Rev. Aman Abhishek Prasad
St. Paul’s Church, Agra

We’ve not only kept a cross in our sanctuary, when Lent arrives we take out the stylized brass one and bring in an old rugged cross. It fills up the front of alter. We drape it in purple for the days of Lent, change it to black on Good-Friday then surround it with flowers and go to a white bunting on Easter to remind every one that out of death came new life, from the cross God brought about resurrection. As you may know, some of the young, mostly suburban, non-denominational churches have removed the cross from worship. In efforts to appeal to the new American sentiment, according to this line of thought, they have worship centers not sanctuaries, victory centers not churches, stadium seating instead of pews and a podium and movie screen instead of a chancel with a cross. The cross is “out” from that perspective; it is an old symbol and one with a rather nasty history, what with the days of the Roman’s crucifying bandits, dissidents, murderers and religious leaders labeled dissidents. Who wants to remember that ?

George Carlan used to make fun of Christians in one of his routines, wondering if we would be wearing electric chairs around our necks if Jesus had come at a different time and a different place. He meant it as a joke, a bit of biting humor at the absurdity of turning an item of capital punishment into jewelry. I’ve always thought that the point is well taken: the cross was in fact a sign of violence; it was a tool for torture and execution, intentionally public as a way to scare the masses into submission. Then Christians turned
The symbol on its head and the crucifix became a sign of sacrificial love and the empty cross (common in Protestant churches) a subtle sign of the resurrection; the reality of death yet Jesus not present but risen not held down by death, God, not Rome having the last word.

We’ve kept the cross. Jesus said that he would travel that road and Peter better not stand in his way. He also said that his followers would have crosses to confront, crosses to bear and that life somehow travels through death not around it, that losing a life is part of gaining one. Yes, we’ve kept the cross in our church, the cross that towers over the wrecks of time. Welcome to a church, to a faith that can deal with death and proclaim life.

Jesus said that he would suffer. He also said that following him would include a cross. The Apostle Paul announced that we preach Christ crucified noting that this was “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Corinthians 1:23).Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who we are inviting into the sermons this Lent, wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” All a bit tough; hardly, at first glance, what one would call good news. As you might well expect, I am asking you to take a harder look.

First, let me offer a word of what this emphasis on the cross is not about. It is not about the glorification of suffering and it is not about any form of self-destruction. God knows, there is plenty of suffering to go around and the broad sweeping story of the Bible is one of freedom and life for the people of God. Jesus spent an inordinate amount of his time healing and freeing, relieving hurt and eliminating suffering. The cross is not about the glorification of human suffering. What it is about is a confrontation with suffering and the promise that God brings life out of death.

We are near the heart of faith. For the Christian faith is all about new life, life emerging from death. It all spins on Easter, in fact, every Sunday is a mini-Easter for, on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, the women went to the tomb. They went, expecting death and they found life. It is all about new life, life emerging from death.

A related theme is the grand story of the Hebrew Bible, namely that God moves people from one life to a new one. From Abram to Abraham, from slaves in Egypt to free people in the promised land, from no people to God’s people, from no one to some one, the some one found within the mercy of God. So Abram caught religion and took on a new name. And Sarai got a new name and a baby to carry on the name. And, just to make the story all the better, their ages are wildly exaggerated so that we could imagine the walker being traded in for a baby carriage. Talk about new life; God gives it in dramatic ways.

But the new always means a shedding of the old. That’s why death is part of the story, part of the experience. When Bonhoeffer wrote: ‘When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” He continued:
It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s (he is speaking of Martin Luther, the 16th Century reformer), who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time-death in Jesus Christ, the death of he old man at his call .(The Cost of Discipleship, P.89-90)

You know this, I’m sure. Throughout life you have needed to die and to say goodbye to one phase in order to enter into the next. We say goodbye to childhood and enter into adult lives. In our culture this is all a bit vague for children come to age biologically speaking around 13 but many don’t get out of school until their mid-twenties. As cultural anthropologists, sociologists, counselors and every parent knows, this is a rather long and awkward transition. In ancient cultures it happened rather quickly and many had a ritual to announce the death of childhood and the arrival of adulthood. It is about dying to one way of life and being raised to a new one. We give up being single in order to be married, we give up marriage at the time of the death of a spouse and enter into a new life. Sometimes the transitions are painful, they feel death like. In terms of faith we give up seeing the world through the eyes of our own life and see the world a new through the eyes of faith. That is why the baptism liturgy speaks of death and new life within the aters of baptism.

In his excellent, short book The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg writes about this eighth chapter of Mark with warnings of trouble, mention of the cross and the instruction that those who want go gain life must loose it. Borg concludes : “For Mark ( and for Matthew and Like, who repeat and amplify this pattern), the way, the path of personal transformation, is the path of death and resurrection.” (The Heart of Christianity, p.109) The path of dying and rising is what it means to be born again. As Borg writes, “To be born again involves dying to the false self, to that identity, to that way of being, and to be born into the identity centered in the Spirit, in Christ, in God. It is the process of internal redefinition of he self whereby a real person is born within us.” (p.117)

This death and resurrection can be tough stuff, marvelous and life giving but also tough at times. I remember an African American pastor in a poor Buffalo neighbourhood saying that we white folks just don’t understand their worship. He said, “We gather and sing for 20 or 30 minutes just to warm up. It takes that long to sing the slave out of our spirit in order for us to be free people to worship God.”

For some it takes years of therapy and help to work the death out of life in order to have the ability to embrace the life, waiting to be born. For others prayer is the key. The Spirit is at the center of it all, working with each of us, labouring to the ends that life may be born from all the dead places of our existence.

We shake off death to make room for life. With God’s spirit we move through fear, let it go and embrace hope. We wrestle with the death of insecurity, let it die away so that we can embrace confidence for living. Yes, we take on death. We face the death of anger and hate, choosing to live instead in a new way. We shake off the death of greed in order to live generously. We face the corporate death of blind, uncritical nationalism so that we can live within God’s kingdom. And we gather her to lose our lives within the story of Jesus, the story of death and resurrection. We lose ourselves within this story in order to take on new life, losing life in order to gain it.