Except for Christmas and Easter Sunday, there isn't a lot of everyday recognition of the Christian liturgical calendar in our post-Christian culture. But this is a new phenomenon. Our kids might not believe us, but not only did most businesses used to close on Sundays, but other Christian observances were commonly honored as well.
McDonald's came out with it's Filet-O-Fish sandwich in the 1960s not out of some kind of early health consciousness, but so that on Fridays observant Catholics could still drop by the fast food restaurant for a quick bite. Within memory of many here, it was routine for businesses to shut down on Good Friday between the hours of noon and three o'clock the hours Christian tradition declares Jesus hung on the cross allowing employees and customers to attend Good Friday services. (If your kids don't believe you on this, have them read or re-read John Steinbeck's Winter of Our Discontent).
Today can anyone today imagine Wal-Mart voluntarily shutting down on a busy Friday afternoon before a big weekend?
Today would any banking institution shut its doors for three hours on its busiest deposit and withdrawal day of the week?
Today would H & R Block let its harried pre-April 15th employees take a three-hour break one week before that tax deadline date?
Forget it.
Today our 24-7-365 world has better things to do than to worry about the calendar of some 2000+ year old religious tradition.
Except this year.
In this year of 2004, more unchurched, semi-churched, over-churched and supposedly-churched people will know when Lent begins than they have in years. Lent, the season of prayer and fasting, soul-searching and body-denying, has a marker this year of 2004. This coming week, as the season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, actor/director/born-again conservative-Catholic Mel Gibson officially opens his self-funded movie "The Passion of the Christ."
Mel Gibson's Passion has touched off a passionate debate among the religious, the a-religious, and the anti-religious, the likes of which has not been seen since Madonna recorded "Like A Virgin" (remember when we were shocked by that?).
Whether you love Mel's movie, hate Mel's movie, are totally confused about Mel's movie, or could care less about Mel's movie, you can't ignore Mel's movie.
Gibson's graphic depiction of the last twelve violent hours of Jesus' life, its excruciatingly up-close, lash-by-lash detail of the pain and suffering experienced by Jesus on his way to the cross and on the cross, is in the public eye in a way that the Christian tradition hasn't been in decades.
No, no one will miss the beginning of Lent this year. Whether you care about the movie or not, the beginning of the church's most somber, holy season is being announced to our world loud and clear. While the negative publicity about The Passion of the Christ decries its violence and what some see as blatant anti-Semiticism, the positive media hype about The Passion of the Christ proclaims it as the greatest outreach opportunity in 2000 years. Even allowing for a huge margin of ecstatic over-statement, the church in general, and all people of faith in particular, need to think about what this media event might mean for themselves and for people around them.
For instance: How many of you wear a cross? Anyone have on a cross this morning as a necklace, earrings, a tic-tac, a lapel pin? Anyone display a cross somewhere in you home, car, office? Crosses are everywhere. We're surrounded by crosses. Yet how many times do you think about what that cross really signifies, really represents?
For Christians to understand what the cross means to them and their faith, perhaps we might compare it with some more recent, tangible symbols of hatred, cruelty, and human failure. For a Christian to wear a cross is tantamount to a Jew wearing a Nazi swastika around their neck, or for a resident of Japan to wear the symbol of a mushroom cloud.
Who would not be shocked to see such a thing?
No matter how you feel about the minute-by-minute particulars of Gibson's movie about the crucifixion note in particular its depiction of Jewish mobs, Roman complicity, the disciples' cowardice the truth is that this film does succeed in making the cross once again a symbol of the human capacity for cruelty, blood-thirstiness, abandonment, and evil. And for that reminder alone we should all thank Mel Gibson.
The designer Roger Dubuis offers for sale a "Follow Me" watch in the form of a cross. It starts at $12,500. Let us stop domesticating the cross. The cross is not a geometric figure that can conveniently hold a lot of diamonds or rubies to make a dazzling piece of jewelry. The cross is a symbol of the barbarism and butchery that is made possible by human sin and hate.
The cross is not a present from Tiffany's. The cross is not a treasure from Hermes. The cross is a torture-chamber from Hades.
Today's gospel text recounts the glorious epiphany of the transfiguration that Peter, James, and John were privileged to witness. But the real glory of this story is found in its introduction and its post-script. On either side of the transfiguration Jesus proclaimed his future suffering and rejection. On either side of the transfiguration Jesus declared without decoration the life of cross-bearing and self-sacrifice for which all true disciples must prepare.
Today is Transfiguration Sunday. But to see the transfiguration as only a mountaintop mirroring of Jesus' glory, power, and authority is to miss the point. It would be like going to the last board meeting of Enron and declaring the company in great shape because it had an outstanding platter of bagels and croissants on the table.
The setting for the transfiguration is glorious. But the message, which Moses and Elijah came to discuss with Jesus his departure-- was somber indeed. The disciples are not part of the private conversation between Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. They are only witnesses to the glory that surrounds these three. They are not privy to their considerably more distressing discussion.
When the divine voice bursts from the clouds and frightens the three simple men standing there, it tries to re-focus their gawk-eyed stare by urging the disciples to listen to the words Jesus has given them now, and will give them in the future. "Don't be dazzled by the light," the voice to the disciples counsels, "instead concentrate on the words and mission that is placed before you by Jesus."
The cross looms everywhere. Even in this transfiguration moment of glory the shadow of the cross falls on the disciples. It's true, the transfiguration didn't seem to do that much for the disciples who witnessed it. Peter, James, and John remained as clueless about Jesus and his mission after this event as before. The transfiguration functions more as a booster-shot of energy for Jesus Moses and Elijah both tasted rejection and ridicule on earth than it did as to boost the faithfulness of the disciples.
The disciples have an excuse: they are awed by the cloud, the presences, the voice from above. We have no excuse for being uncomprehending about the mission of Jesus and his message about true discipleship. The cross of Christ tells us that we're broken and in need of healing. The cross of Christ tells us that there is one who loves us and was broken for us that we may be healed. There was no room at the inn for Jesus, but there is room at the cross for you.
Is there room in your heart for Jesus?
Is there room on your body for Jesus?
If you're wearing a cross this morning, I want you to touch it right now. The wearing of a cross reminds us that every one of us gets to carry a cross. Every one of us gets a mission in life to carry out. Whether you like Mel Gibson's movie or not, The Passion of the Christ reminds us that in the 1st century if you're bearing your cross you're going out in shame TO DIE.
And Jesus says to each one of us, bear it daily, And Jesus says to each one of us, bear it gladly.
The first Christians spoke of Jesus as reigning from the cross.
It's the only kind of reigning we know: the suffering love that stretches out its arms of love for a hurting, hateful world.
Jesus loved you that much to die on a cross for you.
Do you love enough to carry your cross and follow him?