Sermon: November 20, 2022

Preacher: Rev Ryan Slifka

Scriptures: Luke 23:33-43

Today is Reign of Christ Sunday, also known as the festival of Christ the King. This day we look back to the scriptures where Jesus is proclaimed as Lord, as king, as ruler of all the universe. We look to his work in our own lives and to re-pledge our allegiance to him in the present. And we look forward to the fulfilment of God’s eternal purposes. The promise that in the end God will get what God wants.

Thinking back to Queen Elizabeth’s funeral this past year, it was a somber affair. But it was also quite  gorgeous. Brilliantly decked processionals. Incredible costumes. Thousands of bouquets of flowers. Crowds of adoring well-wishers. It was an event fit for a Queen. In spite of the occasion, it was rather beautiful.

Jesus’ crucifixion, not so much.

Rather than a royal robe, Jesus is stripped naked while they gamble for his clothes. Nails in his hand where a solid sceptre would be. No crown of gold, but a crown of thorns. Where you might expect a bottle the finest vintage spirits, he’s given sour wine as a palliative painkiller.  No royal entourage, just a couple criminals on his left and his right, and above his head they’ve carved the words “king of the Jews.” What kind of king is this? What kind of king is enthroned on a cross?

This isn’t gorgeous. It’s not beautiful at all. The cross is as ugly as human life gets.

The cross represents the worst in us. The worst we can experience, the worst we can do to each other as human beings. It represents the brokenness of political and social systems, and the darkness of the human heart. Fear, hatred. Pragmatic politics, mob rule, torture and betrayal. And this is the symbol we slap on steeples, print on our letterhead, and wear around our neck as jewelry. This is as ugly as it gets. It’s as ugly as we get.

The cross is as ugly as it gets. But, in the end, this ugliness is the point. It’s the point because within all this ugliness, the worst of human nature, is the power, the presence, and the beauty of God. If only we have the ears to hear it from the mouth of Jesus.

First, in the cross, we’re given the beauty found in the depth of divine love and forgiveness.

“Father, forgive them,” he prays. “For they do not know what they are doing.” For any of us, the ugliness of betrayal, humiliation, and torture, would have stoked within us the same kind of fear and hatred that brought it about. But Jesus reveals the depth of the Father’s love, of God’s love for all, forgiving his murderers in the middle of the act. Paul in his letter to the Romans says, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.”

This is true Love, not just for the kind and gentle in us, but love for even the darkest, most cruel parts of who we are. And forgiveness, not just for the good, but forgiveness even for the wicked. In the middle of deep human ugliness, we are assaulted by the beautiful words of grace. Of bottomless, unconditional, one-way love.

Next, in the cross we’re given the beauty of God’s power for life. Even under the inescapable shadow of death.

Jesus was strung up between two criminals. One mocks him, saying that if he was the Son of God, he’d save himself and them. The other, however, intercedes on Jesus’ behalf. “We’re the guilty ones,” he says. “This man is innocent.” Then as he’s dying, he begs Jesus: “Jesus, remember me when you come in to your kingdom.” Jesus responds, “truly, this day you will be with me in Paradise.”

Paradise means the realm of eternity, the realm of heaven, yes.  But here Jesus isn’t only speaking of the afterlife. “Paradise” also means God’s garden, Genesis. The loving peaceable world that God intends. It’s an “end-time image of New Creation.”[i] Jesus is saying that today, here and now, in Jesus’ death, the New Creation is touching down, breaking in to our world. Like the great old hymn “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” which we began the service with, says: “His reign shall know no end; and round his pierced feet fair flowers of Paradise extend their fragrance ever sweet.”

It means that no power on earth, or heaven above, not even death can stop the energy and creative vitality of God’s Spirit. Facing the dead-end of death and destruction, we are rescued by the beautiful promise of a glorious future. One without end.

And finally, in the cross, we’re given the beauty of a life lived in total, undeviating goodness.

Jesus has been given every opportunity to abandon his mission, to return evil for evil. To hide, escape, and run away. There’s no certainty here that what he’s doing will work out in the end. These words express his faith, his full, and uncompromising trust in God’s sovereignty and God’s goodness.[ii] At the tail end of what appears to be a complete disaster, Jesus has gone God’s way, loving, forgiving, saving. Obedience until the bitter end.

It’s the beauty of faith, that even when all seems lost, when the cause is doomed, we’re given the courage to do what is right.

