Scripture:
And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
~ Mark 1:10-13
Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our Passover lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
~ 1 Corinthians 5:7-8
This morning I opened my prayer book, and there it was, in the Thanksgiving for Baptism for Lent. A prayer I’ve read every day during Lent for the past three years, since I got the new, updated Presbyterian Daily Prayer Book. It read,
O God, we give you thanks
for the mercy you so freely offer us through our baptism—
safe passage through the sea,
justice rolling down like water,
deliverance from sin and death forever.
And there it was. The saving action of Jesus on the cross, connected to the exodus of enslaved people from Egypt, connected to justice for those who were oppressed. And just in time for this Lenten journey we are embarking on together: a deep dive into our understanding of the crucifixion.
I have no illusions that this is a welcome subject for most people. It has never been a very welcome subject for me. Along with many of my classmates I chuckled when one of my seminary professors said, “All that blood and stuff? No thank you.” I felt the same way.
And the people who write the great tomes on these matters see and acknowledge this discomfort. Contemporary theologian Jurgen Moltmann begins his book, “The Crucified God,” with this sentence: “The cross is not and cannot be loved.”
And yet, the cross remains the central, undeniable symbol for those who follow Jesus. We place it prominently in our homes and sanctuaries, we wear it around our necks. In the gospels, Jesus acknowledges the cross throughout his ministry, foretelling his death three different times. The gospels describe the crucifixion at length and in detail: the story of the Passion takes up one quarter to one third of each gospel narrative. In the epistles of Paul, you could be led to believe that Jesus did nothing else but die on the cross—entirely missing are the Beatitudes, the parables, the healings, the miracles of abundance and of mastery of nature.
We must reckon with the crucifixion. Lent, this time of preparation for our annual observance of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, seems to me a good time to do that.
But we must also reckon with the fact that the cross is a multi-faceted, many-splendored image. There is more than one way to understand its meaning. The task I have set for myself this Lent is to lay before us the images that, from the very beginning, have filled the minds of the faithful when they struggled to understand why. Why did the eloquent and compassionate teacher, healer, and wonder-worker, in whom they’d placed their trust, die the most shameful and the most painful death? They struggled with that question, even after the resurrection. And so they searched the Hebrew Scriptures. The images they found there provided them understanding, and came to be woven throughout the gospels and the letters that circulated the early church.
Two of those images are Passover and Exodus.
In our passage from 1 Corinthians, we find Paul reminding the faith community at Corinth that Christ is our Passover lamb, that he has been sacrificed for us. Paul does this in the middle of a pretty angry rant over the behavior of the members of that community. Paul diagnoses the central problem of community at Corinth as this: It is no longer grounded in the cross. They have strayed, and because of that, they are excusing all manner of appalling behavior in their community. Paul reminds them that it only takes a tiny bit of yeast to leaven an entire batch of dough—an image that may seem like a comforting one, until you remember that, in Paul’s day, “leaven” was a “rotting, molding lump of bread.” It’s a warning.
Passover and the crucifixion have been linked from the beginning. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we read of Jesus celebrating the Passover supper with his friends on the night before he is crucified. But the gospel of John agrees with Paul: Jesus is nailed to the cross at the every moment the lambs are being slaughtered for the Passover meal. In the original Passover story, we see how God intervenes in history—God protects Moses and the Hebrew people from death, and enables them to shatter the shackles that bind them, and opens for them a way to freedom. That action is centered on a sacred meal.
Paul says: Christ is our Passover. In three of the gospels, his saving action begins with the sacred meal, which we Christians commemorate as the Lord’s Supper. God enters history here, too, but in the person of Jesus. In the crucifixion we see another Passover: God protects us from death, shatters the shackles that bind us, and opens for us a way to freedom.
And what does that freedom look like? Ironically, it looks like a wilderness journey. In our other passage today, the Spirit hovers over Jesus at his baptism, reminding him of how very much he is loved. Then, she promptly drives him out into the desert! All the things that happen next are described in one sentence: [Jesus] was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
That’s a lot. But the number forty resonates. We know it in connection with numerous Bible stories, but the one that dominates is the story of the Hebrew people in the wilderness for forty years. And in the testing we find in each of those stories, something massive is being accomplished. Something old is being swept away, and something new is being prepared to take its place. For the Hebrews, it is a new life of freedom, and a new land, where God will fulfill at long last the covenant promise. For Jesus, it is preparation for his ministry—for Good News of healing, and table fellowship, and lives made new.
If the crucifixion of Christ is our Passover, then his resurrection is the Exodus. The tomb is emptied to make way for new life, and life is renewed, just as the Hebrews streamed out of Egypt toward a new life free of chains. And—each of these pairs cannot be uncoupled. Passover and Exodus are joined together. The cross and the empty tomb are inextricably linked. In each case, you cannot have one without the other.
At different points in my life, I’ve been able to participate in an Easter Vigil. During this Saturday night service, the drama of the resurrection unfolds in darkness through the reading of the entire salvation story as told in both testaments of the Bible. The summit, the highlight of this unfolding drama is the story of the Exodus, chapter 14, describing the escape of the enslaved people from Egypt. Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge describes it this way:
It depicts the band of cruelly oppressed [enslaved people] gathering in the middle of the night, their few worldly goods packed up and their traveling clothes on, eating their final anticipatory meal in haste, preparing to venture out into the unknown with only the Word of God through Moses their leader to trust, ready to follow the Word of this God out of the house of bondage into the way of freedom. This is the atmosphere of the Easter Vigil when it is done the way it should be—in the middle of the night, the church dark, the story of the exodus read as the worshipers tremble on the brink of the final and conclusive deliverance—the resurrection from the dead.[i]
The Passover and Exodus have claimed such powerful place in the hearts and minds of Jews throughout the ages, that they continue to remember and re-enact their learning of it each year around the Seder table. The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ have claimed similarly powerful place in Christian hearts and minds. As Jews do at the Seder table, we place ourselves at the events. We sing both “Let my people go,” and “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” For the enslaved African American communities who first sang those spirituals, that demand—let my people go—was horrifyingly urgent, and the question—were you there?—was answered with a firm and resounding “Yes.” They were there, because crucifixion and resurrection have always spoken to most powerfully of all to those who know suffering and hold onto the promise of liberation.
We are at the beginning of our own forty days. By design, Lent evokes for us the wilderness sojourns both of Jesus and of the Hebrew people. There is always the possibility that, in these forty days, something massive just might be accomplished in us. Something old might be swept away, and something new might be born to take its place. There is always the possibility that we might know, with a renewed sense of awe, the mercy God so freely offers us—safe passage through the sea, justice rolling down like water, deliverance from sin and death forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmaans Publishing Company, 2015), 227.