By Such Stripes Are We Healed
by Jack Shaver
©The United Church of Canada, 1985
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-88622-196-X
7M/12/85/APL
Used with Permission
Saturday
The proof of sonship reversed
Matthew 27: 33-44
A characteristic of the Gospel is that it is always news. It never ceases to surprise us. It is always turning things into their opposites. And even if we have heard it before, it surprises us because, as the gospel song puts it, "I forget so soon." The better we understand the story the more fully we realize that we need to hear it often, for it proclaims a profoundly radical reversal. Our text for today was chosen because it contains eloquent witness to just how radical that reversal is.
We have already seen how much trouble the inner circle had with Jesus' understanding of the fate he was to undergo. When the execution finally came, it was a blow to all their hopes. It is said that they all forsook him and fled. The one they thought was going to put everything right didn't make it.
- Note the crowd's reported behaviour at the crucifixion. People, soldiers, leaders and criminals wag their heads and rail at him:
- "You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself!"
"If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!"
"He saved others, he cannot save himself!"
"He is the king of Israel; let him come down now from the cross
and we will believe in him." - We understand this sentiment very well. If you were God's glory this wouldn't be happening to you. How can we believe in you when you can save others but not save yourself? If you got yourself out of this fix, we might see how you could be God's anointed one.
But the Gospel message is the opposite of all that; and that is what makes such good news. It is the one who saves others and cannot save himself that is the window of God's glory. It is because he is God's anointed one that Jesus got into that fix. If God loves the world, including its sinners, then the role of God's Chosen One is exactly that. Less than that will not be big enough news for the salvation of the world.
For 10 years I was on the staff of a downtown mission in Vancouver . One of the blessings of that decade was the presence of Lieutenant Christine McMillan, a young Salvation Army officer who ran a program for street people. "Crosswalk" was a warm, imaginative, accepting program, like its director. Vancouver's skid road was not an easy place for a mother hen to gather her brood. Christine won an amazing response among the men. But women of the street, who were the object in starting her program, did not gather.
Christine sang a song at one of our Downtown Eastside Clergy retreats, accompanying herself on the guitar. I'll never forget the title of that song, "He makes the woeful heart to sing". That's when healing goes deep when the woeful heart is taught, not to forget, but to sing. And it's the glory of God revealed in the one who cannot save himself that can teach the woeful heart to sing.
Petition
Father and Mother of all,- We aren't anybody until we're
heard. - It's vital to us that we get heard.
Hear our prayers and let our cries
come unto you.- Hear our prayer for our loved ones:
- We delight in them. We ache with dreams on their behalf.
We long to bless them. We want rid of them.
We want our love to make a difference with them and we
worry when it does. - Hear our prayer for our undertakings:
- those tasks close to our hearts to which we give ourselves and which make us vulnerable. We are paralysed by the fear of failure and haunted by the emptiness of success.
- Hear our prayers for the world:
- There is so much wrong with it, we are afraid to look.
Terror stalks the lives of vast numbers of people.
Masses of people go hungry, even unto death.
Overwhelming numbers of people face a lifetime of homelessness.
We who share the planet with all the life neglect the care of it.
We who share the planet with other humans refused to do so,
except by violently contesting together. - The cries go up from children of the earth in all parts of the world.
Hear their cries!- As we know they are heard we can bear to hear them ourselves, and begin to find our true meaning and home as participants
in your love of the world.
Amen