November 24, 2013
The World Flipped – Turned Upside Down
By Rev. Drew Stockstill
Morningside Presbyterian Church, Atlanta
The World Flipped – Turned Upside Down
Luke 23: 33- 43
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Drew Stockstill
Nov. 24, 2013
The place even looked like death – The Skull, they called it. A place of long, slow suffering. How did we end up here – watching silently with this crowd of people? Jesus is dead. The crowd, who had gathered for this spectacle, returned home, beating their breasts in grief, full of the emotion, the lament and voice they could not find moments earlier. I’m reminded of the images in the news this summer of Syrians in the moments after sarin gas flowed through the streets and seeped into homes, robbing the lives of 1,400 people. Grief stricken, shocked they beat their breasts and grasped for words.
Luke, the messenger takes off, the body of Jesus still hanging there between the criminals. Luke – the scribe, has rushed into our midst with a breathless message – a testimony of what he has just witnessed. He has found his voice and can’t get the tale out fast enough. He’s come running from the dusty, rocky hills outside of Jerusalem, stumbling through the noisy crowds of history, running down Morningside Drive, through the autumn trees’ golden arches, gasping the cool air into his lungs as he pushes through the heavy wooden sanctuary doors and blurts out, “They crucified Jesus, there with the criminals.” We drop the phone, the papers, the glass, the shopping bags in our hands, our world interrupted as the words land: “they crucified Jesus…there…with the criminals,” at the Guantanamo Bay of the time; the place where punishment for political insurrection and terrorism is carried out – The Skull. It’s a bombshell.
Luke’s delivery of this Good Friday message on the advent of Advent, bursts into our lives and pours out of his mouth with just the facts, nothing more. Luke’s prose would make Nobel Prize Laureates Hemmingway and Alice Munro proud: “concise, subtle, revelatory.” Luke unfolds the details of this scene in such a way that before we have even settled back into our selves after that anthem we are whisked away to The Skull and find ourselves amongst the crowd as they crucified Jesus there, with the criminals, in the hot noonday sun.
The Luken text moves quickly, unveiling more and more of the scene with each line; like a movie director who has focused in tight on the cross and then zooms out to reveal more and more detail: The leaders, the crowd, the pile of clothes, the soldiers, the sour wine, the inscription over his head: “This is the King of the Jews.” The image is overwhelming. What can we say? The truth about Jesus, that he is the Messiah we’ve been waiting for, Christ is the King, the chosen one, the son of God, here to save us, is now proclaimed with bitter, contemptuous irony by corrupt religious leaders and mocking soldiers and condemned criminals as the King’s life slips away and we’re left standing by, watching with the rest of the people as they cast lots for his clothes, and he hangs, humiliated. We, the people, stand by, watching. Why?
Is it possible for us to find words in the midst of this cosmic injustice?
Through the lectionary, we’ve been following Jesus, the disciples and the crowd in Luke all year. We’ve witnessed Jesus’ birth, his ministry, profound teachings and deeply redemptive healings and all the time there are these crowds. Luke testifies to huge crowds that gather around Jesus, a character in and of themselves, a powerful force. They seek baptism, they look for him when he slips into the wilderness, they press in on him to hear the word of God, they gather on the beach as Jesus teaches from a boat, they seek healing, when he returns home the crowd welcomes him and when they are hungry he miraculously feeds them with loaves and fish. But when they get to Jerusalem, to the heart of the religious and political power structure, the crowds turn. After Jesus is betrayed and arrested, the crowds become the ones who insist on crucifying Jesus. Pontius Pilot and King Herod both attempt to release Jesus but it is the crowd that cries over and over, “Crucify him.” The mob justice prevails. Crowds can be a terrifying force, especially when they turn.
I once met a man at Grady Hospital who told me his name was Little Geek. He was an older gentleman and as he neared the end of his life, he reflected back on the time of racial segregation in Georgia. “I wasn’t afraid of a white man,” Little Geek told me. “I’d go in a store and talk to a white man; but a group of white men – no way. They were only dangerous in a group.”
Crowds are unpredictable. Or is it, crowds are too predictable?
