Crumple, Swish, Two Points

Text: Mark 15:1-39
Date: April 1, 2012
Green Street UMC, Augusta, ME
Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher

Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

And the curtain of the Temple was torn in two…. Torn in two. The commentaries have explanations for that odd event, of course. Those of you who have studied the OT in Disciple Bible Study and elsewhere, or who have watched Indiana Jones movies, know that in the center of the Second Jewish Temple was a room, the holy of holies (קֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִׁים). It was at the rear of the room into which only the priests were allowed access. And into the Holy of Holies, only the high priest was allowed to go, and he but once a year, on the Day of Atonement, to offer a yearly sacrifice before the Ark of the Covenant. So great was the holiness of this room that a rope would be tied around the high priest’s waist, lest he be struck dead by being in the presence of God, and need to be pulled out by those unworthy to enter to retrieve him.

The Holy of Holies was a means of providing for the people’s need of holiness. It was a way of making the very presence of God available to the people of Israel through an intermediary. But then Jesus came. And Jesus loved so many people without regard to the opinions of the religious authorities of his time, that Jesus was put to death. And upon the moment of his death upon that cross, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two.” It has a symbolic meaning, of course, that access to God will no longer be through intermediaries, that the holiness of God is not kept in a back room someplace, but is present through faith in the person of Emmanuel, God with us. But the tearing of the curtain, it seems to me, is also symbolic of the fracture of time which occurs when humanity puts to death the one who perfectly embodies God’s universal love.

It is our belief as Christians that that day changes everything. Christ dies, is murdered, executed, and after that death something new begins to happen.

There is, across from where our family computer is in our kitchen, a trash can, about 10 feet away. And on most days, while sitting at the computer, I crumple up and throw papers toward that trash can, and most of the time they go in. In fact, some of my bank shots off of the pantry doors are amazing, usually when no one is around to be impressed by them. Sometimes I’m throwing away junk mail, sometimes old information that isn’t needed any longer, and sometimes I am throwing away paper on which plans have been written. You see, I’m a great one for planning things out on paper. Later this month we’re going to go looking at colleges with Patrick, and there is a white sheet of paper on my desk with days, and destinations, and numbers of miles in between. There’s a list of bulletins that needs to be written for this week, and what day Darby needs to receive them. There are lists of important dates for the three different schools our kids attend, with yellow highlighter marking what days we’re supposed to pick them up or drop them off. These slips of paper are our plans, our expectations, and even our dreams for how life will be in days to come. And sooner or later life comes calling, and one or more of those pieces of paper have to be crumpled into a ball and sent flying through the air. Crumple. Swish. Two points.

• A few years back I was privileged to be asked to serve as a sponsor to another pastor who was being ordained at annual conference. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, but when the day came I was flat on my back in the hospital with a mystery infection. Crumple. Swish. Two points.

• I once met with a military couple to plan the perfect wedding. They both had gotten leave the same week from separate bases to gather at their home church and tie the knot. Invitations were sent out, gifts were wrapped, the dress was fluffed and the dress uniform was pressed. Their wedding date? September 15, 2001, four days after the attacks on New York and Washington. Crumple. Swish. Two points.

Yes, we make our plans, we decide how things are going to be, we even write it all down on paper. But then God, or fate, or simply life steps in and everything can change.

I’m sure that the first Holy Week was like that for Jesus and his disciples. Palm Sunday was an amazing moment. The cheering crowds were an affirmation of all that Jesus had done and preached and taught from day one. “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.”

What happened between Sunday and Friday to turn their lives around in such a horrible and decisive way is something that we can’t completely understand, anymore than Peter, Andrew, James, and John could, and they were there living it moment by moment. One minute Jesus couldn’t have been more popular. A short time later his life’s blood was draining from his body, and he was closing his eyes in death. Crumple. Swish. Two points. Whatever earthly plans he and his disciples might have had for the future were so much paper in the rubbish bin. He was dying, the story was ending, cruelty and evil and death had won, as they had won so many times before.

