This Church Must Die (Matthew 21:1-11)

2000 years ago, a man named Jesus walked the dusty roads of Galilee, and eventually made his way down to Jerusalem.  Upon arriving in that great city, he was hailed as a hero by many, but was seen as a threat by those in positions of power and authority.

It didn’t take long for those authorities to find him, arrest him, and execute him. At the time of his death, scholars think he was about 33 years of age. 

We in the church like to think that his crucifixion was unique and significant, but the truth is that the Roman government crucified people all the time.  There are accounts of the hillsides being lined with bodies hanging from crosses.  The gospels even mention that, at Jesus’s own crucifixion, his was not the only one; two others were crucified alongside him.

I mentioned that Jesus was 33 when he was executed; in that time, the average life expectancy for someone who survived infancy and childhood was around 40 years of age.  Some people, blessed with remarkably good health, did live to be 70 or 80, while others, afflicted with diseases or conditions that could easily be treated today, died much, much younger.

Given that so many people died young, and given that crucifixion was not unique to Jesus, what was it that made his death so significant and meaningful?

Today, in the 21^st century, there are thousands upon thousands of Christian congregations, filled with millions of believers all seeking to follow Christ’s example and teachings.

The life expectancies for these churches vary greatly.  Some of these churches have been around for centuries.  Many others are born, survive for only a few years, then close their doors.  Churches die all the time.

When Jesus died, it was seen by his closest followers as a failure of their movement and all it stood for.  Their leader was dead, and it seemed the movement he started was dead with him. 

They were devastated.

But – spoiler alert! – three days later their eyes were opened and they realized that it wasn’t a failure.  They realized that Jesus’s death was, in fact, necessary, that it die have meaning.

And a generation or two later, when the gospels were written, they were cleverly crafted in such a way that everything in them led up to that climactic end, when Jesus died on the cross. 

The details about what, exactly, it all means, differ between the four gospels. 

Of the four gospels, three of them have Jesus rising from the dead after three days.

Of those three, there are different explanations of what the resurrected Jesus was like.  In one account, he has a body that can be touched by his followers.  In another, his resurrection body is not something that can be touched. 

But in all four gospels, Jesus dies on a cross, and his death is not portrayed as a failure.  His death is not the end.  Rather, it is just the beginning.

When a church dies, we have a harder time seeing things that same way.  The gospels portray a Jesus who walked confidently toward his death, knowing that it would fulfill his purpose.  Churches that are near-death, however, do just the opposite.  They dig their claws in to the ground, trying desperately to hold on to what little life they have left…

This clinging to life can last for decades.  Jesus said repeatedly, “the Son of Man must die,” but churches that are barely clinging to life insist, “We will not die!”

Jesus risked everything to fulfill his purpose and his mission…  Churches that are near-death are willing to risk nothing, for fear that the slightest thing might put that final nail into the coffin.

This, I think, is the one aspect of Christ’s crucifixion that we don’t like to think about.  It’s one thing that Christ had to die; it’s a whole other thing to think that we might be called to die with him.

In recent times, some church leaders have tried to avoid the discomfort around this, by preaching and teaching substitutionary atonement.  [Say that with me…] Substitutionary atonement is the theological view that Christ died so that we don’t have to.  Because of sin, God was angry, and had to punish someone… and according to substitutionary atonement, that someone was Jesus.  Jesus died in our place, taking the punishment we deserve.

  The nice thing about substitutionary atonement is that we get off scott-free; no punishment for us!  But the downside is that God is portrayed as mean and abusive.  After all, what loving father would require the death of his own son in order to calm his own anger?

The Bible speaks not of substitutionary atonement, but of participatory atonement.  [Say that with me…]  In other words, Christ didn’t die in our place, so that we don’t have to.  Instead, we are called to die with Christ.  We are called to participate with Christ in dying to ourselves.  We are called to deny ourselves and take up our cross.  Have you ever thought about what that means, to take up your own cross? 

Paul writes to the Romans that “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.”  Participatory atonement.  And to the Galatians, Paul wrote: “I have been crucified with Christ.”