It’s not clear exactly what provoked this turn in the crowd. In Luke the crowd turns on Jesus as quickly as they proclaimed him their long awaited Messiah, the anointed King. Perhaps they turned because once in Jerusalem, in the shadow of the mighty Temple, surrounded by Roman guards, they began to doubt the Jesus movement was truly going to change the world, their world, the way they wanted. Perhaps, they began to question his strength, his ability. He sure doesn’t act like a king, a warrior. Perhaps they began to feel powerless and afraid.
It is easy for us to judge the crowd harshly, but aren’t we part of them? All along, Luke has invited us to sit amongst the crowd, to hear the stories, witness the miracles, break the bread. We’ve not had trouble rubbing elbows with the crowed as they followed Jesus on the up and up. Where are we now that his approval ratings have hit a record low? Slowly stepping away, formulating our excuses, our judgments. The religious leaders ridiculed, scorned, scoffed and sneered, “he saved others, let him save himself,” and the people stood by and watched. The representatives of the government, the Roman soldiers, mocked him, saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself,” and the people stood by and watched. One of the criminals joined in, the suffering of death on a cross not enough to deter him from throwing a punch, and still, the people stand by and watch. The crowd that turned to cry ‘Crucify him’ is now strangely silent.
The struggle for Christians today, is to find our voices and begin to speak truth again even after being struck by the horrifying reality that we have also been at some point and in some way complicit in the string of events that led us from breaking bread with Jesus, seeking him out to hear his good news and receiving the healing welcome into his community, to him being hung on the cross. Whether it’s because we betrayed him with Judas, denied him with Peter, abandoned him with the other disciples or got caught up with the fever of the crowd and shouted “Crucify him!” Perhaps we participated in some bullying mob at school or work or home, or stood by silently and while someone was hurt. We stand here, on Christ the King Sunday, no less, and we are forced to look and see Jesus hanging there, and we must find again the words to speak the truth, the truth about injustice, the truth about who Jesus is and what Jesus is about. He’s more than just a nice guy with some solid teachings about how be a good person, but the Son of God the Creator, the savior of all Creation. How can we, the church, stand by silently as political and economic forces mock the truth of the Gospel and coerce us into worshipping the golden calf of the consumer market? How can the crowd suddenly fall silent?
I took this question with me to the Columbia Seminary library a few days ago where I planned to turn to some books for guidance. I ran into Griselda Lartey, who works at the seminary library. I presented my question about this silent crowd to her. After some thought she came to me and said, “I am really thinking about this crowd. You know, sometimes a crowd is rendered speechless when they feel powerless. They fear and so they cannot speak. You know, there is this movie, ’12 Years a Slave.” Yes. I’ve seen it.
I strongly recommend this movie to you all. It is hard to watch but it gives a disturbing glimpse of 19th century American slavery, and it does not flinch. It is the true story of Solomon Northup, a free man living with his family in Saratoga Springs, NY, who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana where he lives in bondage for twelve years. The movie is his memoir. There is a scene that is particularly powerful and painful, depicting the attempted hanging of Northup. His life is spared but he is left hanging from the lynching tree, supporting himself only on the tips of his toes, all day, in the hot Louisiana sun. Director, Steve McQueen, holds the shot for a long time, well beyond the point of discomfort. After several agonizing minutes of Solomon hanging there, you see fellow slaves begin to exit the cabins behind the big oak tree from which he dangles. They don’t acknowledge him; they go about their business. Kids start to play around him, their parents do their work, and Solomon hangs. McQueen said of the scene in an interview, “If they touched him, they knew they would have been strung up next to him. So you can see that image of mental torture as you see one of physical torture.” In Luke’s gospel, we witness the physical torture of Jesus hanging on the cross, nothing less than a first century lynching tree, and the mental torture of those present, rendered speechless in the presence of the Roman Empire killing machine. As Griselda said, the crowd is afraid and so they cannot speak.
Who is robbing the people of God of our voice today as we stand this moment at the foot of the cross? What false idol has taken control of us that we stand silent in the face of injustice and violence?
