Don’t Betray Life!
April
5, 2009
Mark 11:1-11, 14:3-11
Reverend Steve Clunn
This is the climactic week of= the Christian experience and it all begins today, Palm
Sunday.
This is the week of Jesus tak= ing his version of the Jewish faith to the heart of Judaism,
Jerusalem. It’s a week filled with powerful teaching; table flipping; being
challenged by religious leaders; betrayal; Jesus’ arrest, trial, death; and, ultimately
the resurrection story of Easter – next Sunday.
I love the fact that this sto= ry of a woman wasting expensive oil on anointing Jesus’ feet is
a part of the drama of this week!
I love it because it challeng= es all of our expectations about the way things were and
should have gone that week.
The man who had shown himself= to be deeply committed to the plight of the poor and
outcasts of society; the man who seemed to be frugal and generous with things of
monetary value; suddenly = is celebrating an act of wasteful extravagance.
Let me share another way of l= ooking at things.
Back in the year 2000, Leonar= do Da Vinci's painting The Last Supper was finally
finished. That’s right, finished. You see, it had undergone years of being
retouched, refurbished and renovated. In 2000, it could once again be seen by the
viewing public. It was back and it was beautiful, sharper and more colorful than
ever!
But not everyone was happy about the results.
It took two decades to scrape 500 years of grime off one of the world's most famous
paintings. But now, visitors to the Santa Maria delle Graz= ie church in Milan can
see a much brighter, clearer depiction of the last meal shared by Jesus and his=
disciples.
Paint and dirt were flaked away a millimeter at a time to get to Da Vinci's original 1497
masterpiece. Over the years the tempera-on-stone painting had been the victim of
nine known retouchings; destruction by Napoleon's tr= oops, who used the church
grounds as a stable; grease buildup from a nearby kitchen; and the Allied
bombing
of 1943.
But critics say that the $8 million project stripped away important details,
leaving nothing
more than fragments of Da Vinci's original work, and= that the intervening space –
as
much as 80 percent of the mural - were filled in with watercolors.
A similar sort of thing happened 2,000 years ago. The crowd on Palm Sunday =
was
pumped up and praising Jesus as he entered the city, but by Thursday night many
of the same folks wanted to persecute him. Over the course of four short days,= the
people of Jerusalem thoroughly retouched Jesus, transforming him from a king
into a criminal.
Like the experts gazing upon = Da Vinci today, we - standing at a distance - decry t= he
results
of this sort of capricious retouching.
But it is still going on, isn't it? And we still do it - this retouching of
Jesus.
We constantly recreate him in= our own image, rather than allowing ourselves to be
transformed by his image of life and ministry.
Some of us want a savior that= will rush in and rescue us from the dangers and trials of
life. Some of us want him to be a guarantee for life beyond life. Others want
him to be the one who relieves our guilt and frees us live with freedom from fe= ar.
Some seek the healer, who can relieve our suffering and restore us to physical,
spiritual, and emotional health. Still others want him to be the prophet, who will
take on the principalities and powers of the world and fight the battles of the =
oppressed and down-trodden.
Maybe some of us want all of = the above, depending on the moments and circumstances
we find ourselves facing.
There’s nothing wrong w= ith this. The Church has been struggling with trying to identify
the authentic and/or historic Jesus since it’s inception.
“Debates over who Jesus= was developed early in Christianity as its leaders struggled to
establish core beliefs. These debates, however, did not involve the historical
details of Jesus' life. Instead, these early controversies centered on Jesus' divin= ity
versus his humanity.
"Christology" is th= e term for the study of Jesus' divine and human aspects. For example,
the Gnostics-members of a first century movement who claimed to possess secret =
knowledge of God-rejected the notion that Jesus had an ordinary human body.
This rejection was part of the Gnostic belief that the body was impure and that spiritual
salvation required breaking loose from material existence. Elsewhere, the priest
Arius of Alexandria postulated that Jesus, although the Son of God, was not equal
in status, or nature, with God the father. And the religious patriarch Nestori= us
taught that within Jesus existed two separate natures, one divine and one human. <= /p>
In 451 C.E., this debate was = put to rest when Christian leaders meeting at the Council of
Chalcedon de= clared that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. All other
notions of Jesus' nature were declared unorthodox. But orthodoxy began to loosen
with the Protestant Reformation, in which Martin Luther stressed that every
Christian ne= eded to establish his or her own relationship with Je= sus by studying
the Bible. Study led to reflection and, for some, a questioning attitude.
