Sunday, March 25, 2018

truth+beauty+goodness*

Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion
Mark 14:1 - 15:46
(homily preached at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, New Harmony, Indiana)


Truth.  Beauty.  Goodness.
In theological talk
These three attributes of God/God-likeness are called the Three Transcendentals
Truth---not popular or fashionable-but ultimate
Beauty---not the plastic shallow kind…but deep radiating beauty
Goodness---not chicken soup for the teen-age soul…but real love in action

And you can’t have one without the other two.
Something can’t be true…if it is un-lovely or unkind.
And something can’t be beautiful…if it is false or spiteful
And something can’t be good…if it lies and hides ugliness

What I noticed this week about the Passion Story according to Mark
Was Truth. Beauty. And Goodness.

That Woman and all that oil
BEAUTY
Her gesture was beautiful
It spoke in the language of sacrament
Words…always fall so very short…
Even as we pile on more and more of them
Actions…beautiful ones…point way beyond themselves
They reach inside our hearts

That woman’s action was also True and Good
devoid of ego…just taking what she had and giving it all to Jesus
and the image of her extravagance still speaks

GOODNESS 
Simon, the Cyrenian
One line
“They pressed into service a passer-by, Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross”

Jesus couldn’t die on the way to the hill
The spectacle demanded the crucifixion
Ultimate shame and degradation
Worse than the scourging and beating

Simon …from Cyrene
That is in present day Libya
1200 miles away…
Was he there for Business…for Passover
Either way
Cross-Carrying was not on his agenda
I can see him…in the crowd…wondering what is going on
Standing on his tiptoes
And then…he is singled out…conscripted
…saying ‘no’ was not an option
The Roman soldiers were well armed

Perhaps he was singled out because he was young and strong
…not just any body would do for this task
That cross needed to get to the top of that hill

For Simon it was
Wrong place – Wrong time
Was he thinking:
Why did I leave Cyrene?

Unwanted, unpleasant, unfair
But GOOD…
Simon…the Cyrenian
He has a name
His sons have names
Which means they were known to the community of Mark’s Gospel
It is like saying “You can go ask them! Alexander and Rufus...they are right over there!  
Ask them...they'll tell you how Jesus forever changed their lives!”

The spiritual writer Henri Nouwen once wrote:
“I used to get upset about all the interruptions to my work
until one day I realized
that the interruptions were my real work.”

and TRUTH
The Roman Centurian
“When the Centurian who stood facing him
saw HOW he breathed his last he said,
‘Truly, this man was the Son of God!’”

Where oh where would such a confession come from?
A gentile…A Roman soldier
It was his business to carry out the empire’s justice
His world was so very clear on this:
On The Cross = GUILTY
It was almost routine

He has none of the background of the Jewish scriptures
No categories
I mean---there is nothing in him that would be even slightly welcoming
to a revelation from a guilty crucified nobody.

YET…it happened
The word is HOW
When he saw HOW he died
There was something in HOW he died that pushed him into confession
I wonder if
Seeing the HOW
Turned the question around in his mind
Seeing HOW, the Centurian said to himself:
“Wait a minute…who is sacrificing what to whom?”
All this violence
We’ve been putting it on God…or maybe Gods
But it turns out…I can now see
it was us all along…all of us!”

A complete about-face
Looking up at Jesus
Now he saw…innocence…he saw TRUTH
And that truth is
That Jesus’ way of dying
seems to suggest that
Real Power is not at all conventional
And that finding God’s presence in suffering
is always and ever more a place of revelation

The secret is revealed…
It is the words of the Jewish Mystic Martin Buber
that speak so clearly:
“always and everywhere
in the history of religion
the fact that God is identified with success
is the greatest obstacle to a steadfast religious life”

TRUTH, BEAUTY, and GOODNESS
In the story…And at this table
Where we will again say Amen
Amen to that request:
‘Do this in memory of me’
Do it all
the True
the Beautiful
and the Good


 






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