No Crown without the Cross; Matthew 17:22-23, II Corinthians 4:7-12

Back when my husband was a music director, one of my favorite songs that his choir sang during the Lenten season was “Without His Cross, There is No Crown” by Joseph Martin. Without His tears, there is no comfort Without His death, there is no life Without His blood, there is no pardon Without His cross, there is no crown Without His shame, there is no glory Without His grief, there is no joy Without His stripes, there is no healing Without His cross, there is no crown Lamb of God, You bring salvation And with Your grace, our hearts are sealed Lord, with Your tears of love, You bathed our sorrows In Your eyes we stand revealed Friends, this is the good news. Because Christ suffered for us, we have salvation, comfort, life, forgiveness, joy, healing. Because Christ suffered for us, we can share in His glory and victory. But there would be no crown without the cross. The suffering of Jesus was necessary. When we were going through Matthew 17, we skipped these two short verses that comprise our gospel reading today. “And while they were gathering together in Galilee, Jesus said to the disciples, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and He will be raised again on the third day.” This is now the second time that Jesus has been straight up about His impending death. The first, you may recall, was in Chapter 16, after Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus tells them that He is going to suffer and be killed, and Peter tries to rebuke Jesus, but gets rebuked in return. Both times, Jesus tells them that He is going to be raised on the third day. He does not leave out the resurrection. But their reaction is to be exceedingly sorrowful. They are grieving, and their grief is real. Many of you are probably familiar with the stages of grief as explained by Elizabeth Kubler Ross and David Kessler—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. None of these stages are bad—they just are. For some of you, this hits home as you have been going through these stages due to recent losses. Though denial does tend to be one of the earliest stages and acceptance one of the latter stages, each person is unique, and there is a tendency for us to bounce around in the stages—going from denial to depression to anger to bargaining back to depression then acceptance with anger and depression still reappearing from time to time. And as far as length of time, we are all different. But rushing the process or dragging it out can be harmful. If we try to rush the process, we often end up making unwise decisions because they might be coming from a place of anger or depression or bargaining, or denial. If we drag the process out too long, we never find the healing that God intends. Usually this happens because we are holding on to resentment or unforgiveness. The disciples are already grieving the loss of Jesus. In fact, their reaction to Jesus the first time around was also grief. Peter’s response to Jesus back in chapter 16 was a grief response of Denial and Bargaining. Here, in chapter 17, they experience depression. Resurrection is something they don’t understand. Even though it’s going to be more amazing than they can ever imagine, it’s also going to be a huge change, and the way to resurrection is going to be difficult. Changes that we don’t understand are sources of grief. Even the promise of an amazing outcome does little to comfort us. Jesus is with us in our grief process. Jesus is described by the prophet Isaiah as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He knew what it was to grieve and He tried to take time to grieve, though He was often interrupted. He was finally able to pour out the fullness of His grief in the Garden of Gethsemane. Those hours were so important. In the garden, we see Jesus in the stages of depression and bargaining—“If You will, take this cup from Me.” He knew there was no other way, and He was fully committed to doing the Father’s will, yet in taking this time, He was able to come to the place of acceptance. He could face the pain and shame of the cross because He knew that there was going to be a crown on the other side. Hebrews 12:2 tells us that He was able to endure the cross because of the joy that was set before Him. He moved past the grief and focused on the joy. That joy was not limited to His personal triumph over death and the devil. It was not limited to His return to the glory and taking His rightful place as King of all, but it was the joy of the salvation of His people. You and I are part of Jesus’s joy. Grief is not just experienced alone. There is corporate grief. In the Old Testament, Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet. He wrote Lamentations in addition to the book that bears his name. But Jeremiah didn’t just write laments for himself. Much of what he wrote was in the style of a city lament. He did not invent this literary form. City laments were used when some kind of catastrophe fell on a city—such as they were conquered, or ransacked, or a leader died, or a fire or plague broke out. They were often written with a sense that their gods had abandoned them. They were used to help the community grieve together. Jeremiah writes these on behalf of his people. Grieving together can allow healing to take place. Churches go through grief…sexual misconduct, financial misconduct, loss of a leader. Just like with individuals, if we rush or drag out the grief process, it can harm the body. Too short and poor decisions are made. Too long, and new visioning and