Sermons

"Into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23:44-46)"

Good Friday Liturgy 2005
Delivered at First Baptist Church and Sponsored by Chico Interfaith Council

From what I’ve heard, the lowlands of Northern Ireland are known for their exquisite beauty. I haven’t been there, but I hope to visit someday. Out of all that I’ve read about those deeply green landscapes, the most memorable is that which St. Angus of the 8th century wrote as he described his experience of the beauty of those surroundings.

Perhaps you have heard of St. Angus’ use of the phrase “thin places.” A “thin place,” as he meant it, is a place where the separation between heaven and earth is, just that, thin – where one can’t quite tell whether one is in heaven or on earth. That’s how St. Angus experienced his encounter with the beauty of Northern Ireland . The separation between heaven and earth seemed to him very ‘thin’ in deed.

Over the past months, I’ve been reflecting on the ways Jesus’ walk to Jerusalem was like what St. Angus described as a “thin place.” I’ve also been thinking about how walking closely with Jesus opens us to those “thin places” even where we least expect it.

Of all that transpired in this last week of Jesus’ life – from the triumphal entry into Jerusalem until now, the depths to which Good Friday takes us may most clearly fit what is meant by a “thin place.” When one reads of the Gospel accounts of the death of Jesus, one doesn’t know when exactly Jesus makes the transition from earth to heaven – so permeable are the two. The ongoing conversation between the Father and the Son is so intimate that it’s as if Jesus is already in the presence of heaven even from the place of the cross. Jesus seemed to have a foot in both realms at once.

We stand at the foot of the cross in the presence of something awesome – a presence that draws us in, even in its anguish, because it is so clearly a presence of love. Love is that which knows no bounds. Love transcends all barriers, breaking down dividing walls – even the dividing walls between heaven and earth. The Author of love will not be separated from the beloved.

The love in the “thin place” of the cross is so palpable that it enables Jesus to entrust his breaking heart into hands that he trusts are immediately before him, not out of reach. “Into your hands I commit my spirit,” says the dying Jesus. And in those final moments what might have been “thin” is now obliterated into no-thing, no separation at all. As Jesus breathes his last he is incorporated fully into the hands of God.

In his dying, Jesus models a way for our own dying – the daily dying we do as baptized Christians as well as our final journey home. Divine hands are close enough for us to trust as support for our living and to entrust ourselves to them in our dying. Trusting this matters if we are going to have the courage to live, and die, as Christians in the world.

The German Lutheran Pastor and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, taught that when God calls us into the Church God bids us come and die. Being Christian isn’t about playing it safe, or about what God can do for us. God has already done everything for us – given us God’s company in both heaven and on earth. There is nothing more God need do for us than what God has already profoundly done. What is left is what we can offer as response – our gratitude and acceptance of what has already been freely granted.

Bonhoeffer understood this and his understanding led him to take a stand against what Hitler was doing in the 1940’s. Bonhoeffer was martyred, of course, for his effort to love others as he had been love. But the cost wasn’t morbid to him. I think Bonhoeffer would have taken kindly to this thought of St. Angus that there are “thin places” where heaven and earth almost touch – and that serving the neighbor in need opens us to such places.

To be bid to come and die is to be called to follow Jesus to the cross. Not for the sake of gaining something, but because we have already gained everything in the call itself. The call to follow Jesus is gift enough. If we have to risk our lives to follow him, so be it. There is nothing more for us to seek than the privilege of walking, as theologian Miroslav Volf says, in the company of the crucified.

Whatever keeping company with Christ asks of us, it results in drawing us closer – in “thinning” the boundary between this world and the next. Keeping company with the crucified one makes more available to us this experience of which St. Angus writes.

To be bid to come and die, however, is not a romantic thing. It’s not easy to do the Christ-like thing in a world that urges self-protection and teaches that the only honorable way is up. The Christ-like thing sometimes bends us low for a neighbor. It sometimes costs us our reputations, our relationships, even, in some countries, our lives.

But even in this country where we have freedom of religion, if we really listen to the Gospel we, First World people, have a challenge before us. Jesus walked among the poor. He loved the little children. He spoke across party lines. He welcomed the stranger and fellowshipped with the ones the world pointed fingers at. To follow the Jesus of the Bible, is to put ourselves at risk of being misunderstood by those who thought following Jesus meant God would rescue us from trouble not put us in the midst of it. But Jesus’ life wasn’t a life of avoidance of the hard places. But it was a life that discovered the hard places are also those prone to what St. Angus calls “thin.”

To be bid to come and die, as Bonhoeffer says Christians are bid to do through our baptism, is to be called by a larger purpose. To be bid to come and die is to be bid to follow Jesus in living for a purpose – living towards a goal – living towards the prize of the upward call of God, as St. Paul puts it.

To be bid to come and die is to be called towards the radically misunderstood way of Jesus who was despised, rejected and acquainted with grief. As disciples of Jesus we are called to follow him into this misunderstood way – this way of loving the least and the lost and the lonely in our world – not because it will get us somewhere, but because it is a “thin place” – a place where Jesus is and where it’s hard to tell whether we’re in heaven or on earth.

It is because of this call to follow Jesus that I am pleased that the congregation I serve is a part of the Chico Interfaith Council along with all of you. What I’ve seen of the Interfaith Council in the five months that I’ve been here in Chico is that the Interfaith Council is committed to the bold work of helping us live as people of God.

The Council participates in things like the Torres Community Shelter. It encourages support of the Well Rescue project and the interfaith dialogues and events. I was awed at the energy in the community around the Celebration of Abraham event that stretched us across our usual boundaries to reach our neighbors who are different than ourselves. Jesus did that. He reached out to people who were different than he – people like the woman at the well, people like the lepers he cured, people like the children be blessed. I’m glad to be part of an organization that has as its mandate this kind of stretching.

And the example modeled by Jesus in his final words from the cross encourages us. Jesus’ final words from the cross help us see that the cross – the place of self-giving – is truly a “thin place.” To come and die is really to come and live, to come and live fully as followers of Jesus. To follow in the footsteps of the Spirit, as Jesus did, is to become acquainted with those “thin places” where God is so close that divine hands reach across time-honored barriers.

The final words from the cross are words of extreme comfort. God is that close that Jesus believes he can place his dying spirit into God’s waiting hands. “Into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Jesus models for us how to live and how to die. Jesus reaches – not inward upon himself in despair, but outward to God in trust – in his living and in his dying.

May we thank Jesus today for these courageous words! “Into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Is there anything more we need know to be courageous faithful Christians? The separation between heaven and earth is that close. May God give us eyes to so see!