THE CROSS IS WHERE LOVE WALKS THROUGH DEATH

14 April 2017

Good Friday

It’s about walking. It’s still about walking.

On Palm Sunday, the walking began in glory, with bright sun warming the labyrinth ground. It felt good to greet the refreshing morning. We walked with energy and hope.

For me, the day seemed just like the previous morning, a Saturday, when I had walked to the Cathedral Farmer’s Market, and greeted hot coffee, warm bread, and familiar friends. The community was rich and strong.

That Saturday, I kept walking, into Buckhead Village, noticing the optimistic new construction everywhere, and stepping into a little boutique store, just to see what they had. Wow! I never do that, step into a store just to see what they have! But I did that day. And I kept walking still.

I find that when I take my steps intentionally, deliberately, prayerfully, those steps become somehow holy. I begin to see the beauty of ordinary things. And the ordinary things become holy. It seems easier to smile at people.

I kept walking. I was deliberately not in a hurry. I stepped inside one of our local restaurants, one which has been closed for two years, and has now come back to life. It’s been resurrected! It is in a new location, and I had to visit.

Then, I walked through the parking lot of the Cathedral. I knew that our family mini-retreat was occurring, and I knew that other visitors were elsewhere on the campus tending to things. I was walking, however, deliberately in the middle of the driveway. It is not the safest place to walk, but I do that occasionally here at the Cathedral, just to slow people down, especially when I have the time to engage people.

Yes, I was walking in a way to slow people down, especially people who were cutting through our Cathedral property, zooming through, in order to hurry their errands. It’s our property, and people don’t seem to know that. Thus, our parking lot is sometimes used as a convenient cut through, a way to get some place in a hurry. But, my thought is that the Cathedral is supposed to be the place that teaches us not to be in a hurry! It was fun to smile at people, and welcome them to the Cathedral!

But on Saturday, the passenger in one of the “cut-through cars” turned mean. The driver drove around me, but it was the back seat passenger who stepped out of the car and yelled at me, hollered at me. What was I doing walking down the middle of the road? I told him softly that I was slowing down the traffic that was zooming through our church property. We care for lots of people walking here, I said. Indeed, our youth and family retreat was occurring just then, on the lawn of the Lanier House.

Nothing further than that happened. The yelling man got back into the car, and they drove off. All was fine. I kept walking. But I have to admit that I also felt wounded, somehow stung by the man’s anger, even though I also admit that I had opened myself up to it. I felt like my walking had taken me not only to the nice people around town; but my walking had also exposed me to the angry people around town.

Good walks do that. They take us everywhere. As I walked on, I realized how often our walks take us through the valley of the shadow of death.

My little skirmish with meanness was not a big deal. I knew I was risking absorbing another person’s anger, and I did receive it. I figured I was absorbing that meanness on behalf of the church. I was stung by the guy, but it was nothing compared to the other ways that humanity strikes each other around this world.

My example is a small one.  But maybe it gives a way of explaining what Jesus did on Good Friday. Jesus walked. And he walked deliberately. And he walked knowing full well that he was about to absorb the meanness and anger of the world. More than that, of course, he was about to absorb the sin and violence of the world.

On this Good Friday, please don’t think about the old and worn-out ransom theories of atonement. Please disregard, in particular, any theory of so-called substitutionary atonement, the theory that Jesus violently dies in the place of humanity because God is owed justice. I have preached before about how meaningless those theories are. God does not demand blood because humanity has sinned. God is not a god of violence. Satan is not owed a ransom either. On Good Friday, there is not some cosmic judicial transaction going on.

The reason Jesus dies is because there is violence and death in the world, and Jesus dies to show us how to defeat that anger and death. Amidst all the anger and pain and violence of the world, Jesus demonstrates that there is a love that defeats violence and anger.

The reason we walk with Jesus to the cross today, is so that we can touch even the painful and angry parts of the world – even the neighborhoods we would rather not walk through. The neighborhoods of cities, and the neighborhoods of our interior lives, too. There are areas of our own souls that we fear walking through.

Today is a day to walk through those interior neighborhoods, too – places where we are in pain, places where we are angry, places where we might even be violent. Jesus wants to absorb those places, too.

We have skirmishes with death every day. Those deaths are not just the physical deaths of people we love. We have little outbursts with anger every day, too, encountering it in others, and even delivering it ourselves. Pain and death reside not just out in the world, but also in every one of us.

