The
Old South Church in Boston
Disciples? How Would Anyone Know?
Sermon
by James W. Crawford
*John 13:31-35
May 13, 2001
Who are we? What marks us as Christians? How shall
the world know Jesus makes any difference in our lives? That question, of course,
troubles churches and church people in all generations. We see it on a global
scale, for instance, with Pope John Paul making his way to Greece and the
officialdom of Greek Orthodoxy offering resistance and arguing over an event
taking place some 1600 years ago. Closer to home, on Easter Monday, a major
headline in The Globe described a
serious local congregation in bitter schism over the size of financial
contributions to the church. Just this last week, a news article came across my
desk indicating our own denomination, the United Church of Christ, is losing
local congregations because of our denominational stance including homosexuals
in the ordained ministry and in all aspects of the common life of our churches.
In each of these conflicts, defenders of one side or the other bring to bear,
in one way or another, that time honored question, “What would Jesus do?” And
each side comes up with Jesus defending diametrically opposed positions.
So how do we tell? What are the marks of our
identity? How can the world at large tell we follow Jesus as the Christ?
I
Well, in a conflict not a lot different from those I
just mentioned, John concludes others will know us by our love. His own church
is in the middle of a fierce and virulent conflict over whether a crucified
criminal can really be a Messiah. Some say, “Of course! Who else?” Others say,
“No way. A felon. A fraud.” There is no love lost between these religious
antagonists. John comes from that saddest of church bodies: split, divided,
adversarial. . . win-lose.
So out of this turmoil, John tries to tell us that
what truly defines a congregation lies in the quality and depth of its love for
one another. He is not covering up the rupture. He is not trying to coat the wounds with a temporary cure. He
illustrates his conviction about love embodied in a crucified Christ by
illustrating throughout his narrative that love can be strung up, nailed to a
tree, that it can be misinterpreted, betrayed, rejected, bloodied, crucified—yet
love can, even when spurned, remain a vital force relentlessly seeking,
yearning, reaching, searching, eager to embrace, to reconcile, to heal, to
forgive, to begin anew with its distant and perhaps resistant partner.
That kind of love—risky, prepared to weep over its
failures, yet never giving up, to pursue at great cost, to suffer humiliation
and scorn yet tenaciously, creatively hang on pressing for re-creation—that
kind of love, John tells us, defines our discipleship; it tells and convinces
the world we follow the crucified One, Jesus as the Christ.
II
So what does such love look like? How does it
operate? Well, on this fifth Sunday in Easter, coinciding with Mother’s Day,
let me suggest in the first place, the love John describes for us can be
pictured, I believe, in maternal terms. Surely, in my own personal experience
that rings true. My own mother and
indeed, Linda, serving as glorious illustrations. But, let me bring you another
illustration, from that most ingenious and perceptive of modern, practical theologians,
Erma Bombeck. It goes like this:
“You don’t love me!”
How many times have your kids laid that one on you? And how many times
have you, as a parent, resisted the urge to tell them how much?
Someday, when my children are old enough to understand the magic that
motivates a mother, I’ll tell them:
I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going, with whom and
what time you should get home.
I loved you enough to insist you buy a bike with your own money even
though we could afford it.
I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover your friend was a
creep.
I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite out of it
to the drugstore and confess, “I stole this.”
I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned
your bedroom, a job that would have taken me 15 minutes.
I loved you enough to say, “You can go to Disney World on Mother’s Day.”
I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment, disgust and
tears in my eyes.
I loved you enough not to make excuses for your lack of respect or your
bad manners.
I loved you enough to admit that I was wrong and to ask for forgiveness.
I loved you enough to ignore what every other mother did or said.
I loved you enough to let you stumble, fall, hurt and fail.
I loved you enough to let you assume the responsibility for your own
actions at 6, 10 or 16.
I loved you enough to figure you would lie about that party being
chaperoned but forgave you for it, after discovering I was right.
I loved you enough to accept you for what you are, not what I wanted you
to be.
But most of all, I loved you enough to say “No” when you hated me for
it. That was the hardest part of all.
Got it? Tenacious love, invested in the good of the other, risking
everything, even rejection, for the sake of the other. A taste of discipleship.
III
But we find another dimension to this matter of
discipleship and loving one another. We
discover the hope of the Gospel rests not simply on loving one another in our
families or in our churches. It stretches to loving one another in what I
believe Martin Luther King consistently called, “The Beloved Community.” When
he refers to the Beloved Community in his addresses and prayers, he speaks of
our civic life, our public arrangements, our national priorities, our
international obligations, our interdependence with one another. And in this context, I want for just a
moment or two to brood with you about the still pending execution of Timothy
McVeigh, the man who on April 19, 1995, bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City, killing some 168 people, including 19 children,
leaving hundreds of others badly injured. As of this morning he will be
executed by lethal injection in Terra Haute, Indiana, at 7:00 A.M. on Monday
morning, June 11, 2001.