The cross is indeed ugly. But, in the end, its ugliness is overshadowed, is transfigured by the Word of God embodied, and the love of God spoken into being by Jesus.[iii] This shifts its power from fear and violence, to an empowering, life-giving trust. Trusting that, even now, Christ is king of the cosmos. In the end, Christ’s kingdom will come into every square inch of creation. That in the end nothing can stop the onslaught of his Love.

I’ve shared this story before. But it’s one that’s worth repeating. Over and over and over again. It’s the story of Etty Hillesum.

Hillesum was born in 1917, a Dutch Jew who was highly influenced by the medieval Catholic mystics and Russian Orthodox novelists like Fyodor Dostoevsky. She’s most famous for her diaries she began in 1941, after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Her diaries record the increasing anti-Jewish measures imposed by the occupying German army, and the growing uncertainty about the fate of fellow Jews who had been deported by them. As well as forming a record of oppression, her diaries describe her spiritual development and deepening faith in God.

For the most part, she refused to hide when the gestapo came knocking, and even ministered to camp prisoners, slipping food and words of hope through their barbed wire fences.

Eventually, she was arrested, and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was killed at the age of 29. If anyone knew the ugliness of Jesus’ crucifixion it was Etty Hillesum. Her last few years were cross-shaped ones. And yet, her letters and diary are marked by unmistakable joy, prayers of gratitude. And moments of deep beauty. Here’s one of her last, in the form of a prayer:

"Sometimes,” she writes. “Sometimes, when I stand in some corner of Auschwitz, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised toward Your heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. And I want to be there right in the thick of what people call “horror” and still be able to say: life is beautiful. And now I lie here in a corner, dizzy and feverish and unable to do a thing. But I am also with the jasmine and with that piece of sky beyond my window. For once you have begun to walk with God, you need only keep on walking with Him and all of life becomes one long stroll—such a marvelous feeling."[iv]

Etty Hillesum was a victim of one of the worst crimes against humanity in this century. And yet, because of the God who meets us most fully on the cross, she wasn’t overcome by this terror of terrors. Because of the cross, like Jesus, she could gaze in to the abyss of human depravity and “horror” that was Auschwitz, and plant the words of paradise. Caught up in the ordinary splendor of a shrub, and a sliver of sky. Because of the cross, she could stare straight into the dead-end of evil, of pain, of suffering and death, and see nothing but one long, joyful stroll into eternity. Because of the cross, with her dying words, she could say that “life is beautiful.”

What kind of King is this? And what kind of Kingdom? The cross is ugly, and in its shadow all of our ugliness comes to light. There’s nothing visually beautiful about this scene, or about the people in it. And there’s nothing beautiful about what’s being done to Jesus with it. Nor is there beauty inherent in any of our suffering.

But the Good News is that beauty lies hidden in the middle of all ugliness. As Paul says, “where sin abounds, grace abounds more so.” The good news is that our own ugliness, the world’s ugliness is not ultimate. Whatever ugliness, broken and hurt you know now, it’s not the end. It’s never the end. Because it’s no match for the beauty, it’s no match for the power. It’s no match for the love of God on the cross, poured out for us all in Jesus Christ. Who lives and reigns, whose name is above all other names.

May each of us be able to gaze unflinchingly into the darkness of the cross, this object of human ugliness at its worst. But when we look, may we see it with our ears instead of our eyes. May we see it illuminated by the beauty of the final words of Jesus. His words of forgiveness. His words of love, of hope, and of trust. And maybe then we, like Etty Hillesum, will see the ugliness of our world and see the paradise of God’s kingdom. That in spite of it all, “life is beautiful…” One long stroll into Easter, into the eternal love of God.

Amen.

[i] The New International Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, ed. Gordon D. Fee (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 314.

[ii] Green, Commentary on Luke, 315.

[iii] “Even at his crucifixion, Jesus is no hapless victim. He continues to take initiative in the events that engulf him. His trust in God never wavers. Even in the lean shadow of his death, he continues to prophesy, to intercede on behalf of his enemies, to extend hope and the promise of salvation, and in his dying breath, offer his life up to God.” Joel B. Green, “Luke,” in the New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, gen. ed. Walter J. Harrelson (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 1900.

[iv] Brian Zahnd, quoted in sermon “You’re Being Followed,” Word of Life Church website, <http://wolc.com/watch--listen/sermon-archives/youre-being-followed/> October 14, 2018