Jesus Christ touched, absorbed, all those places when he walked to the cross. The reason, then, that we walk with Christ to the cross, is so that Christ can touch those awful and treacherous places in us. When Christ touches them, they become holy.

Yes, I know it is hard to call death holy. But even death becomes holy when the love of Christ touches it. We walk the way of the cross so that Christ can touch our pain, so that Christ can touch our anger, so that Christ can touch our death.

When Christ touches the suffering of the world, when Christ touches the sin of the world, nothing magical or transactional happens. The Cross is not some commercial or juridical exchange wherein an angry God is now satisfied that a penalty has been paid for human sin. We are not “sinners in the hand of an angry God!” That way of thinking perpetuates the sad system of violence and blood shedding. That way of thinking leads only to more unjustified suffering.

What happens, instead, when Christ touches the suffering and sin of the world, is that sin becomes emptied, suffering becomes become dis-empowered. Sin and suffering lose any effect on us; they become meaningless, powerless. They wither away in the glory of love.

Yes, the cross is about love. Ultimately, the cross is where love touches the sin and suffering of the world. The cross is love, love absorbing anger and death, and de-powering them, in the name of God. The cross is where love walks through sin and death.

Our “Holy Week” is “Holy Walk.” And our Holy Walk brings us to this day, Good Friday, gazing at the cross of Christ, so that we can absorb that love which we see in Christ. Every one of us has skirmishes with anger and death every day. And some of us have tremendous battles with anger and death. And all of us will eventually die. Every one of us walks, eventually, through the valley of the shadow of death.

The way to prepare for those skirmishes and battles. and for death itself, is to slow down and walk through them in small ways now, to take the time to learn how to encounter them daily. When we say that we take up our cross daily, we mean that we are choosing to take love with us on our daily walks; with love, we are willing to encounter violence and to absorb the tiny deaths that assault us every day. 

The cross, then, is not where Jesus pays for sin. The cross is that place where love meets death. It is part of the Holy Walk of love. And love wins today. Love wins.

AMEN.

IT'S ABOUT WALKING

It’s about walking. In the fourth century A.D., a woman named Egeria, or Etheria, took a long pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and beyond. She walked a lot. Apparently, she wrote a detailed letter back home describing her travels, a letter called Peregrinatio Etheria, the “walking,” or the “pilgrimage,” of Etheria. In particular, she described what the fourth century Christians in Jerusalem did on the Sunday before Easter. They walked. From holy site to holy site, they walked. So began the observance of processing on the Sunday before Easter. It’s about walking. Christians have been walking ever since. Indeed, people of faith, and people of “no faith” walk. Something happens when we walk. Something holy and inspiring occurs when we walk. The famous thinker, Augustine of Hippo, is known for his answer to an unsolvable philosophical paradox. He said, “Solvitur ambulando,” “It is solved by walking.” Many a great thinker has discovered the same thing. Walking solves problems both intellectual and psychological. In May, 2014, an article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology showed that walking—as opposed to sitting—significantly improves creative thinking. Charles Dickens and William Wordsworth knew that a long time ago. Wordsworth was known for rambling all over Europe in all kinds of weather, composing most of his poetry while walking. It is said that even in his 60s, Wordsworth walked twenty miles and day, and that he probably walked 180,000 miles in his life. Jean Jacques Rosseau, in his Confessions of 1782, wrote “I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.”  Even the atheist philosopher, Frederick Neitzsche wrote, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” That is why we Christians walk, too. It is why we take time to walk. Of course, we actually walk throughout the year, not just on Palm Sunday. We walk on the labyrinth, for instance, where God’s spirit speaks to us without words. Just yesterday, I enjoyed walking around the Cathedral Farmer’s Market. I had no particular goal, or object, in mind, except to walk around, to saunter, to meander. To be present in the moment. And I ended up finding holy people there. The beautiful Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, has written about “Walking Meditation” as a form of prayer. He said, “Many of us walk for the sole purpose of getting from one place to another. Now suppose we are walking to a sacred place. We would walk quietly and take each gentle step with reverence. …. In our daily lives, we get lost in our computer or in our worries, fear, or busyness. Walking meditation makes us whole again. …Walking meditation unites our body and our mind.” (Thich Nhat Hanh, “Walking Meditation,” Lion’s Roar, March 20, 2015). There is a spirituality, a deep spirituality, that occurs in walking. It is the reason Jesus walked into Jerusalem. It is the reason some pilgrims walk the el Camino de Santiago de Compostela. It is the reason we walk today. We find God in our walking. A simple Palm Sunday Procession, perhaps around one’s local church, is a relatively short one. We don’t go a long way, physically; but we can go an incredibly long way, spiritually. It’s about walking. Spirituality is about walking. God comes to us when we walk. This day, Palm Sunday, begins something called “Holy Week” for Christians. But we might better call this week, “Holy Walk.” This week is “Holy Walk.” We have blessed palms and shouted “Hosannah!” But, if we are following the walk of Jesus, we know that our shouts of joy can turn embarrassingly into shouts of betrayal, too. Our beautiful walks of glory can also take us walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Christians hear the painful Passion of Christ on Palm Sunday, and we will observe that Passion again on Good Friday. That’s what true walking does. True walking takes us everywhere, from joy to pain, and from death to life. Yes, the walk will conclude next Sunday, a week from today, with resurrection and new life. But the walk will take us through death first. That’s what faithful people do when we walk. We touch every facet of human life; we try to walk the full way of Christ. The naturalist, Henry David Thoreau, did not always get etymological details right, but he got walking right. He knew how to walk and how to enjoy the presence of God in the world. Listen to how he talks about walking, and how he explains the definition of the word, “saunter.” He wrote, “I have met … but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived ‘from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,’ to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, ‘There goes a Sainte Terrer,’—Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. (Henry David Thoreau, “Walking”, 1862) Yes, every good walk is a walk to the holy land! Every good walk is a holy saunter, a holy walk, a spiritual pilgrimage to holy land. When we walk deliberately, intentionally, spiritually, then every place we step is sacred ground: the soft, beautiful ground, and even the bloody, crucified ground. Today begins Holy Week, “Holy Walk.” Walk in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).