For Paul, there is no digging one’s claws into the ground, desperately trying to avoid death.  Paul, like Christ, embraces death.

We avoid death – we don’t like to talk about it – but actually, embracing death can be very helpful.  Death can be a very helpful advisor, as Carlos Castaneda discovers in the book Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of don Juan, where death is an advisor lurking an arm’s length away, just over your shoulder; “the only wise advisor we have.”

In a book called Losing Your Faith, Finding Your Soul, David Robert Anderson mentions novelist Reynolds Price, who discovered how embracing death can be a good thing.  It happened because Reynolds Price went through a horrific ordeal with spinal cancer.   

Anderson writes: “Ten years after his cancer diagnosis – years of struggling to get his old life back – [Reynolds Price] says it would have been a great favor to him if someone had walked up to his hospital bed right at the start and said, ‘Reynolds Price is dead.  Who will you be now?’”

David Robert Anderson then acknowledges that “Pronouncing yourself dead happens to be the prerequisite of all faith traditions. (St. Paul says flatly, ‘I die daily,’ and Zen master Maezumi Roshi suggests, ‘Why don’t you die now, and enjoy the rest of your life?’)…”

Psychologist Gary Klein realized that death could be a useful advisor, and he devised a method for testing decisions he calls “premortem.”  It works like this:  Imagine the future death.  He’s talking specifically about the death of a big project, a company, an organization,… or possibly a church...

Imagine its death.  Imagine that it’s 3 or 5 years in the future, and that project, that organization, that church, has died.  And ask yourself:  What killed it?

Now if we were to apply this exercise to our congregation… Don’t get me wrong, I am hopeful about our congregation, but as an exercise… imagine that it’s 3 or 4 or 5 years in the future, and we’ve reached the final worship service for Bixby Knolls Christian Church.  The church is closing its doors.  And then ask:  Why?  What killed the church? 

Think of all the reasons you can that might have caused the death of the church.

I can think of two possible reasons...

Reason #1 is that the church did too little.  The church dug its claws in the ground, its members huddled in around themselves, and refused to embark on anything new or risky… The church stopped giving to mission and outreach, preferring to save the money for its own survival… and the church just slowly fizzled out until there was nothing left.

Reason #2 is very different.  Reason #2 is that the church died because it did too much.  The church overextended.  It reached out in mission.  It sought ways to be bold in ministry, and it cost the church dearly. 

The church loved too much.  It cared too much.  It gave too much...  It gave until nothing was left.

Now, if the church is going to die anyway, which do you think is the better way to die?

Jesus would have died anyway.  If he had dug his claws in, kept quiet, stayed in Nazareth and gone about the family business making things out of wood, perhaps he would have lived a little longer.  Perhaps he would have made it to the typical life expectancy of 40 years – another 6 or 7 years added to his life.  Maybe he would have lived longer than that.  Or maybe he would have died sooner. 

But after 2000 years, does it really matter whether one man in the first century lived to 33 or to 40?

What does make a difference is the reason he died.  Jesus died bringing life to others.  He died – he was killed – because his love was too great.  The authorities didn’t want to love people, they wanted to control people.  Jesus was a challenge to that. 

And no amount of threats – not even knowledge of his own impending death – could keep Jesus from parading into Jerusalem and challenging the system that would deny life and love to the people.

Now that is a good death.  From that death comes life.

From that death comes life.

The years Reynolds Price spent with spinal cancer were, as I said, a horrific ordeal.  For the past few decades, the church has endured its own horrific ordeal.  Since the 1960s, the church has been struggling. 

And, for the most part, the church has endured that ordeal by struggling to get its old life back.  It has dug its claws in. 

Perhaps it would be helpful for someone to say to the church:  “The church you know is dead.  What will the church be now?

It was in the early 1960s that Martin Luther King challenged the church to recapture its “sacrificial spirit,” the spirit that is willing to die so that new life may come.  If the church does not recapture that sacrificial spirit, he said, “it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the 20^th century. I am meeting young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust.”

Those words are true today, perhaps even more so than they were then.  The church needs to die.  It needs to die so that others can have life.  It needs to die so that it may be reborn into something new.