No Cross, No Crown

No Cross, No Crown (Palm/Passion Sunday - March 16, 2008)

“And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death -- even death on a cross.” Philippians 2:8

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for the early Christians to have talked only about Christ’s great triumph and leave his ignoble humiliating death to the footnotes. But they didn’t do that. It was because in that death they understood the man of sorrows had taken their burdens upon himself, and suffered for them on the cross, and his death had brought them forgiveness of their sins and a new relationship with Almighty God. God is love, they proclaimed, and the cross is what shows it. “We preach Christ and  him crucified,” wrote St. Paul to the Corinthians.

There is a saying in the world of sports: “No pain, no gain.” In other words, there’s no victory without effort, even painful effort. There’s no telling how many football coaches have drummed this into half-time talks to their losing team in an effort to get them to try harder. The church has a similar saying, “No cross, no crown.”  There is no Easter without Calvary, there’s no love without sacrifice, and there’s no triumph without cost.

Why do we call today “Palm/Passion Sunday” and not simply “Palm Sunday”? The fifth Sunday in Lent used to be Passion Sunday, but a few decades ago the churches moved it to Palm Sunday. In too many of our churches people go from the apparent triumph of Palm Sunday to the triumph of Easter and miss the full meaning of the cross itself. This isn’t true as much in Catholic churches where the crucifix is an ever present reminder of Christ’s  death. But in our Protestant churches the cross is the empty cross of the resurrection. Many don’t even pay attention to Lent or read a devotional booklet for five minutes a day. Fewer and fewer attend the Holy Week services during the week, especially on Maundy Thursday, when Christ memorably gave his disciples the new commandment to “love one another”, and Good Friday, when Christ rendered his atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world. It is as if we want only  the crown – Christ’s glorious resurrection – but without any painful reminder of his agony and death before that, or why it should have been necessary in the first place.

Some churches, especially some newer “seeker churches”, take out the cross all together. People want comfort and reassurance. They have to be “lured” into Christianity, the idea is, and suffering won’t do it. They want the triumph of the crown. But not the challenge of the cross with its call to discipleship – take  up your cross, Jesus said, and follow me -- and a recognition that we are after all sinners in need of the atoning grace of Christ on the cross. People want to use the church, but not be challenged by it.
What we absolutely must have is the cross and crown together, as is seen in the symbols in the Lenten paraments. No cross, no crown.

The cross supremely stands for what theology calls the Atonement. This is not a word commonly  used in everyday conversation. But a remarkable thing happened this past week: there was the word out front and center and the speaker was none other than the governor of New York – and everybody heard it numerous times. The governor apologized for how he had lived his life and said he had to “atone” for what he had done – to his family and to the public. And hearing him and looking at his ashen-faced wife by his side no one would say that this atoning was going to be painless. Many offered prayers for them and many also said truthfully, “there but for the grace of God, go I.”

There are many other examples of atonement. A month ago the new prime minister of Australia publicly apologized for the treatment the native peoples of that country had received in previous generations from the majority population as aborigine  children had been forcibly taken from their homes and put in foster care and institutions. It was a remarkable moment of national apology and a step toward reconciliation.

In our country the process known as Affirmative Action is in effect a partial atonement for two centuries of racism and discrimination which crucified a whole people. It is an effort to  put “teeth” into the process of reconciliation and not simply say “let’s just let bygones be bygones.”

In Christian thought the gulf between sinful humankind and the holiness of God is huge. And it does not appear we can on our own bridge that gap, it has to be done for  us by someone who is fully identified with us and yet is fully divine and can do it. And in the process there will be suffering – passion, it is called, the Cross. Nor is Christ’s pain limited to Calvary: he suffered when he wept for the city, he suffered when he endured people’s taunts, he suffered when his disciples betrayed him and denied him and fled. The Bible says the cross was in the heart of God from the beginning – God always suffering – and we know Christ continues to suffer in man’s inhumanity toward man, and the insufferable pride and  arrogance which afflicts men and nations. Suffering is at the very heart of God exactly because God loves. The cross is the supreme symbol of it.

Only the God-Man Jesus Christ can provide the atonement. When the earliest Christians looked back on the cross they saw it as a tragedy, yes, but far more. Somehow there they saw someone like the suffering servant of Isaiah going through something terrible for others. Somehow on the cross God himself in Christ was active bringing about reconciliation – atonement – out of God’s great love, to put sin and death to rout in a mighty battle, they said, and to bring about the “forgiveness of sins” – which they  inscribed on crosses they wore. .    As the hymn says, “For, lo, between our sins and their reward, we set the Passion of Thy Son, our Lord.” It couldn’t be easy and it certainly wasn’t painless. And it was effected entirely on our behalf. What was left was for us to confess it, to believe in it, and to live our lives in total gratitude toward God and endeavor to show in every way that the Cross wasn’t wasted. The worst thing is to just take it for granted.

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Christ’s Passion, so the two really go together. Passion refers to Christ’s suffering, and  not only on the cross, though that is obviously the central fact. He suffered for sinful humanity when he wept outside Jerusalem. He suffered when he drove the money changes out of the temple, for he saw what rank materialism was doing to God’s temple. He suffered when Judas betrayed him and Peter denied him and when everyone fled from him. He suffered inwardly in many ways long before the nails were driven into his hands and feet and the spear pierced his side. And he suffers still in man’s inhumanity toward man. This is his  Passion for us, and if we are not somehow  moved by that, if we are only interested in  feel-good reassurance, and comfort, but not in the challenge that offers to us to focus our lives more fully on doing right by our fellow man, living for others and not just for ourselves, and giving glory to God in a purposeful dedicated life, then Holy Week will mean only daffodils and lilies and Easter eggs and little  more.

“And  being found  in human form, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death – even death on a cross.”