WHY THE CROSS ?

Good Friday

3 April 2015

Why do we carry these crosses everywhere?

We wear them around our necks and on our arms. Some are made of the most ordinary materials, and some are made of the most expensive. Some are as simple as two plain lines. Others are ornate and complicated, with no end to their beautiful variation. We lift crosses up into the air, and we process in lines behind them. We place them on our walls and doors.

But what do they actually mean? Do they mean simply that we are pious? That we are warm and cozy, soft-hearted people? Do they mean that we harbor some long lost spiritual dimension in our past? Do they mean simply that we are from a religious family?

No, the cross means more, much more, than those things. Sadly, regrettably, tragically, the cross has also been used wrongly. It has been used, for instance, to justify violence. It has been used in acts of racism and anti-semitism and prejudice. It has been used in ways that are directly antagonistic to the way that Jesus used it.

In his book, Constantine’s Sword, James Carroll delivered a scathing critique of the manner in which the cross has especially been used in anti-semitic ways. Today, some well-meaning Christians are reluctant to display the cross, out of sensitivity to its anti-semitic history.

However, that is one of the attitudes towards the cross that I seek to redeem. The cross means something different. The cross means something that is the very opposite of violence, and it means something that is much more profound than mere emotional pietism.

Today, Good Friday, is the day of the cross. I know that Easter is a lovely and delightful day, but I feel closer to God on Good Friday. Let me tell you why: Good Friday is a day of love. Unfortunately, throughout history, many of us have tried to explain the meaning of the cross without love. We have discussed crude blood sacrifice, and we have developed grand “atonement” theories, and we have tried to explain rationally just how the sacrifice of Jesus, the blood of Jesus, has saved us.

Listen to three of these popular theories.     

                                                                                                                         

A first theory has been called “the fish hook theory.” Some say that “Satan was owed something because of the sinful nature of humanity. Someone had to pay Satan a sort of ransom, and that someone was Jesus. Jesus died on the cross and paid the price. But then Jesus tricked Satan by being resurrected.” This view was once described with the image that Christ was a worm on a fish hook that finally caught Satan. So, this view has also been called the fish hook theory. But this theory has a real problem: why should God have to owe Satan anything at all?