The crowd, who loved Jesus, who worshiped this man who loved them like they’ve never been loved before – deeply and unconditionally – these people now stand watching as Jesus hangs between life and death, speaking words of grace even as his life slips away. This image of the cross is not gilded, bedazzled, worthy of a charm bracelet, it is a violent image of mental torture as you see one of physical torture. And still, and especially, this is the image of Christ the King. The God who became flesh and lived as one of us, goes to the depths of human suffering and despair and reigns even from the pit, bringing the light of hope to the places that are so dark the idea of hope is laughable, like those who scoff at the idea that man dying on the cross could possibly be the savior of all creation.
The crowd may feel powerless now, in the face evil in the world, but even on the verge of death, Jesus still speaks words of hope into our despair. That hope may simply be that in that pit of despair, in the depths of suffering, Jesus is present through his own experience, God is with us, Emmanuel, always with us, in all of it. And so maybe we begin to find some words.
In his book Night, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel recounts a particularly horrific execution involving an innocent, which the whole camp was forced to watch and march past, powerless. A voice in the crowd asked in despair, “Where is God? Where is He?” Wiesel heard a voice within him answer, “Where is He? Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows…”
This isn’t a cheery sermon to send you off into the Thanksgiving Holiday, but I do hope you know that we have arrived here at the foot of the cross, speechless though we may be, and my God do we have so much to be thankful for. We are not alone. We are never alone.
Church, we have wandered, we have sinned, we have fallen short, but the promise from God through the prophet Jeremiah is this, that “I myself will gather my flock, says the Lord…I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer…nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.”
There was an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” As the Messiah, slowly slipped away, the taunting faded with the sun’s light which gave way to darkness and one voice emerged, the man dying next to him, a convicted criminal: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” And that is the gospel truth from Christ who overcomes death. Christ who is for us and with us and will come again. And so we watch, and we wait, and we claim our voices once again to pray, “Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature, O Thou of God, to earth come down!” “remember us when you come into your kingdom,” “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!” Get ready. He’s about to flip turn the world upside down, again. Holcombe, Garan (2005). "Alice Munro".
Contemporary Writers. London: British Arts Council. Retrieved 20 June 2007.
The World Flipped – Turned Upside Down
Luke 23: 33- 43
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Drew Stockstill
Nov. 24, 2013
The place even looked like death – The Skull, they called it. A place of long, slow suffering. How did we end up here – watching silently with this crowd of people? Jesus is dead. The crowd, who had gathered for this spectacle, returned home, beating their breasts in grief, full of the emotion, the lament and voice they could not find moments earlier. I’m reminded of the images in the news this summer of Syrians in the moments after sarin gas flowed through the streets and seeped into homes, robbing the lives of 1,400 people. Grief stricken, shocked they beat their breasts and grasped for words.
Luke, the messenger takes off, the body of Jesus still hanging there between the criminals. Luke – the scribe, has rushed into our midst with a breathless message – a testimony of what he has just witnessed. He has found his voice and can’t get the tale out fast enough. He’s come running from the dusty, rocky hills outside of Jerusalem, stumbling through the noisy crowds of history, running down Morningside Drive, through the autumn trees’ golden arches, gasping the cool air into his lungs as he pushes through the heavy wooden sanctuary doors and blurts out, “They crucified Jesus, there with the criminals.” We drop the phone, the papers, the glass, the shopping bags in our hands, our world interrupted as the words land: “they crucified Jesus…there…with the criminals,” at the Guantanamo Bay of the time; the place where punishment for political insurrection and terrorism is carried out – The Skull. It’s a bombshell.
Luke’s delivery of this Good Friday message on the advent of Advent, bursts into our lives and pours out of his mouth with just the facts, nothing more. Luke’s prose would make Nobel Prize Laureates Hemmingway and Alice Munro proud: “concise, subtle, revelatory.” Luke unfolds the details of this scene in such a way that before we have even settled back into our selves after that anthem we are whisked away to The Skull and find ourselves amongst the crowd as they crucified Jesus there, with the criminals, in the hot noonday sun.
