Sometimes I wonder about the images we Christians project in the world around us. I often question how our message is understood and appreciated, and if we even articulate our message in ways that address the hurting, broken and seemingly hopeless state of many people around us.
This state of wonder causes me to recall a time when I took part in a Good Friday march and prayer service in Seattle. I was asked to deliver a prayer for peace at the end of the march. Once I stepped up to the platform to deliver my prayer, the march leader gave me a special cross to wear, one that was similar to crosses worn by all who participated in the march. Now it was a rather large cross and it was made of clay.
So, I gave my prayer. When the event ended, I began what would become a one-mile walk back to my car. On the way, I noticed that many people gave me interesting looks and more. In fact, one person even stopped me to ask a question, while some smiled, and others spoke to me.
As I thought of the attention I was receiving, it dawned on me that I was still wearing the cross that was given to me just before I gave my prayer. This rather large, noticeable cross was there for public viewing, and as I thought of it, I wondered what people were thinking as they saw my cross. Were they labeling me a religious fanatic of some kind? Did they realize that I had just marched and prayed for peace in the city?
If in meaningful conversation with me, would they have accepted and believed my testimony of the life-transforming, systems-altering, love-infused power of Jesus the Christ? Who knows? Maybe they would have described me and all with whom I had marched by these words taken from legendary singer/activist Stevie Wonder’s piercing song, Pastime Paradise:
They’ve been spending most their lives
Living in a future paradise.
They’ve been looking in their minds
For the days that sorrow’s gone from time.
They keep telling of the day
When the Saviour of love will come to stay.
Tell me who of them will come to be?
How many of them are you and me?
Proclamation, of race relations
Consolation, Integration
Verification, of revelations
Acclamation, World salvation
Vibrations, Stimulation
Confirmation, to the peace of the world*
How many of them are you and me? Whether or not we wear large crosses through downtown streets, our presence here today signals that we are holding on to a memory, a memory of a Saviour of love who changed the lives of scores of people, a Saviour of love who dared to confront the prevailing powers of the status quo in order to usher in an entirely different way for humans to relate to God and to one another.
In Christ, we saw that people mattered more than property, truth was more important than tradition, and human dignity and worth were non-negotiable, irrevocable gifts from God, bestowed and conferred onto every human being.
Even though we know how the story ends, it is important for us to gather here today, for we must remind ourselves that this blessed gift of love from God to us through Christ, cannot be extinguished. Not even by state-sponsored execution on a cross.
The executioners of Christ perhaps considered themselves rid of Christ and his controversial message of love, justice, and radical inclusivity, yet they did not plan for the possibility that Christ’s tomb could serve as his celestial changing room, where he would step out of the garments of mortality into those of immortality.
It would be easy for many of our fellow contemporaries to conclude that addictions and violence; mass incarceration and capital punishment; xenophobia, racism, and poverty; sexual orientation and gender discrimination; and of course, poorly regulated access to guns and the not-just-local-but-national scandal of officer-involved murder of unarmed Black people are realities that will always be with us, and that they are best to be ignored because we cannot overcome them.
Yet when we consider the love of Christ, present throughout history, on the cross, and available to us now, we know that we each have a divine calling and a sacred mission imperative not to be held hostage to hopelessness; not to be governed by grief; not to be made voiceless by violence; not be held back by hate; not to be engulfed by the empty values of the empire. Why? Because Christ is with us; and because he is with us, the future is now; the time for change is now.
As the Apostle Paul reminds us, “…we have this treasure in clay jars (our human bodies), so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but are not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our bodies.” (2 Corinthians 4:7-10 NRSV)
So then, we are here today because we believe in this extraordinary power of God, this love-infused power that can not and will not be extinguished. So then, we must keep on living, we must keep on loving, we must keep on trusting, we must keep on forgiving, we must keep standing for peace, and we simply must keep demanding justice. Let us keep the faith, for even on Good Friday, when it appears that all is lost, we know the faith will keep us. Amen.
Homily delivered on Good Friday, March 30, 2018, before the congregation of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Findlay, Ohio
*Pastime Paradise – Songwriter: Stevie Wonder; Pastime Paradise lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
