Where's Calvary?

One thing that took me by surprise on my trip to the Holy Land was the existence of competing holy sites -- dueling locations where different groups contend that the same event from the Bible took place. My father was struck by the same thing when he visited Israel thirty years before me. He wrote: "Many of the holy places in Jerusalem rival one another in their claim to be the site where Jesus did this or that. While there, we visited the traditional and alternative sites of Calvary, also called Golgotha or the Place of the Skull, the site of the crucifixion.

Altar at Golgotha - Church of the Holy Sepulcher

The first one has a more ancient claim. It was the place designated in the 4th Century by Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine the first Christian Roman emperor, as the place where Jesus was crucified. It is nothing more than a small rocky outcrop no more than 14 meters high. Now built over this location is the magnificent but somewhat tarnished Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher, which is shared by Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Armenian Christians. Under one of the altars in this church is a socket or hole in the floor where they will tell you the cross was erected. This is probably close to the actual place of the crucifixion, but somehow in the strange atmosphere of this ancient church I personally did not 'feel' close to the original Good Friday event -- that is, until later when I combined it with a visit to a rival site of the crucifixion.

Gordon's Calvary

North of Jerusalem's Damascus Gate is a rocky knoll which, British General Charles Gordon was one of the first to point out, resembles a skull. The hill is sometimes called Gordon's Calvary, and it is preserved in its natural state. However, as you stand on the visitors' overlook, visualizing what may have taken place on this hill outside the city 2,000 years ago, it is impossible to block out the mundane sights and diesel smells of a bus station immediately below it. There people come and go, doing the everyday business of Jerusalem, with never a glance up at the supposedly sacred hill above them. It was a dramatic moment for me as I realized that wherever the real Calvary was, there may well have been nearby, not a bus station, but a depot for the unloading and loading of camel caravans, a place of commerce and business with people scurrying about as unheeding as they were that rainy afternoon of my visit. Jesus died in the world, for the world.

That dual experience of being at two supposed places of the crucifixion of my Lord Jesus Christ left me with a question: Where is Calvary?

Now I know that Calvary is wherever the dynamics of the Calvary event take place. Calvary is wherever the Lord's people slink away and forsake him while others, whom you would never suspect, recognize him and pay homage to him. One of the saddest verses in the Bible is Mark 14:50 where Mark reports what the disciples, Jesus' friends, did immediately upon his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane: 'They all forsook him and fled.'  And so it was not one of the twelve, but a stranger from Cyrene, who carried his cross. It was not one of the inner circle, but a dying thief, who expressed belief in him. It was not a friend, but a Roman Centurion, who said 'Truly this man was the son of God.' It was not a disciple, but one from his group of enemies in the Sanhedrin, who took his body, prepared it for burial, and laid it in a tomb.

One recent Sunday afternoon, as I was busily trying to get ready for confirmation class, a battered old car rattled up to the church carrying a young couple who I judged from years of experience with these things to be looking for someone who would listen to their story and then assist them with money for food or gas. I was in the hall near my study grumbling to myself about what poor timing this was and how I couldn't deal with this interruption right now. A few minutes passed, and although I knew the couple had entered the church, I thought it strange that they hadn't yet come looking for me. I went to the narthex to see what was up, and there they were in the sanctuary praying! They finished and came out to me in the narthex and asked where they could make a donation to the church. I showed them the donation box. They put something in and left, and I was greatly taken aback and humbled. Who was faithful to the crucified Lord that day? Who stood by him? The annoyed and busy clergyman of this very proper church, or the rag-tag couple who came in to pray?

Where is Calvary? Calvary is wherever Jesus' followers forsake him while others surprisingly rise up to praise him and minister in his name. Calvary is many places:

• As Pilate discovered, Calvary is wherever you decide to do the expedient thing rather than the right thing, where you're willing to make human life secondary to political necessity. Calvary is wherever you hand the Christ over to the angry crowd for crucifixion.

• As Peter found out, Calvary is wherever you compromise what you know in your heart to be good and true in order to save your own skin. Calvary is wherever you deny that you know Jesus.

• As Judas must have finally realized, Calvary is wherever we turn against those who have disappointed us and have not lived up to our expectations. Calvary is wherever you betray your Lord.

Calvary is not in an ornate basilica or on a hill overlooking a bus station. Ultimately, Calvary is in our hearts. The old hymn asks, 'Were you there when they crucified my Lord?' Yes, all of us were there. Some have shouted the curses; some have driven the nails; some have gambled for his garments; some have just run away, but all of us were there. And the Gospel in the midst of all of this is that Jesus looks down upon us from his cross and he says, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'

It is this word from the cross, this word of forgiveness, that gives us hope. This is the word that brought eleven miserable, frightened, and guilt-ridden disciples out of hiding and turned them into the powerhouse that the early church became. It is the word that will free you and me to move on past our Calvary to the Easter we are longing for."

From:"Where's Calvary?"

Scripture: Mark 15:21-47

Preached: March 27, 1988

at Paoli United Methodist Church  

Bill's Easter Benediction

On Easter Sunday, 1972, my father spoke these words to his congregation at the close of his sermon:

"My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, there is no better day than this – the day of the Resurrection – for us to drop our vain striving and defenses and let the Living Christ work a resurrection in us. Pray that He will close your eyes and ears to the world when it dangles false freedom before you and calls you away from commitment to the Lord. Fall in love with one another; be concerned for your fellow man; walk uprightly; work long and hard. Plunge without any reservation at all into this life-long commitment to the Risen Savior, and see what a new person He makes you."

