Marilu Thomas, “Love is a 5 letter Word”
After 25 months living in a global pandemic, I am basically existing for Wordle. [In the beginning was the Word, and the Word seems to have provided Wordle.] If you’re not familiar with this online game from the NYTimes, you have six opportunities to guess a five-letter word. Five letter words seem to jump out to me now—shirt, night, phone, trash, chair. A friend from Augusta, GA said his family shares the results everyday like golf scores- 4 guesses is par so you’re either below par or above par. A triple bogey and you’re out. There are many choices to be made in Wordle and when we have made better than average game, there is a button to lord it over friends and family, which is momentarily satisfying.
“Make good choices today,” your mother or father might have said as you climbed onto the school bus. As children, we interpret this to mean, “Don’t make your teacher call me today.” We can carry that same rule into our religious life. Make good choices, don’t make someone report you today.
If you live long enough, however, you start to wonder what good choices even look like. The person you desperately wanted to marry, is now your ex. The job that was perfect is wearing you out. The house you saved for is a money pit. What looks good to us—constant winning, gaining power over others, being invincible and self-sufficient- leaves us in a sinking quagmire of self. What looks bad to us- facing our limitations, accepting our imperfections, confessing our creaturely ways of self, asking for help—are good for us. So we don’t know what is good or bad for us. We are judgment impaired when it comes to understanding good from evil, power from love. We have been rendered unreliable choosers by our earthbound perspective. We are in denial about our inability to tell good from bad. Good looks bad, bad looks good.
God’s choices certainly fit this upside-down pattern. This day is named Good Friday because of God’s choice to come into the world as vulnerable baby, live a fully human life in a family, all to die a slave’s death in a Roman crucifixion. Christianity is about God choosing to suffer and die as the Christ. Yet- this divine choice changed the world and every life in this sanctuary.
The question that comes up—for Christians and non-Christians alike- “Why would God kill his only Son to rectify some debt owed, that God could cancel at any time? Isn’t this Divine child abuse? And if Jesus is God, why would He choose to die this horrible death? Why allow this to happen?” You may have these questions too because Good Friday people want to know about the Crucifixion. This question was the reason that I went to Seminary.
The first thing to remember is that the Father and the Son are One. God self-sacrifices as Jesus the Christ to save the world. This is not a case of having a Son killed to settle a debt. This is a case of the most powerful force in the Universe, the creative force that made the sun, changing the course of human history by offering God’s-self to overturn the balance of power. The evil forces of this world were given an eviction notice on Good Friday. Fleming Rutledge, in her book The Crucifixion, poses the question, “What sort of predicament are you and I in that would require the crucifixion of the Son of God?” Here we are going to talk about sin.
I have met many people over the years who would prefer we not use that old, archaic word, Sin. But I ask you, what else would fit here? We know deep down in our souls that we cannot help ourselves.
Rutledge encourages us to put on our God glasses and view our situation from the vantage point of God. We need help. Our human natures are prey to anxiety, fear, distrust, and disconnection. She identifies Sin as, “Not a specific wrongdoing, but a wrenching disruption in our relationship with God… Sin and its cohort, Death, rule over the kosmos as semi-autonomous Powers. This, however, is not the way Americans ordinarily think. We believe that we can resist Sin (if we call it that!) by ‘making good choices,’ and Death we keep at bay simply by not thinking about it, or by domesticating it.”
This ‘body of death’ is not just about when you breathe your last. We experience little deaths throughout which engender fear and anxiety. These are the Good Fridays of our everyday life. Case in point, Tiger Woods. We have seen him go from top athlete to persona non-grata several times. We tend to forget the losses and heartaches. In 2010, Tiger stood behind a podium publicly confessing his brokenness and need for help. Tiger said that the money and fame made him believe the illusion that the rules of life didn’t apply to him. Last weekend, the Master’s gallery cheered watching Tiger Woods return to golf, knowing that, after his rollover accident in last year, the doctors didn’t know if his leg could be saved. I am not holding Tiger up to be the Christ figure, but as a metaphor to say that to have a resurrection, you must have a death. Your idea of self-sufficiency and the illusion that you can make only good choices needs to die so new life can live in you. The life you think you want—the perfect marriage, the perfect job, the perfect children, the perfect body, perfect grades-- needs to die (be surrendered completely) for the life of love God wants to live in you. Our choices, based on self, become painful reminders of our human fallibility. Christ’s forgiveness lifts this pain by redeeming it. To have the resurrection of Easter, you must have the death of Good Friday.
Lastly, if you came today because you have lost your faith or feeling unwilling to believe? I have good news for you. Carl Braaten wrote, “Faith is not the response of a person’s free will to choose the grace of God. God makes unwilling persons willing to do the will of Christ. All is of grace that nothing shall be works, not even the work of believing.” Can you choose to believe? No. Christ has chosen you. Nothing more is required. You are the receiver not the doer in your relationship with God. Our Hebrew text today assures us that we can “approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water [because] He who has promised is faithful.” Love is a five letter Word named Jesus, given through the sacrifice of that Word made flesh for you.
Amen.
