March 25, 2012 | 8:00 a.m.

For Such a Time as This

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 119:9–16
Jeremiah 31:31–34
John 12:20–33

Help us to follow you on the road to Jerusalem,
To set our faces firmly against friendly suggestions
To live a safe, expedient life,
to embrace the way of self-offering. . . . .

Help us to follow you even to the cross,
To see our hope in your self-spending love,
To die to all within us not born of your love.

Christopher Duraisingh

In Cuba, at the Presbyterian Camp, there is a wooden sign nailed to a tree that says in Spanish, “This may not be the best of times, but it is our time.” It was a poignant sign to read standing alongside our Cuban brothers and sisters in Christ, after learning how difficult it is for them to live on rationed food items, how tightly relatives live with one another in limited housing, and how scarce are the resources to teach children in church school. Not the best of times. It was also a poignant sign to read after experiencing their joy in sharing Christian fellowship, their finding hope each day in God, and their commitment to serving their neighbors and fostering the faith in the next generation. Indeed, they were claiming their time to witness in faith.

Every month when pastors who serve the Cabrini-Green area meet as the Near North Ministry Alliance, our president, the Reverend Cecelia Harris, will say, “We are doing ministry here for such a time as this.” “For such a time as this” is a quote from the biblical Book of Esther (4:14). Queen Esther, who was Jewish—unbeknownst to her husband the king—was facing a critical moment. The king was planning to destroy the Jews. On behalf of her people, she could seek to persuade the king against doing this, but to do so put her own life at risk. Her mentor Mordecai told her, “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”

Jesus said something similar to “for such a time as this” in the last week of his life. As we heard in our scripture lesson today, he said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. . . . And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour” (John 12:23, 27).

Jesus makes this powerful statement to his disciples regarding not only what is about to happen but also what is its meaning. Once again he seeks to tell them what his mission really is. “The hour has come.” It is an hour to which his whole life has been leading. It is an hour that causes Jesus to say, “My soul is troubled,” for it seems clear now that to live out God’s call to him with integrity, he must sacrifice his own life. What he was facing would cause any human being to be troubled. It reveals to us that Jesus was not spared from the struggles, questions, pain, despair, and death that we know. What is true for us is true for him.

Yet Jesus does not ask to be spared this hour. It bears the reason for his life. This “hour” is the time for Jesus to complete his mission. It is the time of his absolute and salvific surrender to God.

Jesus reveals this in response to a request by some Greeks who wanted to meet with him, to see him. He doesn’t say, “I’m kinda busy right now” or “Tell them we’ll chat tomorrow afternoon.” He instead describes the hour at hand. It is as if Jesus is saying, if you really want to see me, to know who I am, see me on the cross. No matter what we have understood and believed about Jesus’ ministry and teachings, “we have not really seen Jesus unless and until we have seen him nailed to the cross” (Eugene C. Bay, “Portraits in Depth: VI. His Hour Has Come,” sermon preached on 23 March 1997). That’s when we begin to comprehend who he truly is and what he does. It’s when we see Christ on the cross that we begin to grasp the nature of his way and the essence of his reign on earth.

In Jesus’ taking up his cross, we see him realizing his own teaching: “There is no greater love than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Standing beneath the cross of Jesus we see a revelation about God we cannot see anywhere else. We see, as the Apostle Paul wrote, the proof of God’s amazing love “in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Paul also wrote, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” Paul insisted on the centrality of the cross because only a God who suffers with us can save us.

Over the centuries, different theories have developed as to what Jesus’ death on the cross accomplished. These are theories of atonement, none of which I find fully satisfactory. Instead I affirm what the Reverend Eugene Bay said of the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross: “Jesus died not to change God, but to change us. God did not need to be placated. Jesus’ death did not make God’s love possible; it made God’s love visible.” Jesus embodied, or incarnated, God’s reconciling love through a life of self-emptying on our behalf, which was consummated in a final, free, surrendering love in his death.

Of course, we are seeing Jesus’ crucifixion after the fact, through post-resurrection eyes. The only reason the cross carries such powerful meaning for us is because the one who suffered and died was the risen Christ.

In a short book of Lenten devotions, Carlyle Marney puts it this way: “If salvation could ever be in a cross alone, there have been enough crosses to save the world a million times over.” On one day alone, along a Roman road, crosses were lined up farther than the eye could see, as thousands of rebellious subjects were executed. Many times since, crosses have been raised and people executed cruelly and unjustly. Marney says, “Salvation cannot come from crosses only. Salvation can come only from a cross whose incumbent hanging there has some future. Salvation has to come from someone a cross cannot hold. Salvation has to come from someone of whom a cross cannot dispose. . . . Salvation cannot come from crosses that end something. Salvation has to come from that rare cross that is the beginning of something.”

Jesus described this through a parable, in which he said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:24–25). That is strong language: “hate their life in this world.” That doesn’t mean hating our earthly existence. It means hating any alienation from God that is in our lives and in this world.

Jesus is teaching that death must precede life. We must die to all that is within us that separates us from God and one another if we are to bear new life as his disciples.

Near the end of Wallace Stegnar’s novel Crossing to Safety, there is a scene in which Sally, a victim of polio since childhood, is in a tiny chapel somewhere in Italy, staring at Peiro della Francesca’s painting of the resurrected Christ. On the left the painting depicts a barren landscape with naked trees reaching toward a darkening sky. To the right the landscape is alive with foliage, houses, and bursts of sunlight. Between these scenes of barren death and vibrant life Francesca places the resurrected Christ, with one foot still in the tomb, as if still in the act of stepping out. In Christ’s right hand is a staff holding a flag of victory. On his left hand and left foot, the holes from the nails are still apparent. His side shows the wound from the soldier’s spear, still dripping drops of blood.

Sally’s husband and the friends who are sharing their Italian vacation had looked casually at the painting and moved on. Sally, however, lingers by the painting, transfixed by the face of Francesca’s Christ. Despite the golden halo over his head and the flag of victory in his hand, Jesus’ eyes betray a memory of pain. Sally’s husband wondered at first what it was about this painting that so occupied his wife’s attention. Gazing at her as she was propped up before the painting on her crutches, his eyes returned again to the face of Christ. Gradually he saw the truth that stared at them both in the eyes of this one who only moments before had been horribly dead. The truth of the resurrected Christ, he now saw, is that “those who have been dead understand things that will never be understood by those who have only lived” (Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety, pp. 274-275, as quoted in Eugene Bay’s sermon, “For This We Have Jesus”). Only one who has died can help us properly to live and to die. Only one who has been through hell, as we say of Jesus in the Apostles’ Creed, can help us in our hells.

A young woman whose husband died suddenly and left her with two young children wrote a letter to her pastor. She said, “I discovered that the faith I had prior to my husband’s death was no longer operative in my life. . . . I had reached a point where the road had ended, and the way was unlit. And when that happens,” she wrote, “I find that it matters dearly what kind of God you know. . . . Now, my faith has a new shape and a new meaning, and my life a new tune.” She ended her letter saying, “Circumstances have left me in the best possible place, . . . on my knees, at the foot of the cross.” There is no better place to be. There is no better time than now to follow the One who gave his all for us.