The Crucifixion and redeeming love
Proper Last C | Luke 23:33-43
The crucifixion. What a downer. And a strange way to say Happy Holidays, right?
Last week, we had the story of Jesus and the disciples leaving the Temple, mesmerized by its enormity, beauty, that awesome response to this miraculous achievement, like skyscrapers and other wonders of the world, and Jesus is like, “eh, I wouldn’t get too attached.”
These aren’t particularly happy stories, if you hadn’t noticed. But they point to things in the darkness. Things we’d rather shut our eyes to avoid. So we miss them. The whole truth. Of these Temples and crucifixions we tolerate, the selfish wonders and corruptions that are just part of our lives. Imposed on our lives, even. And they make us sad, despondent, until we accept it as normal, inevitable.
And Jesus says: don’t.
Apocalyptic Normal
I like this time of year, though. Not for the holidays that are fast approaching exactly, but for the spiritual landscape we journey through. The downer stories we read at the end of the liturgical calendar and the beginning of the new. Of waiting impatiently for the incarnation, for the world to be transformed. It feels like our work. Holy work.
The church gives us this pattern for a reason. It wants to normalize the apocalyptic imagination. The simple fact that we still fear apocalyptic talk and avoid thinking about the darkness of the season as a culture shows just how rebellious and ignorant we can be to our vocation as followers of Jesus.
We’re talking apocalyptic today. And we’re going to talk apocalyptic next week. Because that is what the church calls us to do.
But first, we have to remind ourselves what this actually means. Because we associate the word with the side effects to the medication rather than to the medication itself, if you get my meaning.
Apocalypse is a Greek word which means to unveil or reveal. Apocalyptic stories, then, are about revealing the truth: of God and the world. And they often show what happens when God sets to make things right.
This is why the common associations with gruesome depictions of the End Times, of conflict and destruction, are so animating and present in this. We treat these as synonyms for apocalypse, rather than the revealing: that evil sets to destroy the innocent in our world now. And God’s promise is that this must come to an end.
The Crucifixion is apocalyptic.
Because it reveals the evil of the world and the love of God. It is a contrast of the evil we are called to abhor and the love we are to embody.
The darkness, the shame, outrage, sadness that comes with it — we need a container for that. Some place to put that. And chances are we really only face that fact in the spring during Holy Week. The rest of the time, it is an abstraction. A data point. Something that happened.
On the way back from Waycross last Sunday, I passed a church sign that declared “We preach Christ crucified” and I said to the universe
Good for you!
And I also said
So do we! Because that phrase is just a saying — describing the proclamation of the Good News. How we go about our business as pilgrims on the Way of Love. We preach Christ crucified . . . and risen. And this led me to say to the universe…
Where’s the “and risen?” It’s just like Good Friday without Easter. Which is as true as the other thought that came next.
Do most of us actually preach of Christ Crucified and risen? Most of the time, we talk about the presence of Jesus or our belief or faith or love, but not the crucifixion. And, let’s be honest, just talking about it all the time isn’t the same thing as preaching it.
What then does it mean to preach Christ crucified and risen?
It works in the same general tenor of living Christ crucified and risen. It isn’t a matter of talking about it or assenting to it as a faith statement. It isn’t a concept to understand in our heart or adopt so we “get right” with God. It is more like a way of being, like living into the love of God rather than the violence of the world. Like being in communion with your neighbors rather than hostility, isolation, and rejection.
It is about seeing the revealed world around us as good because God made it and many of our cultural priorities as evil when they undermine it. Priorities like war and violence, persecution and pain, greed and isolation. Those things that pull us from love and faith and hope; sharing with others, building up our community, and enjoying life in this neighborhood.
We receive this gospel story from the cross today because it reveals how broken the world’s priorities so often are. Not because they must be or will be, as if it is all predestined to be so. But because that is how people often tend to gain power and privilege. It is how we make sense of our moment and our struggles. And it’s often how we make ourselves feel better — by mocking the weak. Even from our own weakness.
And yet, any of us can stand up. Like the thief from the cross. He accepts his own weakness, rejects the patterns of power that put him there and torture him there. Patterns that oppressors use to oppress them and that the other thief mimics himself! He is oppressing himself — accepting the lie of the world and mocking along with the ones who mock him. But the one stands up, and in so doing, gains salvation.
The Real Criminals
It is important to remember that these two crucified with Jesus, called “criminals” in the text, are there to contrast with Jesus, who was innocent. They are factually guilty of the crimes for which they are convicted, while Jesus is not. The writer of Luke takes great pains to ensure the reader understands this fact.
Historically, there is only one crime that is punished with crucifixion: insurrection. The threat of taking up arms against the state. These aren’t people who did an individual sin or stole something. This is particularly important given our cultural bias toward believing Middle Eastern crime and punishment is reprisal and vindictive: cutting off a hand for getting caught stealing, for example.
These two men next to Jesus aren’t thieves or common criminals. They are traitors in the eyes of Rome. Which probably make them folk heroes in the eyes of zealous Hebrews. Revolutionaries for the cause of liberation. The one zealot probably doesn’t think he has a single thing to repent for. Because his cause is Godly.
The other, however, sees that Jesus reveals the truth. That God’s way isn’t violent revolution. Nor is it violent oppression. Or violent suppression. He, therefore, is guilty. Not just guilty of breaking Rome’s oppressive laws, but of evil. Guilty of rejecting God’s true authority.
This is about authority.
As much as the church likes the wordplay of Jesus’s kingship and it rubs me the wrong way because we miss the nuance of it, this story is about authority. It is about the evil of kings and the reign of Christ as the anti-king.
We see this all apocalyptically because it reveals the truth of power, the truth of supremacy. It helps us see how tyranny condemns the guilty and the innocent alike. It is capricious and violent, full of hatred, malice, and punishes with both anger and fear. It hides its vulnerability and preys on the vulnerable. It sends to death those who want a different way. And causes everyone to think only in terms of violence.
And it reveals the Jesus Alternative. It exposes the limits of violence, oppression, and suppression and offers a genuine alternative to the violence dichotomy: fight or flight. Of standing up for our convictions. And of being vulnerable and offering vulnerability as a means of connection.
Like children.
We aren’t supposed to be independent from God, but dependent on God.
The lies of our culture obscure our view and make us fall for the delusion. And given enough focus on the fake vision of the world, we’ll find the reveal to be painful. That the apocalyptic imagination hurts, rather than helps. But that isn’t exactly true. It is an untruth we’ve accepted to make this distorted world more hospitable. To survive it.
Jesus doesn’t want us to survive. He wants us to live. Really live. With love and joy and all manner of hope, faith, and love.
That we are God’s children. Blessed with community, with neighbors and friends and family. To love and share God’s love and be filled with joy and creative hope. That we can be here for one another. A whole community of love, blessed. Blessed by love, not just with love. Blessed by love to love. And to give generously, joyously. With a grateful heart. To this place. To this work. In this neighborhood. In solidarity with those who live and love and lose and grow here. Our people. God’s people. All of us children.
The flock redeemed. Free of oppression. Free of hatred and that which steals joy and a future in faith. Free to be together in faith and love. Living the Jesus Alternative Way of Love we become more like God. We become love. The vehicle of redemption, that undermines the cross, that raises the dead and transforms the world. Making the world, us, life itself, new. Ever more infused with love.