The Luken text moves quickly, unveiling more and more of the scene with each line; like a movie director who has focused in tight on the cross and then zooms out to reveal more and more detail: The leaders, the crowd, the pile of clothes, the soldiers, the sour wine, the inscription over his head: “This is the King of the Jews.” The image is overwhelming. What can we say? The truth about Jesus, that he is the Messiah we’ve been waiting for, Christ is the King, the chosen one, the son of God, here to save us, is now proclaimed with bitter, contemptuous irony by corrupt religious leaders and mocking soldiers and condemned criminals as the King’s life slips away and we’re left standing by, watching with the rest of the people as they cast lots for his clothes, and he hangs, humiliated. We, the people, stand by, watching. Why?
Is it possible for us to find words in the midst of this cosmic injustice?
Through the lectionary, we’ve been following Jesus, the disciples and the crowd in Luke all year. We’ve witnessed Jesus’ birth, his ministry, profound teachings and deeply redemptive healings and all the time there are these crowds. Luke testifies to huge crowds that gather around Jesus, a character in and of themselves, a powerful force. They seek baptism, they look for him when he slips into the wilderness, they press in on him to hear the word of God, they gather on the beach as Jesus teaches from a boat, they seek healing, when he returns home the crowd welcomes him and when they are hungry he miraculously feeds them with loaves and fish. But when they get to Jerusalem, to the heart of the religious and political power structure, the crowds turn. After Jesus is betrayed and arrested, the crowds become the ones who insist on crucifying Jesus. Pontius Pilot and King Herod both attempt to release Jesus but it is the crowd that cries over and over, “Crucify him.” The mob justice prevails. Crowds can be a terrifying force, especially when they turn.
I once met a man at Grady Hospital who told me his name was Little Geek. He was an older gentleman and as he neared the end of his life, he reflected back on the time of racial segregation in Georgia. “I wasn’t afraid of a white man,” Little Geek told me. “I’d go in a store and talk to a white man; but a group of white men – no way. They were only dangerous in a group.”
Crowds are unpredictable. Or is it, crowds are too predictable?
It’s not clear exactly what provoked this turn in the crowd. In Luke the crowd turns on Jesus as quickly as they proclaimed him their long awaited Messiah, the anointed King. Perhaps they turned because once in Jerusalem, in the shadow of the mighty Temple, surrounded by Roman guards, they began to doubt the Jesus movement was truly going to change the world, their world, the way they wanted. Perhaps, they began to question his strength, his ability. He sure doesn’t act like a king, a warrior. Perhaps they began to feel powerless and afraid.
It is easy for us to judge the crowd harshly, but aren’t we part of them? All along, Luke has invited us to sit amongst the crowd, to hear the stories, witness the miracles, break the bread. We’ve not had trouble rubbing elbows with the crowed as they followed Jesus on the up and up. Where are we now that his approval ratings have hit a record low? Slowly stepping away, formulating our excuses, our judgments. The religious leaders ridiculed, scorned, scoffed and sneered, “he saved others, let him save himself,” and the people stood by and watched. The representatives of the government, the Roman soldiers, mocked him, saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself,” and the people stood by and watched. One of the criminals joined in, the suffering of death on a cross not enough to deter him from throwing a punch, and still, the people stand by and watch. The crowd that turned to cry ‘Crucify him’ is now strangely silent.
The struggle for Christians today, is to find our voices and begin to speak truth again even after being struck by the horrifying reality that we have also been at some point and in some way complicit in the string of events that led us from breaking bread with Jesus, seeking him out to hear his good news and receiving the healing welcome into his community, to him being hung on the cross. Whether it’s because we betrayed him with Judas, denied him with Peter, abandoned him with the other disciples or got caught up with the fever of the crowd and shouted “Crucify him!” Perhaps we participated in some bullying mob at school or work or home, or stood by silently and while someone was hurt. We stand here, on Christ the King Sunday, no less, and we are forced to look and see Jesus hanging there, and we must find again the words to speak the truth, the truth about injustice, the truth about who Jesus is and what Jesus is about. He’s more than just a nice guy with some solid teachings about how be a good person, but the Son of God the Creator, the savior of all Creation. How can we, the church, stand by silently as political and economic forces mock the truth of the Gospel and coerce us into worshipping the golden calf of the consumer market? How can the crowd suddenly fall silent?
