Last Tuesday was a busy day here at the church. The YMCA was here, of course; and, in the evening, there were karate classes. The boy scouts had their parent committee meeting, our church board had its monthly meeting… and, all day, polling was taking place in two different locations here at the church.
I don’t know where you voted last Tuesday, but I hope that you did vote. I noticed that one of the propositions on the ballot dealt with primary election participation; that is, in a primary election, voters should be allowed to vote for any candidate, regardless of party affiliation.
The proposition was approved, which I guess means that, in the next primary election, your choices won’t be limited to candidates from your party. Candidates won’t even have to declare their party, from what I understand. Obviously, some folks are happy that this proposition passed, while others are not.
Now, I’m not going to talk politics with you today. But I think the issue surrounding this particular proposition gives good insight into the situation that exists in today’s scripture reading.
Jesus was the Jewish messiah. He was the one anticipated by generations of faithful Jews. When he came, his earliest followers were Jews. When he chose some folks to be his disciples, he singled out twelve of them for special roles, the number twelve being symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Following his death and resurrection, an ever-growing number of people became followers of Jesus – and not all of them were Jews. A debate arose: does a person need to become a Jew in order to be a follower of Jesus? In other words, is it a closed-party system, or an open-party system? Do you have to be a member of the party in order to be a follower of the leader?
There were some that said yes, and some that said no. The apostle Paul, writing to the Galatians, was one of those who said no. I don’t know if Paul would advocate for an open primary when it comes to politics, but Paul did advocate for an open movement when it came to following Jesus.
Following Jesus, Paul insisted, is not limited to “we” Jews. (Remember, Paul was a Jew himself.) “Following Jesus is not limited to we who are Jews. It is bigger than that. The Christian movement is open to all. It is bigger than Judaism. It is bigger than any one religion.”
Now perhaps someone today might ask, “but isn’t Christianity a religion?” But if religion means a doctrine of beliefs, then no. Christianity is bigger than that. It is about following Jesus with one’s whole life. It is being passionate about the things Jesus was passionate about: justice; equality for the poor; healing and wholeness for all; life unrestrained by systems of domination.
And what does this mean? Well, Paul says that it means being crucified with Christ. Jews need to be crucified with Christ. Non-Jewish Gentiles need to be crucified with Christ. All those who want to follow Jesus need to be crucified with Christ. We need to unite ourselves to him. We need to be passionate about the things he was passionate about, which in turn are the things God is passionate about. And we need to be willing to commit our lives to living out this passion.
Some people get confused by Paul’s talk of being crucified with Christ. “Why do we need to do that? Didn’t Jesus pay the price? Didn’t he die in our place, so that we don’t have to? What, then, does it mean to be crucified with Christ?” Questions like these imply that the work is done, and all we have to do is believe that it happened.
Questions like these also imply that someone had to die, and so Jesus died instead of us … in our place … that Jesus was required to die, that it was a part of God’s plan, because God insisted that someone had to die. Well now, isn’t that a horrible thing to say about God? That God requires death? That God requires blood?
That’s a common belief, but I wonder where that is in scripture. It certainly doesn’t fit with Paul’s insistence that we be crucified with Christ. And it certainly doesn’t fit with the biblical image of God as caring, compassionate, and loving. But it is what a lot of people believe, and what a lot of preachers preach: that God required a death, that God demanded that there will be blood.
A lot of preachers preach that, and a lot of people believe that. Or, at least, a lot of people try very hard to believe that, because it’s what they’ve been told that they should believe. But I think many more people have a problem with that, and that’s one of the things that keeps them away from the church.
I think a lot of people, in the back of their minds, are thinking: surely God, the creator of all that is, could do better than that. Surely God could find some other path to salvation, healing, and wholeness. Surely, there must be some other way to understand the gospel, some alternative to this vengeful, bloodthirsty portrayal of God.
Well, there is. The alternative view, the one I am more and more inclined to agree with, is that God’s passion is justice, not vengeance; compassion, not judgment; peace, not fear; life, not death. God’s passion for the world is that every human being might live a life of wholeness, a life of freedom, a life of dignity, a life that is one with all the people of the world and one with God.
This is the message that Jesus proclaimed in his ministry: that there is another way to live. The Roman Empire, the domination system of the time, set the rules by which society was governed. And by that I don’t just mean the laws, but the unwritten rules as to who is better, who wins and who loses in the game of life. These rules of society were set up in such a way that life was dehumanizing for the vast majority of the people. The rules of society were skewed in such a way that those who had the power and the wealth kept their power and wealth, and even had the opportunity to accumulate more power and wealth – all at the expense of everyone else.
Not that they were any happier. We know in our own society, that those who have wealth and power are not any happier. We hear reports all the time of people who have it all but nevertheless seek escape in drug or alcohol addiction, or illicit affairs. Their relationships certainly aren’t any longer lasting than anyone else’s. And yet, the rules of society declare that they are the winners. And the winners will do whatever it takes to remain in that winning position – even if that winning position doesn’t bring them any extra measure of happiness.
In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the rules of society were dehumanizing to everyone, not just the vast majority who were oppressed and dominated, but even to those at the top.
I thought about these things last Tuesday evening, at the end of that busy day, as I watched the season finale of Glee on TV. The high school glee club was competing in the regionals competition against several other top-notch school choirs. Everyone wanted to be crowned the regionals champion. Everyone wanted to win.
At the risk of giving too much away in case someone is waiting to watch the show, I’ll just say that by the end of the episode, the members of the glee club had discovered a new way to define who is a winner. In a way, they wrote their own rules about who is and who is not a winner, and they discovered what it really is that brings happiness and healing and wholeness. They discovered a new way to define their lives; a new way to live.
Jesus, who was filled with God’s compassion for the world, taught that there is a new way to live, a new way to define life. He rewrote the rules. He taught that the way to define life is NOT in terms of the dehumanizing Roman Empire, but in terms of the kingdom of God.
And because he taught this, he was crucified. The Roman Empire didn’t look too kindly on those who didn’t play by the rules and expectations of society. The message Jesus proclaimed was intensely and intentionally provocative. It threatened to turn upside down the social order of the Roman Empire.
And so, the Roman Empire, the domination system, had him publicly executed. It wasn’t enough for those who set the rules to quietly do away with Jesus in some back alley. Jesus was put on display in a very public way, on a cross, as an example to all those who would dare challenge or provoke the domination system.
But the passion for justice and equality that was Jesus’ life and ministry became the passion of his followers. They carried on the mission for which he died. As people who had seen the kingdom of God and who were now living in that kingdom, they had died to their old way of living. They were no longer playing by the rules of society, the rules that said who wins and who loses. They had, in fact, died to that whole way of living, that whole dehumanizing way of life.
That is what it means to have been crucified with Christ. We, too, are called to reject the rules of society, the definitions of who’s a winner and who’s a loser, because those rules and those definitions are dehumanizing and lead to fragmentation.
That’s what the kids on Glee discovered. At the end of the show, they realized that whether they were winners or losers didn’t depend on what the judges said. The judges were, shall we say, not fair, not even living in reality, really, and the kids in the Glee Club decided that what the judges said really didn’t matter.
Having been crucified with Christ, Jesus’ followers were now living a new life, a life so radically different, that they, like Paul, said that their old selves were no longer alive, that Jesus Christ – the one who had been crucified – was now alive, living within them.
“It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” He gave his life for me, yes. He gave his life for the world, to restore to the world its humanity. Rome tried to take that life away, snuff it out, destroy it; but that life still lives within you and within me. It is alive. It makes us whole. It restores to us the life that the world daily tries to take away from us. We are united with Christ.
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