He is risen! May we be raised with Him and made new, not just at the end of our days, but now.  Amen.

From: "The Resurrection of Commitment"

Scripture: Colossians 3:1-17

Preached at: Grace U.M. Church, Millersville, PA

Bill on Martin: A Call to Action

On April 14, 1968, my father stepped into the pulpit at Adams Shore Community Church in Quincy, Massachusetts – near Boston – to deliver his very first Easter sermon after being ordained. As the young pastor scanned the white faces in the pews before him, I imagine there was some anxiousness in the congregation, maybe even apprehension, about what he might say. Some may have thought, “This is Easter – a time to celebrate Christ’s victory over sin and death. It’s no time to bring up divisive issues like race.” But others may have been lost in a fog of despair that morning. Just ten days before, Martin Luther King, Jr. had been gunned down – and with him their hopes for non-violent change in a nation torn by racial injustice and strife.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dad began to speak: “You saw it as I did on television. You saw 150,000 Negroes marching beside the casket of their patron saint, who had been murdered by a white man. But somehow it didn't seem like a funeral at all. Oh, some were crying, but most of them were singing: ‘We shall overcome, we shall overcome. We shall overcome some day. Deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome some day.’ They surely couldn't be serious about the meaning of that song. How could they be optimistic about their deplorable situation? Truly their cause was in its darkest hour. Small strides have been made, yes. Some schools have token integration; Negroes now may ride in the front of the buses in Atlanta; there are many civil rights laws on the books. But many Negroes are in no better position economically and socially now than they were 20 years ago before this all began.

And today, the hour is even darker because one of their leaders was struck down by the vicious racism that he tried to combat. When others were forsaking non-violence and turning to black power and its own kind of racism, saying that non-violence had been tried and had failed, this one man stuck with it. He preached love and black and white living together in peace and mutual respect, when all others had despaired of it ever coming to pass. And now, this voice is snuffed out. It is a dark hour for his cause; it is a dark hour for his black people, it is a dark hour for our nation.

So how is it that his followers are singing beside his casket? They are so few in comparison to the untold numbers who hate. They are so few, and the whites and blacks who oppose them are so many. They sing, 'We shall overcome.' They sing it like they believe it. They have no grounds for this hope. The evil they are fighting is too great. They are too few. Their leader is gone.  They are cockeyed optimists. Their optimism is absurd.

Almost two thousand years ago, there was another small group who, under their leader, had brought at least a dim light to the horizon, but now he was dead, and surely now, even that dim light had every reason to go out. There were other leaders – self-styled zealots and messiahs who sprang up almost every day – telling the people that the only way to freedom was through armed revolt. Their answer was to rise up and throw out the blood-sucking Romans and restore the kingdom of Israel. Only Jesus had advocated another way – a way of non-violence, peace, love, service. He preached love and brotherhood and peaceful community when all others had despaired of it ever coming to pass. And now this voice was snuffed out. It was a dark hour for his cause; it seemed a dark hour for our world.

But he did have these few followers – sometimes weak, sometimes vacillating, but basically faithful and committed. They were so few that no one could reasonably expect them to change the world; yet they continued to gather together in upper rooms and on street corners, praying, preaching, singing, witnessing. They were acting as if they actually expected to change the world. They were cockeyed optimists.

What is the basis for this we-shall-overcome attitude of both groups? The basis of their hope is the right reason for our being here this morning, my friends. We should be here to whoop it up, to celebrate the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ is alive! The basis for their cockeyed optimism is that they serve an all-powerful, living God. The resurrection proves something. It proves that the most gigantic, hideous, evil crime man can perpetrate – the cruel torture and murder of the Son of God himself – cannot avail against the power of the living God. In the end, after evil and death has swung its last punch, God still stands there untouched. Both of these groups know by virtue of the resurrection that, even when the odds are so great against them, good is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, and they are on the side of good and love.

But now, my friends, a final warning – lest we mistakenly conclude that the Easter message is that God is in charge, so we can sit back and let him clean up the mess. There is reason to expect a happy ending. There is reason to believe in a nation where blacks and whites live together in happiness at every conceivable level. There is reason to see ahead a world community of peace. But the reason is only there if we let the resurrected Christ be alive in the way that he chooses to live … in us!

I truly believe that the living spirit of Christ incarnates himself in flesh – yours and mine – and works to change the world through us. This is how the resurrected Lord works. You prove the resurrection is true when you yield to the living spirit of Christ and allow him to use your body, your mind, your soul, your whole person to fight the battle against evil that is so real to us today. We prove Christ is alive by letting him live in us.

Since God has chosen us as his means of living and working in the world, it behooves us to get on the stick and become the transforming resurrection community we have so long failed to be. This means ACTION, not sitting on your hands bewailing the terrible state we are in, or even preaching pious words, but allowing the living Lord to empower us to actually tackle our predicament head-on, with the sure knowledge that with Christ in us we will win. Now I say this in all candor, and I’m sure you would too, given recent events: Either we become the resurrection community in action or the world blows up in our faces.”

From: "Easter's Cockeyed Optimism"

Scripture: Isaiah 25:1, 7-9; Mark 16:1-7; Acts 13:26-33

Preached on April 14, 1968 at Adams Shore Community Church