I took this question with me to the Columbia Seminary library a few days ago where I planned to turn to some books for guidance. I ran into Griselda Lartey, who works at the seminary library. I presented my question about this silent crowd to her. After some thought she came to me and said, “I am really thinking about this crowd. You know, sometimes a crowd is rendered speechless when they feel powerless. They fear and so they cannot speak. You know, there is this movie, ’12 Years a Slave.” Yes. I’ve seen it.
I strongly recommend this movie to you all. It is hard to watch but it gives a disturbing glimpse of 19th century American slavery, and it does not flinch. It is the true story of Solomon Northup, a free man living with his family in Saratoga Springs, NY, who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana where he lives in bondage for twelve years. The movie is his memoir. There is a scene that is particularly powerful and painful, depicting the attempted hanging of Northup. His life is spared but he is left hanging from the lynching tree, supporting himself only on the tips of his toes, all day, in the hot Louisiana sun. Director, Steve McQueen, holds the shot for a long time, well beyond the point of discomfort. After several agonizing minutes of Solomon hanging there, you see fellow slaves begin to exit the cabins behind the big oak tree from which he dangles. They don’t acknowledge him; they go about their business. Kids start to play around him, their parents do their work, and Solomon hangs. McQueen said of the scene in an interview, “If they touched him, they knew they would have been strung up next to him. So you can see that image of mental torture as you see one of physical torture.” In Luke’s gospel, we witness the physical torture of Jesus hanging on the cross, nothing less than a first century lynching tree, and the mental torture of those present, rendered speechless in the presence of the Roman Empire killing machine. As Griselda said, the crowd is afraid and so they cannot speak.
Who is robbing the people of God of our voice today as we stand this moment at the foot of the cross? What false idol has taken control of us that we stand silent in the face of injustice and violence?
The crowd, who loved Jesus, who worshiped this man who loved them like they’ve never been loved before – deeply and unconditionally – these people now stand watching as Jesus hangs between life and death, speaking words of grace even as his life slips away. This image of the cross is not gilded, bedazzled, worthy of a charm bracelet, it is a violent image of mental torture as you see one of physical torture. And still, and especially, this is the image of Christ the King. The God who became flesh and lived as one of us, goes to the depths of human suffering and despair and reigns even from the pit, bringing the light of hope to the places that are so dark the idea of hope is laughable, like those who scoff at the idea that man dying on the cross could possibly be the savior of all creation.
The crowd may feel powerless now, in the face evil in the world, but even on the verge of death, Jesus still speaks words of hope into our despair. That hope may simply be that in that pit of despair, in the depths of suffering, Jesus is present through his own experience, God is with us, Emmanuel, always with us, in all of it. And so maybe we begin to find some words.
In his book Night, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel recounts a particularly horrific execution involving an innocent, which the whole camp was forced to watch and march past, powerless. A voice in the crowd asked in despair, “Where is God? Where is He?” Wiesel heard a voice within him answer, “Where is He? Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows…”
This isn’t a cheery sermon to send you off into the Thanksgiving Holiday, but I do hope you know that we have arrived here at the foot of the cross, speechless though we may be, and my God do we have so much to be thankful for. We are not alone. We are never alone.
Church, we have wandered, we have sinned, we have fallen short, but the promise from God through the prophet Jeremiah is this, that “I myself will gather my flock, says the Lord…I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer…nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.”
There was an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” As the Messiah, slowly slipped away, the taunting faded with the sun’s light which gave way to darkness and one voice emerged, the man dying next to him, a convicted criminal: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” And that is the gospel truth from Christ who overcomes death. Christ who is for us and with us and will come again. And so we watch, and we wait, and we claim our voices once again to pray, “Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature, O Thou of God, to earth come down!” “remember us when you come into your kingdom,” “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!” Get ready. He’s about to flip turn the world upside down, again. Holcombe, Garan (2005). "Alice Munro".
Contemporary Writers. London: British Arts Council. Retrieved 20 June 2007.
