for ourselves—but it does not follow that fading away just plain is awful. The condition of endless rise and fall is just plain so. It is not freedom, but it is life as we know it.
Yet what we really wanted—was heaven. Once, what could stop us? Not the skies, it seemed. We were Babel builders, heading higher, higher. Oh, the exquisite thrill when we are running our race with all our strength and all our gift! There’s been blessing in it, surely. But heaven we could not have by straining for it. Perfection eluded us, even deluded us. Is it real—heaven?
Still, there was a passage to perfection. There was a way to go whose path is never barred, whose pitch is not too steep, whose goal is never put behind. It is the path of giving by going lower. On this path, there is no end but God, for no matter how low another creature is or has fallen, you, by the grace of God, can choose to go down a step lower, to be sent down to serve. It is not that you always must, but that you always can. And this is freedom. It is not life as we knew it, but it is the stairway to heaven. It goes down.
In the 1930s, a Russian citizen named Iulia de Beausobre was subjected to torture in the gulag of the Soviet Union. In her autobiography, The Woman Who Could Not Die, she tells how she came to life in extremis. Alone in her cell between sessions with her tormentors, she engaged an inner conversation between herself and a partner of spirit which she called “my Leonardo.” One day, her inner Leonardo spoke to her of the possibility of her transforming her suffering:
If you want to understand, to know the truth about this sort of thing, you must rise higher and look deeper. If you do, you can transform the ghastly bond into that magic wand which changes horror into beauty . . . It is unpardonable that anyone should be tortured, even you—if you merely leave it at that. But, surely, when you overcome the pain inflicted on you by them, you make their criminal record less villainous. Even more, you bring something new into it—a thing of precious beauty.
But when, through weakness, cowardice, lack of balance, lack of serenity, you augment your pain, their crime becomes so much the darker, and it is darkened by you. If you could understand this, your making yourself invulnerable would be not only an act of self-preservation; it would be a kindness to Them . . . Look right down into the depths of your heart and tell me—Is it not right for you to be kind to them—even to them— particularly to them, perhaps? Is it not right that those men who have no kindness within them should get a surplus of it flowing towards them from without? . . . And the whole of me responds with a “Yes!” like a throb of thundering music.
Cited by Princeton Seminary professor Diogenes Allen in “Traces of God”
Now, you think: “I could not do that.” But you have no idea what you can do. You have no idea what you can do because you have no idea who you are—as long as you seek perfection through strength. On that path, you are bound and determined; you are always and only making more of yourself. Never can there come anything divinely new into our self-made man or woman. There is no real freedom there.
But if, like the sent-down man whose name you have freely taken, you go seeking the seat at the low place; if you follow the example that was set; if you kneel yourself at the foot of the other, suddenly an infinite horizon for freedom and action opens. Your energy, intelligence, imagination, and love will never exhaust the possibilities for refreshment as you find the right way to kneel for the other in perfecting humility. Down that way, following the sent-down man, is the only country in which you are no longer bound and determined. There is no conflict you have in your family or with your neighbor or with your co-worker in which you cannot, with generous genius, discover the secret of the door through which you can step down to serve them as one who is kneeling and looking up. There is not a grievance in your mind or in your body whose pain will not be transformed by your free choice to let go, to find the place of the servant.
The reason these things are so is simple. When you follow the sent-down man down, you cease making more of yourself. In that act, you begin being made; being made human, a being made in the image of God, in the image of the sent-down man. Until heaven and earth should pass away, the sent-down man and his Cross will never pass away, for the way of the Cross is the only road that has no end but God. Go this way in peace.
“For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you . . . If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”
delivered at First Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, New York
© Stephen H. Phelps 2010
C.J. Jung on the preconditions for human renewal:
A human relationship is not based on differentiation and perfection, for these only emphasize the differences or call forth the exact opposite; it is based, rather, on imperfection, on what is weak, helpless, and in need of support—the very ground and motive for dependence. The perfect have no need of others, but weakness has… it is from need and distress that new forms of existence arise, and not from idealistic requirements or mere wishes. What our world lacks is the psychic connection; no clique, no community of interests, no political party, and no State will ever be able to replace this.”
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