resurrection doesn’t happen. David Kessler has recently written about a 6th stage of grief—finding meaning. When loss occurs and we have begun to accept it, we still want to know why, to find some purpose in the pain. The meaning that God intends is resurrection, vitality, a crown. I read a great article a couple of weeks ago by Chad Bird entitled, “I Can’t Wait to Get Out of Heaven.” The heaven that now is, at least from out trapped in time position, is not the end. Resurrection is the goal. The graveyards and columbaries are going to be empty. There’s going to be a new heavens and earth. There will be no more barriers. It will be always light because of the constant presence of God and Jesus. It’s going to be so amazing we can’t even imagine it. We are going to be everything God intended us to be from the beginning. Resurrection is about God bringing beauty from death and destruction. I don’t believe God ever wastes a hurt. All of our hurts will be redeemed. Look at what happened to the disciples post-resurrection and ascension. They became spiritual powerhouses who turned the world upside down. Keeping sight of the resurrection even in our grief helps us to move forward and find meaning. Our epistle reading this morning was written by Paul. He didn’t have the same experience with Jesus that the other disciples did, but he knew all about grief and suffering. In fact, these words were written when he and his companions were undergoing persecution and suffering, but he keeps his eyes on the resurrection. If we had kept reading, we would have gotten to verse 14—“knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus and will present us with you.” Resurrection is coming, and because of that, we can be “hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed. Both the life and death of Jesus can be seen in our bodies at the same time. Some things have to die so that resurrection can take place, but it doesn’t have to be a hopeless process. Paul describes us as jars of clay and even cracked jars of clay. Our brokenness allows for resurrection to take place. It allows the power of God to shine through. I went to our presbytery’s small church gathering at the end of January. Our keynote speaker was Jihyun Oh, who is our midcouncils liaison in the Office of the General Assembly. She talked about the need for adaptive change using the metaphor of fermentation. Fermentation is the process of the breaking down of a substance by the means of the addition of something new and often seemingly unpleasant to create a new substance, one which is often considered better or more valuable than the original substance—cheese, wine, chocolate. It’s not the same thing as rot—where something just decays. She used this metaphor to talk about change in the church. Sometimes what we think is neat and clean can be harmful. Fermentation is messy and produces heat—there is often discomfort, it can expose our sin, and yes, there is grief with change, but to undergo the process helps to ward off rot. In order for resurrection to take place, what might need to die first so that something new can be formed? What might need to be added? Are we trying to delay what God is doing because we can’t get past our grief? The resurrection of Jesus was so much bigger than the disciples. Jesus came to save the world, not just a few people from Galilee. As we heard in the play last week, Jesus didn’t come to be a local, earthly King. Certainly, He is King of the Jews, but He’s also King of the Universe! We may find that the dying and rising process might not be for our own personal benefit. In II Corinthians 4:12 Paul says that death works in him and his companions so that life works in the Corinthians. Are we willing to do whatever it takes for someone else to find life in Jesus? Cole Richards, President of Voice of the Martyrs, recently wrote the following: Obedience must be understood to be active (there is no passive obedience), and remaining active for Christ will cost us our lives as we expend our limited stocks of time, energy, and resources. Biblical discipleship is therefore a process of losing our lives; it is impossible to interpret and apply Christ's teachings without understanding this point. 'Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it," He tells us in Matthew 10:39 It is worth noting that even if we are not obedient to Christ, we are diminishing day by day as we approach the day of our death. Therefore, we have only two options: (1)seeking to expend ourselves for Christ's sake or (2)attempting to preserve ourselves as we diminish day by day. Let us be clear in our understanding that both options lead to our earthly death. Our lives are either used or lost. ...Our Lord's eternal kingdom is worth so much more that we not only should be ready to respond to God's call but should beseech Him for greater opportunities to trade anything (or everything) for the kingdom's advancement. Are you willing to risk loss for the sake of seeing Jesus do a new thing that might be a whole lot different than what you expected, but will also be a whole lot greater than you could ever imagine, or are you risking your life to keep things the same? Faithfulness doesn’t always look like success, but if you are being faithful to God’s will, God will crown you with honor. If you don’t have the assurance of resurrection, carrying around Christ’s death in your body can be a terrifying thought. You need to know you have eternal life before you can give your life away. I would love to help you find the assurance of eternal life and the hope of resurrection.