A second type of theory has to do with satisfying God’s justice. Some say that “it wasn't Satan who had to be satisfied. Rather it was God's justice that had to be satis­fied. The perfect righteousness of God demanded that someone suffer for sins which had been committed. Therefore (according to this theory), Jesus's death on the cross satisfies the justice, the righteousness, of God.” But this theory has a similar problem: Would God kill Jesus in order to satisfy a harsh and impersonal justice system? That can’t be.

A third theory is the blood theory. This theory maintains that “sin –somehow—can be transferred to another's blood. The Old Testament sacrificial offerings of lambs and such were designed to be a sort of transference. In those ceremonies, the sins of humanity were transferred to the animal and so offered to God and removed from people. Thus, sins can be transferred to Jesus's blood because he was a perfect and sinless offering; he was able to take away the sins of the world.”

Alas, as Rene Girard has shown us, this theory runs the risk of perpetuating scapegoat systems. When we believe that Jesus’s death is just another example of the scapegoat sacrificial system, we perpetuate scapegoating and violence to other innocent people. We run the risk of making the cross a sign of violence towards others again.

Perhaps you recognize the language of these three sorts of theories. Elements of each theory appear in our theology and in our litur­gy. Some of us may believe parts of all of them.

Let me suggest, however, that none of them captures the essence of what is going on today. The cross is not about a legal contract or a heavenly transaction. It is not “blood for sin.”  We betray the cross if we analyze it in quantifiable and crude transactional terms. Good Friday is not an intellectual day, and the cross cannot be fully explained with an intellectual theory.

The cross goes deeper than our brains. 

The cross, indeed, is a starkly violent image; there is no getting around that. But the point is that Jesus transforms that image. Jesus “made an instrument of shameful death to be for us a means of life and peace.” That transformation declares that even the most painful suffering and most gruesome death are not stronger than God. God is greater. God defeats violence at the cross; and God defeats death at the cross.

Well, how does that transformation happen? Why the cross? Today, I have three words with which to answer that question. The cross, the holy cross, means three things: pain, paradox, and passion. And by “passion,” I mean “love.” Pain, paradox, and love.

Let’s start with the human experience of pain, and death. Why do we suffer pain? Where does evil come from? What is death?  These are eternal questions of humanity, whether that humanity lived two thousand years ago or today. The eternal questions of humanity have had to do with suffering, have dealt with evil, have been about facing death. Wherever we have lived, at the beginning of humanity in sub-Saharan Africa, in the ancient kingdoms and dynasties of China, in the crowded streets of Atlanta, in the comfortable homes and apartments of Buckhead, wherever we humans have lived, we have faced similar questions.

There are some people of the world who do not believe in pain. There are some religions of the world which do not believe in pain. Some do not believe in sickness or disease. Some religions believe that evil is an illusion, that evil does not actually exist. Some religions do not acknowledge death.

Let them be, those religions. Christianity is not among them. Christianity's answer to the eternal questions of pain, death, and evil is not simply to claim that they do not exist.

Rather, Christianity’s answer is the cross.

The pain and suffering of the cross is Christianity’s acknowledgement that suffering, and evil, and death, really do exist. This might seem obvious to you. “Of course evil, suffering, and death exist,” you say. But I am not speaking so simplistically. I have known hundreds of situations in which good-willed people have been unable to acknowledge their pain. Our tendency is to hide those embarrassing parts of ourselves, places which have not matched our ideals of perfection and happiness. Suffering is painful, yes, but it is also embarrassing. Pain is also humiliating.

Our tendency is to hide. We would rather not admit those times when we have been betrayed, when we have lost, when we have been defeated.  Husbands and wives live hidden from one another. We show up to work in misery. We collapse in the evening from fatigue and bewilderment, unable to keep up with our dreams. But somehow, we dare not admit those problems. We are scared.

Then, worse, we tend to explain away evil. Such an act was due to a lost childhood, we say. Such an atrocity was a sign of sickness. Such horrific behavior is a symptom of a sick society, we say. No; pain and suffering are inherent parts of being human.

So, first of all, the cross means that we Christians acknowledge the real existence of pain and suffering.  In fact, we share an important tenet with Buddhism in this regard. Life is suffering. Of course, we believe that life is also much more than that; but life does involve suffering. None of us gets around pain and suffering. The way to the other side of pain and suffering is not around it, but through it.

