Test Driving Theology

I want to begin this morning with a word about branding and marketing.

If you were one of those early Christians…those disciples who were working to spread Christianity in the years right after Jesus walked the earth, and you brought the cross to the early church’s marketing committee, they might have laughed you out of the room. 

You would have walked in and said, “I’ve got it!  I’ve got it!  It’s the new symbol for this faith…this movement…this way of living, and loving in Jesus’ name!”  The committee would have looked up excitedly and said, “Well, what is it?”  You’d say…”it’s a cross!”  

They would look at you like you were nuts.  “The cross?  The cross is a symbol of legal punishment…it is an instrument of public torture, and it is a tool of the state to execute its enemies.  A cross?  Are you kidding us?”  Then, gently and kindly, they might say, “…umm…maybe…maybe you should go back to the drawing board. Have you considered a dove? People love a dove. What about a sunrise?  Or maybe a nice rainbow?”

Because in the Roman world, the cross was not a decoration. This was their equivalent of the electric chair. It was what the empire did to slaves and rebels, out there…up on a hill or beside the road where everybody could see it.  It was a punishment and a warning: “Toe the line, or this could happen to you.” 

The cross…even the word “cross,” was terrifying.  People in Jesus’ day feared it.

The apostle Paul knew exactly what the cross meant. “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” he writes to the Corinthians, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”  The power of God.

It’s maybe the worst logo in the history of logos. And yet, it’s also the strongest foundation in the history of foundations.

And that foundation is what I want to talk about this morning. Not the cross as a logo, or a symbol we admire. The cross as a place where we put our weight.

So then, what does it mean for us…for people who follow Jesus…to stand on the cross?

Martin Luther said we have two different ways to approach our faith.  He called one the theology of the cross.  The other? The theology of glory.  He did not care for the theology of glory.  Luther put it this way. He wrote: “A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it is.”

A theology of glory goes looking for God in the wins. In the promotion. In prosperity and success.  A theology of glory tells us that “hey, if you do everything right…if you are faithful…if you follow Jesus exactly…then you will be successful…and rewarded…and someday, you too will drive a Porsche.  

But the theology of glory is hollow.  Because we all know that life and our faith don’t work that way, it is a perfectly delightful theology right up until the moment when things go wrong…and life stops cooperating. 

Then it has only two things left to say to you, and neither one helps: Either you must have done something to deserve this, or your faith isn’t strong enough. A theology of glory has to spin. It has to find the silver lining. It is the theology behind every well-intended thing anybody has ever said to you at a funeral…in the midst of your grief…that made you want to walk away in frustration.

But a theology of the cross does not spin. It looks straight at the crucifixion…or struggle…or pain, and says, there.  Right there. That is where God is. Not hovering above the suffering at a safe distance, observing. No. God is right there in the middle of it…with you.

Luther summed up his whole life’s work in five words. “The cross alone is our theology.”

The theology of the cross…now this is heady, conceptual stuff.  But what does it give you…practically? I think it gives you three things.

First, it gives you permission to tell the truth. You do not have to come in here and perform. You can say out loud that life can be hard…a struggle even.  You can admit that you don’t understand…that you are not okay, that you prayed and nothing happened, and that doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with you. In a theology of the cross, that is not the moment God backs away from you. That is when God draws close.

Second, it gives you a companion instead of an explanation. And I will be honest, most of us would rather have the explanation. The cross does not tell you why things happen. Instead, God tells you: “I know. I have experienced that.  I’ve been there.” You see, God knows what being scared…in a hospital room at three in the morning feels like.  Because of Jesus…God has experienced pain…and grief…and loss.

Third, it ends the scorekeeping. From the cross, Jesus says three words. “It is finished.” The Greek word is tetelestai.  This was a common word… a word first-century shopkeepers wrote across receipts when someone bought something.  It translates to “paid in full.”  On the cross, Jesus says “tetelestai.”  “It is finished.” It is paid in full.  Jesus is saying the work is complete. The account is closed. He wants you to know that you can stop trying to pay it yourself.

Now, all of this sounds lovely from a pulpit on a Sunday morning. But the fair question is whether it holds up when it really matters.

So let me tell you about a pastor named Martin Rinkart.

In the early 1600s, Rinkart served a walled city in Germany called Eilenburg. The walls made it a safe place, so refugees poured into Eilenburg for protection. This meant the town was crowded…actually overcrowded. Then, in 1637, the plague rampaged through the town. Because of the conditions and the overcrowding, thousands upon thousands of people died. The other pastors in town either died or fled. Rinkart was the last one standing.

By most accounts, Martin Rinkart was burying forty or fifty people a day that year. 40-50 funerals a day.  He did something in the neighborhood of four thousand funerals in just twelve months. One of them was for his wife.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, Rinkert sat down and wrote a table prayer for his children. Just a little something to say before supper, at the end of a long, hard day, when he had spent all his time staring into open graves.

You may know this prayer. We use it here regularly.  You see, it was put to music…turned into a hymn.  And we have sung it in this room. “Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices.”  We will sing it again in just a few minutes.

Rinkart was not a man simply putting on a brave face. That was not spin. Rinkart never once pretended the plague was secretly fine. He never said, “It’s all going to be ok.”  He knew what was going on.  He saw it every day.  But he also knew his foundation.  He knew that he was standing on something. He had been formed by a theology that told him God is not absent from the graveside, that God is right there…with him… in the worst of it, and that the account had been settled…paid in full… and nothing happening in Eilenburg…disease…death…suffering…was going to change that.

He could be honest about his town…it was dying…and he could give thanks to God in the same breath. Those two things did not cancel each other out…Why? Because he stood on the cross.

For Rinkart, the cross was not a decoration…it was his foundation…it was the floor on which he stood.  

So let me talk to the person who came in here this morning carrying something. A diagnosis. A marriage that is fraying. A kid you cannot reach. A grief that is two years old and still turns up uninvited at the times you least expect it.

Hear this. Whatever happens, you are not alone.  You do not have to have this all fixed before God can be close to you. You do not need to perform well…or to succeed, to qualify. The entire message of the cross is that God comes to us at our worst and calls that a perfectly good place to start.

That is what you stand on. Not your own record, which is spotty. Not your own strength, which comes and goes. No, you stand on a finished work that Jesus completed 2,000 years before you were born. 

So go ahead. Take up your cross. Hang it on the wall. Wear it around your neck. Give one as a gift when a kid gets baptized…or confirmed.

The cross may be the worst logo anybody ever chose.  But when the ground shakes, and one of these days it will, it will still be the only thing in the room on which you can absolutely depend.

This is the cross.  And this is what we stand on.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.