In 1778, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, a German biblical scholar and philosopher, = caused
a stir by publishin "The Aims of Jesus and H= is Disciples", which presented Jesus
as entirely human and the authors of the Gospels as deceivers. Not long after,=
several German Protestant and French Catholic writers also published books
challenging the historical accuracy of the Gospels. The appearance of these books
gave birth to the modern quest for the historical Jesus.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, a G= erman theologian who lived in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries, said that Jesus was divinely inspired, but not God incarnate. David
Friedrich St= rauss, another 19th-century German theologian, in his 1835 book
"Life of Jesus Critically Examined," called the Jesus presented in the Gospels
little more than myth. Joseph Ernst Renan, a 19th-century French historian and
biblical scholar, added to this radical redefinition of Jesus by describing him as <= /p>
nothing more than a gifted preacher.
But the scholar who brought t= he 19th-century quest for the historical Jesus to a close was
Albert Schweitzer, a theologian who wrote "The Quest for the Historical Jesus"
(1906). He believed that Jesus was an apocalyptic-minded 1st century C.E. Jew
who preached the imminent arrival of God's kingdom within a wholly Jewish
context-that is, he was someone who believed in Jewish messianic prophecies and
who did not intend to launch a new religion. But Schweitzer also concluded that= it
was impossible to say with certainty what is historically accurate about Jesus-= -and
that all efforts to do so, including his own, ultimately say more about the auth= or's
beliefs than the life of the subject.” (THE SEARCH FOR THE REAL JESUS:
The debat=
e over
who Jesus was is almost as old as the movement founded in his
name By Ira Rifkin)
Maybe, the important thing an= y of us who claim to be Jesus’ believers has to do in life, is
try to figure out who Jesus is for ourselves.
Maybe the answers will vary f= rom time to time. Even for each of us, individually. But
like the people who started the week praising Jesus and ended the week calling f= or
his crucifiction; like the disciples, or at least t= he group’s treasurer, who gathered
with high hopes and then became so discouraged by Jesus’ assumed
wastefulness… we need to be careful not to allow our expectations of the way
Jesus ought = to be, to rob us of our celebration of the joy of life.
Jesus as healer disappoints w= hen the ill we’ve been praying for don’t make it… does that <= /p>
mean we shouldn’t pray – of course not!
When the poor are oppressed a= nd injustice wins the day, should we give up on trying and
simply join in on the dog-eat-dog approach to life – of course not!
When our Church life isn̵= 7;t going the way we think it ought to go, or those around us
disappoint our expectations, does that mean it’s time to pick-up our marbles and=
leave – I hope not!
Somehow, when we allow our ho= pes for the way we think things ought to be, to move us
to expecting things to go our way; I believe we, like the people of Jerusalem = and
Judas, are betraying something very important. We are betraying life.
Life is always changing and unpredictable. If we can learn anything from the times we
are currently in, it’s that we can’t expect to be able to control h= ow life goes.
Instead, maybe we should stic= k to the things that we can control… How we respond to
life and each other.
Maybe we should take the less= on of the woman with a jar of oil who came to praise J= esus
in the midst of the most powerful week of his life… That life is meant t= o be
savored and that moments of love and joy can be found in all of it, even in the
midst of life’s tragedies.
Today, some will be asking wh= ere is the love of God in what took place in Binghamton
this week? As stories unfold, and a community and neighboring communities
respond… I hope we will all be able to see beyond our expectations of the way
things ought to be, to see how precious the love and joy of God can be in life as =
things are.
My invitation to you this Hol= y Week and for the weeks to come is simple; approach it
with an openness to experience. Leave your expectations behind, but bring along =
you hopes. And when life disappoints, don’t betray life… don’t betray God’s
presence in it. Instead, hold on and see what God will help you to unfold next.
For I believe with my whole b= eing, by the Grace of God, the best in life is yet to come.
Amen.