It is Jesus who shows us how to go through, not around, pain and suffering. The holy cross, then, reminds us that Jesus himself encountered pain, and betrayal and false witness and innocent suffering, too – more so than most of us ever will. We follow Jesus and the cross because they show us the way through. Remember: the cross never gives us permission to inflict pain; it gives us the strength to live through it.

Secondly the cross means paradox. This is more complex. It starts with the very paradox between suffering and joy, and between death and life. The cross means both death and life. Christians are supposed to know how to deal with both. The cross, two simple intersecting lines, represents the truth that life always has two lines going through it, at least two lines, usually many more.

The very shape of the cross, an intersection of two lines, can be seen as paradox, as the meeting of two different worlds. Many people have understood the horizontal axis of the cross to mean reconciliation with each other, and the vertical axis of the cross to mean reconciliation of humanity with God, with the transcendent. Perhaps the cross means the paradox of reconciliation.

Christianity is a deeply spiritual way, not a rational way. People who wear the cross care about the reconciliation of “both/and”, not “either/or.” Paradox means the ability to live with opposites. In Jesus, for instance, we live with both humanity and divinity. Humanity and divinity are concepts that are often seen as opposites; but, to us, paradoxically, they are not.

Finally, passionate love. The cross means love. It was love that brought Jesus into the world, and it was love that led him to the cross. The reason we follow Jesus to the cross is because we want to love like he loved.

In short, wearing the cross around our necks means that we choose to love. In the midst of pain, we choose to love. In the midst of paradox, we choose to love. In the midst of things we cannot hold together, things we cannot understand, we choose to love. In the midst of life, we choose to love, to give ourselves for each other. Love was the choice Jesus made, and he made that choice most powerfully at the cross, the holy cross.

The holy cross means pain, but it means paradox even more; and even more still, the cross means love. Jesus loves us, this we know, for the cross tells us so. The cross is where Jesus sacrifices not just himself, but all of humanity.

But here’s the catch. The word “sacrifice” does not mean to kill something. Sacrifice does not mean violence. The real meaning of sacrifice, the deep meaning that lies behind all the ways the word is used in Scripture, the deep meaning of the word, “sacrifice,” is “to make something holy,” “to bring something close to God,” “to take something near God.”

The sacrifice of Jesus, then, is not simply that he died, or that he shed blood, or that he experienced evil. The sacrifice of Jesus is that he took the human experiences of pain, violence, and death, to God. This is Christianity’s answer to the eternal questions of death, pain, and suffering. Jesus is the evidence that pain and evil really do exist, and even God knows about them. In fact, God has touched pain and evil, and is transforming them.

If Jesus took pain and suffering to the cross, it should be no accident that we today who are in pain should end up in the church, here at the cross with Jesus. Whether we are innocent or guilty with pain, we end up in the same place as Jesus does: before the loving mercy of God.

Again, Christianity is an honest and realistic and incarnate religion. There are places in our lives where we bleed. There are places where we hurt, where we are in pain, where we suffer. Those horrifying, and even gruesome places, are the very places where God –in the person of Jesus Christ—pours out his love for us. God does not love us in theory. God loves us personally, in the person and life of Jesus Christ, in the very blood of Jesus Christ.

Today, we see suffering, but we also see love. It is love that looms so much larger over the landscape of intellectual theories of atonement. It is love that generates the power of Good Friday. It is love that compels Jesus Christ to take the despair and pain and suffering and blood of humanity near to God.

Sacrifice means to make holy. Jesus has made holy the human experiences of torturous pain, or bloody death, by taking them near to the very heart of God.

And Jesus took something else close to the heart of God. He took the human experience of sin. When God was touched so closely with that sin, God was affected. To be passionate means to be moved, to be willing to be moved. God himself suffered when touched by human violence. God was affected.

God’s response, however, was to forgive.

It is at the cross, then, that we discover, the true nature of God. The true nature of God is passionate love. When touched by sin, God forgives – he  does not condemn. When touched by despair, God perseveres. When touched by evil, God instigates the Good. When touched by violence, God turns it into peace. When touched by death, God turns it into life. The true nature of God is passionate love.

This is why we can say with deep conviction that we are saved by this blood of Jesus. This is why we can say with passion that Jesus is the perfect offering for our sins. His offering –his sacrifice—makes holy even the awful aspects of humanity, His offering takes all of human experience to the very heart of God, and in that heart of God we meet ... perfect love.

