Lent 2 March 12, 2006

In those days it was everywhere.  A sense of foreboding.  A reign of terror.  A suffocating feeling that at any moment, in any circumstance, life could be obliterated.

For those who lived in Palestine two millennia ago, the Pax Romana was ruled with an iron fist.  Roman legions were posted in every nook and cranny .  The imperial ensign was raised high.  And if there was doubt in anyone’s mind of who and what held absolute dominion, there was the daily reminder of the cross.

For in those days, they were everywhere.  On every street corner.  Outside every city gate.  Hundreds of crosses.  Thousands of crosses.  For centuries, the Persians had executed with crosses, and so had the Seleucids and Cathaginians, but it was the Romans who made crucifixion its terrifying signature.

This was Rome’s supreme way of demonstrating domination and control.  Its purpose only to provide a painful, gruesome, and public death to anyone who dared to challenge its power.

It is hard for us even to imagine the brutality of the cross.  After all, everywhere we look the cross has taken on the semblance of beauty and comfort.  It adorns our steeple churches, and hangs stately over our altars.  In silver and gold and glittering gemstones, it is pounded into jewelry and art.

But in those days, the cross was a hideous abomination.  Josephus, the Jewish historian of that era, records that the Romans crucified ubiquitously.  The goal of Roman crucifixion was not just to kill the condemned, but to mutilate and dishonour his body as well.  Often it would take days for the crucified to die, a slow suffocating death where the lungs collapsed in a kind of agonizing torture.  And to add insult to injury, once the crucified died, the body was left for the vultures to eat.  This desecration was deliberate, for it ensured the occupying power its hegemony while debasing the status and honor of those it subjugated.  Interestingly enough, Rome rarely if ever crucified its own citizens, preferring instead to reserve this ignominious death for the lesser subjects of its imperial rule.

Now I must admit this is an aweful way start a sermon, on such a beautiful day.  But the historical evidence is undeniable.  And it impinges directly on our Gospel.    Jesus, you see,  from an early age, would have seen crucifixions.  He would have witnessed the horror and agony.  He would smelled the decaying flesh.  He, with his compatriots, would have felt the searing shame this kind of death was meant to instill.  And most of all, he would had to face the paralyzing terror of the cross. 

In this light, the words he speaks in our Gospel story have a riveting power.  I imagine it this way.  One day, as he journeyed in Galilee with his disciples and the crowds that followed him, he came upon one of the many crosses the Romans had set up and left behind.  Perhaps the decomposing body was still on it.  And while those with him averted their gaze, shielding their eyes from the sacrilege, I hear him saying these words:  ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and the Gospel will save it.’

It is no wonder Peter rebuked him.  In Matthew’s account of the story, Peter says: “God forbid, Lord, this shall never happen to you.”  But here we see Jesus choosing the cross, the greatest object of terror in his world, as the very source of his liberation, and the liberation of those who would follow him.

Friends, I cannot think of another Gospel as relevant for us in these times we live.  For in these days, we too are forced to endure a reign of terror.  It fills our television screens and airwaves.  It is forever on the lips of our leaders, who exploit the terror, who mislead and manipulate us with it.   Today, terror is constant drone in our brains.  Today, it has a relentless grip on our hearts.  Today, terror is our cross, the very force that seeks to diminish and debase us.

Since 9/11, we have become a people obsessed with terror, a people cowering under the shadow of our own cross.  We have lost our courage.  We have forgotten our goodness.  We have turned away from the very things that once made us strong.  Terror has remade us.  We once believed in freedom and the rule of law.  Now we glibly sanction domestic spying and torture. We once were animated by the truth.  Now we are driven by deception and artifice.  We have let terror rule our hearts, rule our principles, and overrule our better instincts.

Terror has robbed us our sight, our discernment, our compassion.  The cross has done its work.  All we want to do these days is save our lives, make sure our ports are safe, our futures are secure, our lifestyle is maintained.  Just as it was for those in imperial Rome, we will sacrifice everything on the altar of security.

For that is all every empire in every time can promise.  Security.  Whether it is by way of the sword, or the gun, or the nuclear warhead, or the cross.

Yet the antithesis of terror is not safety.  The opposite of fear is not security.  The opposite of fear and terror is freedom.  Dwight D. Eisenhower, arguably the last President in the United States willing and able to tell the truth to its citizens, said this: “If you want total security, go to prison.  There you’re fed, there you’re clothed, there you’re given medical care and so on.  The only think lacking…is freedom.”

The antidote to terror, Jesus told his disciples, the only way to face into the devastating horror of the cross was, with him, to embrace it freely.  To fear not even the worst evil is to let go of its power over us.  It is lose our life for the sake of a greater good and a greater purpose.  It is to fall freely into the embrace of a nobler good.  It is to give ourselves over to the will and purpose of a saving God.

“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”

In these days,  as in days of old, these are the questions we must ask ourselves…these are the questions that will lead us to the true path of freedom. 

May we have the courage and resolve to face the cross, to confront is terror, to resist every force that seeks absolute dominion over our lives.  May we have the wisdom and strength, in every large and small way the choice comes to us,  to choose freedom  over security, to choose justice over oppression, to choose peace over the sword.  May we never succumb to any earthly power which seeks to usurp what belongs to God alone, the freedom and destiny of our souls.

And in the end, may these strong words of the Apostle Paul to the Christians in Rome be our credo, our true hope, and polar star: “In all these things, we are more than conquerors through the One who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”