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Sermon 04/09/2006
Demands My Soul, My Life,
My All ~ by Tom Kinder
April 9, 2006, Sixth Sunday in Lent, Palm/Passion
Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont,
UCC
Mark 11, 14, 15
Isaac Watts wrote the words to many of the greatest
hymns we sing, like “Our God, Our Helper
in Ages Past” and “Joy to the World!’
He lived in England and served as a pastor for
a short while in the late 1600’s and early
1700’s. He was the first to write the kind
of hymn churches have been singing for the past
300 years.
Our closing hymn today will be another of his
great ones, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”
The last stanza responds with gratitude to Jesus’
self-sacrifice, saying,
"Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small,
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all."
I wish I could say that I felt that much gratitude
all the time—I do not—but I feel it
often enough to make that one of my favorite verses
of any hymn. Sometimes walking through the woods
on a beautiful spring day or sometimes sitting
in my chair down at the foot of the pulpit looking
out at you I feel overwhelmed by the love of God
that suddenly feels palpably present. Sometimes
when I am in the midst of focusing on one small
part of Jesus’ teaching or life I will suddenly
feel the full measure of his love, and I will
feel grateful beyond my ability to express. And
sometimes the feeling comes over me for no apparent
reason at all—just a random, every day kind
of moment. Whenever it comes, it makes me want
to do what Isaac Watts wanted to do—offer
my soul, my life, my all.
Many have joined our congregation since Dan Clouser
died. I wish you had known him. He was a seminary
trained philosopher and professor and one of the
shapers of the modern field of medical ethics.
Dan was passionately faithful and wickedly funny
and stunningly quick-witted and profoundly insightful,
not to mention inspiringly courageous in his confrontation
with a deadly form of cancer. He far outlived
the odds, and was outwalking healthy people half
his age only a few weeks before his death. Dan
was rarely if ever at a loss for words, but after
the last Prayer of the Heart he was able to attend,
he told me that as his death grew near he was
finding that only one thing needed to be said,
and that was, “Praise God!’ He said
it was rather awkward, out of character and potentially
damaging to his professional academic reputation
to be standing in line at Wings and feel the uncontrollable
urge to shout “Praise God!’
One of the great and beautiful mysteries of our
faith is that it can move us to praise God in
the checkout line or in the face of death or even
when we hear the devastating story that we read
again today. Maybe that is the mystery we are
trying to explain when we develop all our complicated
theories about why Jesus had to go through his
suffering and what it means to our lives. Maybe
we are just trying to explain to ourselves why
we feel moved to this irrational gratitude.
I talked in a recent sermon about the meaning
of the cross and all the competing theories of
why Jesus died. The cross works for me as a spiritual
symbol of the way to union with God, and when
I try to explain to myself why the Passion Story
moves me, I think this must be part of it. In
some way, this story is the story of my spirit’s
journey through the material world. Jesus said
“follow me’ and this is one of the ways
we have to go. I am grateful for the spiritual
blessings the way of the cross can bring.
But I also see Jesus on the cross as model for
self-sacrifice in the service of God and neighbor.
I see it as the most powerful act of creative
non-violence ever used in the cause of social
revolution. This aspect of the story moves me
as the stories of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi move me.
The Rev. William Sloane Coffin likes to ask, ‘What
makes you cry?’ I will cry at the death of
William Sloane Coffin, as I cry whenever someone
dies who has dedicated his or her life to serving
the cause of goodness, justice and peace with
all they have and all they are. The death of Jesus
pulls on my heart with this deep gratitude and
sense of loss.
Another impact of the Passion Story comes from
the unfairness of the betrayal, desertion and
torture Jesus suffered. Injustice makes me want
to weep a different kind of tears. How can people
do such awful things to someone so beautiful,
loving and selfless? How can anyone hate someone
who heals the sick and lifts up the poor and preaches
things like the Sermon on the Mount? That is another
part of what makes the story penetrate so deeply
and makes me feel my love of Jesus more keenly.
Then there is the Garden of Gethsemane where we
see that Jesus did not want to do what God’s
cause was asking him to do. It is heartbreaking
to see his anguish on the eve of his suffering
and death. That is another part of the story’s
power.
I could go on, but no matter how many parts I
identify in this story and no matter how deeply
they move me, the effect adds up to be greater
than the sum of the parts. It is not just that
Jesus is a super-Gandhi and was treated unfairly
and sacrificed his self-interest for God’s
sake. There is something more to it, something
that remains a mystery.
Maybe it is true that humans are too quick too
call in God as the explanation of whatever we
don’t understand. I don’t mean to do
that when I say that the mystery—the missing
factor—the thing that makes the sum of this
story greater than the total of its parts, is
the part of Jesus that was divine.
It is not that I name Jesus God, but that I name
God the part of Jesus that I experience in my
spiritual life that makes me want to sing out,
“Praise God!’ I name God the part of
Jesus that demands my soul, my life, my all. That
is what God is—a force of love that owns
us and draws out of us an instinctive reflex of
loving gratitude.
In our deepest core we know God’s force of
love creates, sustains and redeems us. We know
this not by the rational part of our brain—that
part has a hard time recognizing God. It comes
from the part of the brain we stopped using when
we left the Garden of Eden—the part of the
brain that remembers God’s face and knows
God’s secret name and can lead us on the
paths of God’s mysteries.
This part of me recognizes what I call God in
Jesus, but what matters is not what we call the
mystery behind the Passion Story, or how we understand
it. What matters is how we respond to it. That
is why I encourage you not to think too hard about
it with you rational mind. Think about it only
enough to be aware of how you feel and what your
ancient intuitive brain is telling you about it.
Think about it enough to be aware how you could
respond to your feelings in an authentic and meaningful
way. Ask yourself what it is moving you to do.
Rather than think about atonement theories of
the cross, think about how you can respond in
your life to the cross you or those you love are
experiencing. How can you comfort those who are
suffering? How can you confront injustice? How
can you use you own short life to help establish
God’s realm on earth? How can you express
your gratitude for a love so amazing, so divine
as Jesus on the cross? Because however we explain
it, whatever other motives Jesus had for submitting
to it, there can be no doubt that the cross was
an act of his love for God and the world. Everything
he did in life and death was grounded in that
love.
How will you respond? Once again we have heard
the story. How will you respond this year to this
demand for your soul, your life, your all?
Let us pray together in silence…
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