Jesus on the cross is an offering of love. And there is nothing more perfect than that love, nothing more powerful than that love, nothing more passionate than that love. To be loved by a suffering Jesus, on the cross, is to be loved. To be loved where we suffer is to be loved. That kind of love is deep, and broad, and high; that kind of love is the perfect offering for our sins. That kind of love lifts us close, so very close, to God. That kind of love is why we call this Friday Good.

AMEN.

GOOD FRIDAY: THE SECRET OF LIFE

Christians gather on Good Friday, for the same reason that we gather on any other day at church. We gather to walk, to walk with Jesus.

I like this walk. In fact, I need this walk, just like I need to walk every week of the year – no matter where I am. I have walked in the mountains of North Georgia, in the hills of middle Georgia, on the beaches of South Georgia.

Two weeks ago, as is my practice in Atlanta, I walked this very neighborhood, where I know most of the roads now. I know where the sidewalks are and where they are not. I know where certain birds like to congregate. I know where there are hawks, right here in urban Atlanta. In fact, I have seen foxes, all sorts of snakes, even coyote and deer. I don’t need to be walking in rural areas to see those animals.

And, of course, I have seen their life cycles – young birds in nests in the Spring, and the run-over possums and squirrels in the streets. Anyone who walks a lot sees dead things, real live dead things.

Two weeks ago, however, I saw something quite unusual for me. I was along West Paces Ferry Road, here in Atlanta, surely one of the nicest streets in the city. Almost every house on that beautiful street seems to be a mansion, including, of course, the Governor’s Mansion. Some of those homes are truly spectacular.

As I was walking alongside one of those homes, I saw a huge and growling machine. When I was a young boy, I called them steam shovels. I think they are called excavators now, or power shovels, with big diesel engines, and full of hydraulic hoses. It was loud and powerful.

I had to stop and watch. As I paused, the skillful operator turned the saber-toothed bucket right toward the house. Then, with a careful swipe, the bucket tore off a complete wall of one of the upstairs bedrooms.    

This was not an accident. The power shovel excavator was there for demolition work. The machine was deliberately and very methodically destroying that beautiful house. The destruction was quite carefully arranged. There was no wrecking ball just careening around everywhere. First the shovel tore off a piece of the roof, and then a section of the wall, with pipes and wires and conduits hanging out. Every few minutes, the bucket would carry the debris to a nearby waiting truck.

Only when that upstairs room was completely gone, did the operator turn to the adjacent room. Slowly and deliberately, the entire house was coming down. I watched for about fifteen minutes, and then I continued my walk.

I was sad, of course. I was actually sad for the house, imagining what sorts of activities and lives had developed within those walls. I thought of the sad and horrified neighbors. But I was sad for the previous inhabitants, too. Some of them were probably glad to see the house go. Surely at least one of them was. Maybe it was too old to maintain properly any more. Maybe a new owner of the lot wants to start all over again. Whatever the reason, that beautiful home, constructed so carefully and sturdily, was going the way of all flesh.

The next day, I was walking again. Obviously, I wanted to pass by the house again, and I did. By the next day, there was no house there at all. It was an empty space, with a heap of rubble resting below, a pile of broken beams and splintered wood and crumbled plaster and cracked concrete. It was what I expected, but I was stunned. It was a picture of Psalm 103:16, “the wind passes over it, and it is gone; and its place knows it no more.”

But then, as I paused, I saw something else I did not expect. One of the tall white oak trees in the back yard was now the predominant feature of that lot. The tree was still bare with winter gray and no sign of leaves yet. But at the top, at the very top of the bare tree, sat one of my favorite birds, a red-shouldered hawk, surveying the land. I would not have seen the bird if the house were still there.

In fact, the hawk may not have even been there if the house were still standing. He was probably up there waiting for the inevitable mice and rodents who would be fleeing the scene; he was probably looking to take advantage of a newly cleared hunting ground. I thought of Luke 17:37, “where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.”

This week is about walking. It began with the rather fun and glorious procession of Palm Sunday; and today, that walk leads us to the cross.

