Foundry United
Rev.
“Giving Up Money for Lenten: A Spiritual Excercise”
Maundy Thursday, April 21,
2011
Rev.
Sitting on Thrones
Luke 22:14-18; 28-30
The first Maundy Thursday, Jesus made a promise to his disciples. Jesus promises that they will sit on thrones in his kingdom.
What a funny promise from a man who is about to die on a cross! I wonder how the disciples felt when they discovered Jesus' kingdom was a cross...that the kingdom where they would sit on thrones was a cross?
Smith Island is an island with about 400 residents in the Chesapeake Bay. The only way to get there is by boat. Children on the island go to school and back on a school boat.
I don't know whether it is still true or not, but there was a time when everybody on Smith Island was a Methodist. The island had four churches and all four churches were Methodist.
Years ago I was the preacher for a revival in Crisfield, Maryland, and the combined choirs of the Smith Island Methodist churches sang at one of the services. They sang a song that mesmerized me. I asked their choir director to write down the words of the chorus for me.
The words are:
A rugged cross became His throne
His kingdom was in hearts alone
He wrote His love in crimson red
And wore the thorns upon His head.
His throne was a cross; his kingdom was in hearts alone; he wrote his love with his own blood; his crown was made of thorns.
A rugged cross became his throne.
Jesus promises his disciples a throne in his kingdom, which is a cross.
Kurt Vonnegut had a scene in one of his novels.
A physician has purchased a cancer hospital in Central America as an investment. When his son turns 16, he takes his son to visit the hospital. It is an awful place, an absolutely ugly, atrocious place. The hospital is filthy and full of peeling paint and leaky pipes and mold. Patients with open sores are lying on soiled sheets. They are moaning and crying with no one responding. Corpses lie uncared for in a back room. The 16 year old boy is appalled and sickened and shocked.
At the end of their visit, which Vonnegut describes in horrifying detail, the father turns to the boy and says, "Just think, son, someday all this will be yours!"
Jesus, whose kingdom is a cross, whose crown is thorns, whose kingdom is in hearts alone, Jesus says to his disciples, "Just think, someday all this will be yours."
Jesus points to the cross and says to you and me, "Just think, some day all this will be yours."
The kingdom of the cross is a kingdom of love, justice, and inclusion. In our world, love, justice, and inclusion seem so often to lose. I was in a discussion this week where someone pointed out that it is sort of depressing that the world has seemed to have made so little progress in the thousands of years since the first Easter.
2,000 years later, love is still crucified, justice is still more likely to lose than to win, and inclusion is still voted down in legislatures and church assemblies.
A rugged cross became His throne
His kingdom was in hearts alone
He wrote His love in crimson red
And wore the thorns upon His head.
His kingdom is a cross.
When Jesus promises his disciples and us thrones in his kingdom, they are thrones in a kingdom which is struggle.
Struggle is Jesus' kingdom. The cross. The struggle.
The cross is resurrection. The cross is victory. The cross is joy.
The struggle is resurrection. The struggle is victory. The struggle is joy.
We get tired of the struggle. One step forward, two steps back. Push the rock almost up the hill and it rolls down again. We want to wash our hands of the struggle. We want to withdraw from the struggle. We want to retire from the struggle. Sure we do. I do. That's human.
But Jesus says the struggle is our throne. The struggle is our reward. The struggle is our victory.
Racism isn't healed yet. Sexism isn't healed yet. Homophobia and heterosexism aren't nearly healed yet. Classism still reigns in our institutions. Poverty is persistent. Inequality is stubborn. Help 1,000 people who are chronically homeless find permanent supportive housing and the economy tanks and there are 2,000 more people who are homeless.
But, Jesus says to his disciples and to us, the good news is that you get to be part of the struggle. Jesus says I am not going to fix this without you. You get to share the cross with me.
I am slowly beginning to realize that the odds of me living forever are less and less good. One of the things that bother me about this is not knowing if I will see how some things come out. I'm hoping I live long enough to see marriage equality established as a national civil right, but maybe I won't. As the old folk used to say when I was a boy, not even tomorrow is promised.
I know this is controversial. But I am a fan of interracial marriage. I'd like to see the day when we will have so intermarried that everybody would have to check two or three boxes on the census form. I suspect I have Native American great-grandparents. I'd love to have Black and Asian and Latino great-grandchildren or great-great grandchildren. I'd love to see that day.
I'd love to see what Haiti will be like a hundred years from now.
I don't know how much you can watch from heaven. I don't know whether you can get CNN in heaven. I'm hoping.
My hope is that heaven is not really streets of gold and harps and floating on clouds. I am hoping that heaven is another way of being in the struggle. I'm hoping that my heavenly throne is a rugged cross; that I get to continue in the struggle for love, and justice, and inclusion.
Jesus tells his disciples that they will get to sit on thrones in the kingdom of the cross. It is sort of a joke. It is sort of a profound truth. There is no richer life, there is no more meaning, there is no greater fulfillment, and there is no better purpose than life as part of the struggle.
It ought to be true that there are people who know no greater joy than the disciples of Jesus. There ought to be no people better at partying, better at loving, than the people of the cross.
A rugged cross became His throne
His kingdom was in hearts alone
He wrote His love in crimson red
And wore the thorns upon His head.
And we get thrones in his kingdom. Someday all of this will be ours. All of this is ours already. The cross belongs to us. The struggle is our resurrection.
……
Oh, by the way, did Jesus' disciples ever get the thrones that Jesus promised them?
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