Last Thursday afternoon, I went to St. Francis Catholic Church in Winthrop to donate blood. While I’ve never had the physical gifts that the world values highly: an athletic build, long wavy hair, or six pack abs, I do have one thing that everyone eventually wants: O-negative blood. So they parked me on a portable cot, stuck the needle in, and left me to contemplate the crucifix on the wall of the Knights of Columbus Hall. Protestant crosses, as you know, tend to be empty, reminders of resurrection, but the gift of the Catholic Church to Christendom is to never let us forget that Jesus bled on Good Friday, that he did not die in a theoretical, metaphorical way, but with nails hammered into his wrists and ankles, wounds that would have killed Jesus with infection were he not already drowning in his own fluids, feebly pushing his body up against the wood and the nails in a futile attempt to force air into his collapsing lungs. Yes, Jesus bled on Good Friday.

Raising my head up, I looked around and counted a dozen men and women slowly squeezing a bit of PVC pipe in one hand or the other, coaxing the blood out of their veins and into the plastic collection bag. It occurred to me that if someone from another place and time were to wander into that room at the moment, they would be horrified to see twelve people shedding their life’s blood. The visitors would assume that they had stumbled into a tragic moment in the life of Kennebec County. But what they would not see, of course, is the result of that shedding of blood. They would not be there when a surgical nurse reaches for a dark red bag and uses it to infuse life back into a body, pale and cold, or to recharge tired veins filled with chemotherapy drugs or toasted with radiation.

So it is, perhaps, with the cross. Jesus bleeds and dies on the cross because he refuses to place limits on the love of God, to artificially constrain, in accordance with human standards, with whom he associates. And so Jesus dies not simply for the righteous, but for sinners, suffering with the victims of religious bigots and bullies, rather than standing self-righteously with their oppressors. He was not the Messiah they expected, not even the one whom they wanted. But he was God’s Messiah, and so was the undoing of all human expectations and pretensions, all human plans, no matter how beautifully calligraphied or documented. Crumple. Swish. Two points.

Our visitors from another place and time would look at the cross and see suffering, the suffering that is inevitable when love and goodness confront power and corruption. But they would not see that such a death was the undoing of death itself. That the God who cared enough to die with those who suffer, would not allow such suffering to go unchallenged and unquestioned. Last week in West Virginia I had the privilege of serving in mission with 19 outstanding Christians who went to work and share with the people of one of our nation’s poorest states. It’s a trip we’ll be hearing about over the next several weeks. One day on that trip, one of our members hammered his thumb while putting a nail into a wall. Twenty minutes later, because he is an enthusiastic worker, he did it again. Blood was shed in West Virginia. And tetanus shots were given in West Virginia. But it was shed for a good and righteous and holy cause. It was shed in service and obedience to the one who laid down his life for those same men and women, living in the trailers and bearing in their bodies the pain of harvesting the coal that provided for their families.

We may have many items written on the mental or physical piece of paper where we make our life’s plans for ourselves and others. And while many of those plans may come to be, many of them, in fact, will not. Whether through misfortune, malice, bad luck, illness, death, or disaster, not all of our dreams and schemes will come true. Crumple. Swish. Two points.

But God is doing a new thing, brothers and sisters. Every time that the world says no, every time that the world says not yet, every time that the world says it isn’t possible, know that God is doing a new thing. Blood in plastic bags becomes life to those who suffer, surgeons are operating on hearts the size of grapes and giving infants a new lease on life, and Jesus is holding out his hands to a hurting world, and gathering us sinners from the dark places, and inviting us here to this meal, to this improbable, impossible meal, a meal to which we would not be invited, but for the grace of God. And so today we place in our backpacks, the crumpled bits of paper that represent the plans that we made that will never be. And we offer them to God, confident that that even on this day when we hear the nails and endure our Lord’s suffering, God is doing….a new thing. Amen.