That walk leads us, with Jesus, to where he breathes his last and says, “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). He was praying the Psalms when he said that, as he often prayed the psalms. He was reciting Psalm 31:5, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

If we had heard him continue that psalm, we would have heard him say,

“I am the scorn of all my adversaries,

A horror to my neighbors,

An object of dread to my acquaintances;

Those who see me in the street flee from me.

I have passed out of mind like one who is dead;

I have become like a broken vessel” (Ps. 31:11-12).

Jesus, the heroic figure of spiritual strength, the one who made the blind see and who made the lame walk, is now a broken vessel himself. His body, a structure containing such spirit that he could walk on water, that he could still storms, that he could walk through angry crowds – that body is now crumbling and falling like a demolished house. “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Jamie Quatro, a new author from Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, has recently written an engaging book of short stories, one of the most provocative ones titled, simply, “Demolition.” In that story, a strange deaf man shows up one day in the local, steadfast, faithful stone church. But after a few Sundays of his attendance, a small piece of one of the stained glass windows falls out. It is the image of Jesus’s foot. Over the course of several weeks, other pieces of windows randomly fall out, for no reason whatsoever. The other physical pieces of the church are foundationally secure.

Then, as the windows start falling out, the parishioners begin to see God’s natural world in a new way. Indeed, the images before their eyes are so startling and new, so provocative and fresh, that the parishioners decide to actually tear off the roof of the church and see the sky. Then they decide to tear down the walls, very deliberately. They realize that the missing stained glass was actually a gift, and “for the first time [they] could see each other worshipping in the natural light” (Jamie Quatro, “Demolition,” in I Want to Show You More, Kindle edition, location 2471). Ultimately, the entire church is demolished.

The story continues with some shocks, because this fresh spirit in the church also leads to possible irresponsibility and a re-discovery of sin. But the point is that demolition, even the destruction of buildings and structures we hold to be precious and dear, can lead to new perspective and new life. Again, the demolition of what is familiar in our lives is certainly risky, because the lack of structure can lead to irresponsibility, too; but it leads finally to new life.

Sometimes the structures of our lives need to fall away. In fact, they don’t simply need to fall away. They will fall away. They will be destroyed. They will die.

For me, this is the secret of life. I was walking along a beach a month ago when I thought about it this way. Things die; this is the secret of life. I was walking along shells and seaweed, even old carcasses of dead fish and a few birds. I saw where pigs had dug up and eaten turtle eggs. I saw birds eating other flesh. I saw lots of bones. And, yet, as beaches are, it was somehow beautiful; I felt alive.

What is the secret of life? The secret of life is death. The secret of life is that everything dies. At our Christian funerals, we say as much; “All we go down to the dust.” Even Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life – even Jesus, who is eternal life—even Jesus, dies.

And he doesn’t just die. He dies slowly, deliberately, methodically, even terribly. It is his death, this death, which sums up the deaths of a million other creatures. Jesus dies.

If we are to walk with Jesus, if we are to walk the walk of Jesus, then we, too, must encounter death – deliberately, methodically, courageously.

In our lives, walls and structures will fall away. In our lives, bones and skin will fall away, too. We can see it daily if we pay attention while we are walking. Parts of us die. Good parts of us die, parts that were necessary and beautiful and sturdily built. One day, the time comes when they are demolished.

But demolition is not the end. That demolition, and our death to the old, makes way for something new. When the house was demolished, the red-shouldered hawk became visible and alive. In the same way, it is the destruction of our old structures that makes way for the love of God to be renewed in us.

Jesus talked about love. Jesus taught us deeply about love. But, today, Good Friday, is the day that Jesus shows us love. It is when Jesus lets his old life be torn down, when he lets his body be demolished, that we are able to truly see love.

Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The scriptures say he was talking about the temple of his body (John 2:19-21).

When that temple crumbles, when even the walls of our beautiful churches are torn down, when we let down the finely furnished walls of our own lives, then it is that we see the love of God shining in a new way.

And that, ultimately, is the meaning of today, Good Friday. The old falls away. The structures of our lives die. Even our very lives die. The secret of life is death. But if we keep on walking, we see; we see that every death in our lives also shows us a new way to love in our lives.

Good Friday, then, is ultimately about love. It is a death, for sure, an occasion for us to die to ourselves. But we see today, that love is stronger. If we die with Christ, we will also live with him; and we will love with Christ in a new way.

AMEN.

(This was the Good Friday sermon of 29 March, 2013)

The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler

Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip