Proclaiming Death?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
May 4, 2008

Proclaiming Death?
Isaiah 29:13-14
1 Corinthians 11:26

“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the Lord’s death,
until he comes.”
That’s what Paul said as he was teaching the Corinthians,
teaching them in particular about the Lord’s Supper.
If the words sound familiar, they should.
You hear me say those words
at the very end of the liturgy we use in the Lord’s Supper,
before we come to the table.

“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the Lord’s death,
until he comes.”
“Proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
What is Paul talking about?
Why does he say those words?
What does he mean?
The words sound terribly dark,
especially right before we are about to share
a communal meal.

Didn’t Jesus teach us that when we take the bread
and the cup we are do so simply in remembrance of him?
Why does Paul turn from remembering
to proclaiming,
from Jesus gathered with friends around a table,
to Jesus’ death,
that notorious death on the cross?

If we turn to the very beginning of Paul’s letter,
we find a cryptic clue to Paul’s thinking.
He wrote, “When I came to you brother and sisters,
I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you
in lofty words or wisdom.
For I decided to know nothing among you
except Jesus Christ,
and him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:1-2)
or as he put it in another part of the letter,
Paul came “to proclaim Christ crucified”.

But what does that mean,
to proclaim Christ crucified?
Especially for us in the Reformed tradition
where we don’t think about preaching the crucified Christ
as much as we think about preaching the
resurrected Christ.
After all, that’s an empty Cross behind me,
not a Cross with Christ’s lifeless body hanging from it.

If we think about preaching the crucified Christ,
isn’t that something we should limit
to Maundy Thursday and Good Friday?
Perhaps Paul was feeling particularly maudlin and morose
when he wrote to the Corinthians.
Paul knew all too well that they were a wild and unruly lot.
Cole Porter’s song “Anything Goes”,
would have been an apt theme
for the people of Corinth.

But what Paul was doing was reminding the Corinthians and us
that there is no Easter without Good Friday.
He was reminding the Corinthians and us
that even as we think of ourselves
as children of the Resurrection, as Easter people,
the resurrection had its beginning in the crucifixion --
in death, an agonizing death.
Christ was hung from the highly effective killing machine
that those two pieces of timber were.
This is the scandal of the cross.

But the crucifixion was the door that led to the resurrection.
The crucifixion and resurrection were of one piece
in God’s astonishing plan,
Did you hear God’s words through the prophet Isaiah,
“I will do amazing things with this people,
shocking and amazing.
The wisdom of the wise shall perish,
and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.”
(Isaiah 29:14)
Another translation speaks of God doing “astounding things,
with wonder upon wonder”.

God did something truly shocking, amazing and astounding in
Christ’s crucifixion and Resurrection,
for God turned the world upside down;
he completely and utterly transformed the world.
It was such an astonishing act that
we really should mark time not beginning
with Christ’s birth,
but from the moment darkness fell
on that Friday afternoon,
for at that very moment the world was changed forever.
Time all but stopped for those three days
and started when the the world was born anew,
humanity born anew,
on that first Easter.
Death was dead
and we were born to new life.

In proclaiming Christ’s death,
we proclaim death to the old life
so we can more completely embrace the new life in Christ,
the new life with Christ,
and the new life through Christ.
We can more completely embrace the life that
Paul calls the life of the Spirit,
the life to which we have been born
through water and the Spirit.

When we proclaim Christ’s death
we proclaim what Christ died for
and what God raised him for:
for hope for all God’s children,
for mercy, for peace,
for justice, and for righteousness.
In proclaiming Christ’s death,
we proclaim God’s unconditional love for us,
God’s extraordinary gift of grace to us.

In proclaiming Christ’s death,
we remember that Christ calls us to die,
to die to the old ways, and be reborn to new life
to stop chasing the shadows that we think are so important,
shadows that lead to death,
and instead simply follow our Lord in obedience,
on the path to life.

We proclaim Christ’s death as we come to this table,
which is so fitting, for when we come to this table,
we come as we should in God’s new world:
in community, each of us equal before God,
each of us reconciled with one another,
differences and divisions set aside as dead –
or at least so they should be --
enemy not just eating with enemy,
but enemy serving and feeding enemy.
No one with a seat of honor,
rich and poor, young and old,
man and woman, immigrant and native born:
all together, in communion
filled with the Spirit.

Come to this table,
and proclaim Christ’s death.
Come to this table and proclaim Christ’s death
to help you die to the old ways
and embrace more completely
the new life offered you in the resurrection.
Come to this table and proclaim Christ’s death,
remembering that Christ died to put to death
all those things we do that cause death,
all those things we say that cause death:
war and violence, words of hatred or quarreling,
tearing down, withholding love.
And we cause death just as often by things
we fail to say and do.

Professor Luke Powery of Princeton Seminary
has written “The cross that inaugurates the turn of the ages
calls [us] to turn toward God’s ways of being in the world,
…as the future new creation
begins to manifest itself in the present.”
(Luke Powery, “Death Threat”,
Princeton Seminary Bulletin, November 2007, 248.
note: Powery’s sermon inspired this sermon)

God’s astonishing, shocking, and awesome act
in the crucifixion and resurrection
started a new age, a new era,
and we are called to respond.
This is the era when we should beat sword into plowshares
and believe that the wolf will live with lamb,
and the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord.

Come to this table:
For even in the shadow of the Cross,
a new era, a new creation
began to bud, blossom, and bloom
in wonder upon wonder.
“Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup,
we proclaim the saving death of our Risen Lord,
the reconciling death of our Risen Lord,
the life-giving death of our Risen Lord,
until he comes.
AMEN