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CONTENTS
--Housing --People Christian Education --PYC
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Preached by O. Benjamin Sparks, Pastor Second Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Virginia at Watts Chapel, Union-PSCE Wednesday of Holy Week, 2006
FOR THE HELL OF IT
Isaiah 53:4 – 6; I Corinthians 13:4 – 7
I could have called this meditation, ‘The Moral Education of the Cross.’ But that sounds too dreary and doesn’t galvanize your attention nearly as forcefully as ‘For the Hell of It.” Who of us hasn’t used the expression now and then: “Why are you doing that,” someone asks. “Why are you thinking that, saying that?” “Oh, I don’t know,” we answer, “just for the hell of it.” Yet in places like this where we study the scriptures in their original languages, and learn their theology and narratives by heart – we know that the passion stories in the Synoptics – if not told exactly for moral education – are certainly used as examples for the first Christian disciples. Matthew, Mark, and Luke show us how to behave when discipleship exacts its supreme cost. Look, they declare, at how Jesus behaved. “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities” – of course. But he is the model for all Christians for all time on how to take up a cross – not to go seeking one, not to provoke the insults and violence of others for Jesus’ sake – never. But when cross bearing results in persecution, here say the gospel writers – is the way. Few, if any, of us have ever been within shoutin’ distance of the sort of persecution Jesus endured, the passion narrative in scripture and song, (1) which we have just heard, has much to teach us about how to live day by day. Much of the time, even among the faithful, we post modern people are negotiating our lives between boredom and conviction, between exhaustion from good works, and emptiness when we stop long enough to, as we say, ‘smell the roses.’ I confess that the idea for this meditation came from Will Willimon’s article in The Christian Century about the church burnings in Alabama. Two of the three students who torched those African American houses of worship were honor students at a Methodist college, so as the Methodist bishop of Alabama, Will Willimon was required to speak a word. (2) Willimon says he was astonished to learn, after dismissing the notion as foolish, that the primary motivation of the students was: just for the thrill of it. That put Willimon in mind of Flannery O’Conner’s Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the story about the misfit’s murder of a family on a South Georgia road. In explaining his action, the Misfit, “who complains that Jesus has thrown everything off balance,” says that if Jesus’ resurrection is a lie, then “it’s nothing for you to do now but to enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can – by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness.” (3) It’s not a long distance at all from such advice to the burning of church buildings – in adolescent boredom – just to see them burn, or from a frenzied Duke Lacrosse Team (4) to Abu Ghraib. Boredom, meanness, and torture, just for the hell if it. And those who were passing by the cross with Jesus hanging there hurled insults at him: “he saved others, he cannot save himself.” Executions have always drawn curious crowds. There is a searing exhibition on lynching that has toured several cities in the United States. One of the photographs – turned into a postcard for those who attended, I suppose to send to their friends and relatives – shows a crowd in front of a tree from which swings a body. And facing the camera is a grinning man who looks like he is about to wave to someone. There he is, grinning, just for the hell of it. On the other had we who eat the bread and drink the cup, who have been washed in the waters of baptism – whose belonging to one another has nothing to do with bloodlines or race or gender or anything other than being unworthy sinners – we have too many symbols now at play in our culture, and too many examples of boys and girls gone wild, and too much violence in our media, and too many video games that show heads popping off. And the Duke Lacrosse team. Why? Just for the hell of it. We are inundated with such things, assaulted by them. Our young are nurtured on them, dare we think it – influenced by them. We belong to Jesus Christ. And when we watch him closely, especially during this week, we see one who bore all things, trusted all things, and endured all things – because he was Love itself. Even more we see One who never said or sanctioned anything – just for the hell of it, nor did he take part in, a gotcha game, or said of any suffering or tragedy, “serves them right.” To see those attitudes, which too often take up residence in my own heart, we have to look instead to those who set Jesus up for crucifixion, who spinned his words and told lies about him, and who refused, in cowardice, to take responsibility for his death. Let the crowds shout crucify. Who do you want to execute, Barabbas or Jesus? We see those who stood by shaking their heads in mockery while they watched the greatest lynching in history – just for the hell of it. Listen, we don’t have to see the “bad old media conglomerates” as the enemy out there; we can look right inside the church of Jesus Christ – where all too often ideology, stubborn conviction, hatred of our opponents, and delight in their demise, or their stumbling – is the order of the day. Our drawing a verbal sword against our opponents in the church often counts for more than the water of baptism. Some people believe we Presbyterians are headed toward a war in Birmingham (6) over the Task Force Report on Peace, Unity, and Purity. This is all the more to be deplored when the central recommendations of the report are theological and pastoral, calling on us to forebear with one another for the love of Jesus and for the good of the holy, universal church, to let the Spirit lead the way, to learn to live – not with swords drawn, but with welcoming embrace – not just of those with whom we agree, but with all our brothers and sisters in Christ. It gets even worse than our American divisions. I watched a streaming video of Fleming Rutledge’s Lenten Meditation at the Washington National Cathedral last month. She had written something for her blog which she read to the congregation about an article in The New York Times. The article told of Muslims rioting in Nigeria; the riots were set off by the anti-Muslim cartoons published in Denmark. Christians retaliated. (6) The article recounted scenes of charred bodies in the streets, of mosques attacked and vandalized, of trees that sheltered the mosques cut down. Written on one charred wall of a gutted mosque, were the words, “Jesus is Lord!” That is not a witness we can make, says Rutledge, and still call ourselves Christians. That is not taking up the cross – it is taking up the sword. It is using the most sacred Christian confession – Jesus is Lord – to celebrate murder and violence. What do we see instead? In the stories of Jesus’ suffering that are given to us to shape our living and give hope in our dying, we witness another way, a more faithful way. Or as Paul says at the beginning of his love poem to the fractious Corinthians – I will show you a better way. It is indeed the best way; it is the only way that we are called to be faithful. What better week and time – than now – to receive with gladness the moral education of the Cross, and to foreswear forever seeing, doing, or thinking anything – just “for the hell of it.” Let us live with trust and hope and love in the One who showed us how to live faithfully when we take up our cross.
NOTES
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