Until last Thursday evening, for all we knew,
Timothy McVeigh provided the perfect model for the death penalty. He committed
a horrific crime. He confessed to it. Witnesses corroborated his testimony. No
DNA ambiguities existed. His capture and execution might deter others from
contemplating such a crime. He received a fair trial. His lawyers were
excellent. Poverty played no part. Forensic chemists skewed no results. He was not an abused child. He is white. He
is a decorated veteran of the Gulf War.
He is clinically sane, reasonably intelligent, even charming, according
to Barbara Walters. To our knowledge, up to last Thursday, he was not victimized
by false witnesses, faulty police work, or overzealous prosecution. He rejected
all appeals. He chose to be executed. There were no caveats or disclaimers, no
social impediments, no personal pleas.
The London Economist, in a
laconic sentence, wrote, “On May 16th, barring a miracle, Timothy
McVeigh will be executed in Terre Haute federal prison in Indiana.”
“Barring a
miracle . . .”
Are they kidding? I suppose it depends
on how you look at this occasion, but we discover on the eve of the execution
that the FBI, through some bizarre oversight, failed to provide over 3,135 pages
of evidentiary material promised to the defense. Our Attorney General, John D.
Ashcroft, postponed the execution for a month to give attorneys a chance to
review this massive amount of material. It tends to make one wonder if this
most eminent of law enforcement agencies can make a blunder of this scale in a
case of this magnitude, what oversights, shortcuts, procedural errors, faulty
judgments lace the cases of what US News
calls, “the ignored, the anonymous, the
pathetic.”
Nonetheless, I find it interesting that in the most
recent polls as reported in USA Today,
81% of Americans surveyed say Timothy McVeigh should be executed for what he
did in Oklahoma City in 1995. This includes half of the 38% who tell the poll
people they generally disagree with the death penalty. In this USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, 59% of
Americans generally support the death penalty and believe McVeigh should
receive it. 22% generally oppose the
death penalty but support executing McVeigh.
16% generally oppose capital punishment even in McVeigh’s case. I have not seen these percentages change in
the last couple of days.
We do find a variety of opinions in the matter. Some
people believe McVeigh to be an exception to death penalty abolition. One woman talking with USA Today said motherhood made her a firm opponent of the death
penalty. “When I became a mother 18 months ago,” she says, “it really came to
me how God gives life and how humans just shouldn’t take it away. But,” she continues, “when you look at
McVeigh, what he did, how he acts about it, it looks like there’s always
somebody who needs to go.”
A spokesperson for a victims’ rights agency,
“Justice for All,” looks at the 81% in favor and says, “The polling results are
consistent with what the American people have been telling their elected
officials right along; that the worst of crimes deserves the worst of
punishments.”
Another observer from Terra Haute remarks, “It’s a
shame they can’t do something slow to kill him, because he really deserves it .
. . I’d gladly shoot him myself and donate the shell.”
Of course there are some T-shirts for sale. One
says, “Final Justice.” There is a small newspaper called The Hangin’ Times. Its story: “Die! Die! Die!” Vengeance.
Retribution. An eye for an eye. Simple, straightforward justice. It’s all
there.
And as for televising the execution, “about 43% of
those polled say McVeigh’s execution should not be televised, even if the
broadcast audience is limited to families of victims. Another 39% said a
telecast should be available only to family members. But about 17% thought the
executions should be televised to everyone.”
Just 17 percent? Now friends, why this squeamishness
about televising this event among Americans—and I speak among us here as
citizens—why this squeamishness among us American citizens who believe by a
margin of 8 to 2 that McVeigh should be executed? Thomas Lynch writing in a
recent edition of The Christian Century
reminds us that this execution is being done in our name. In this democracy
when the wheels of justice mete out their consequences in federal prison, they
do so in behalf of “We the People.” To put it more candidly: we are the
executioners.
Thus, why do only 17 percent from among this vast majority desire that TV
access be made available to everyone? Why, when Television provides our most
popular vehicle for news and information, do only a small minority want TV used
to inform us about what the government does in our behalf in the name of
justice? Is it a matter of taste? If
that were a criteria, says Lynch, most of our TV screens would be blank most of
the day. Would it make McVeigh a martyr? To a few, but not to the 81 percent;
and those who find him a martyr do not need television to convince them
further. Some caution a spectacle. Why
not? The crime was spectacular.
But, I wonder. What might be the real reason? Is it this, asks Lynch: can the country
stomach what it is we claim to be for? “Is it likely that our bravery and
braggadocio might wither a little by watching someone put down, more or less,
like a cocker spaniel or Cheshire cat—not because of what is done to McVeigh,
but what is done to us?”
When we read of “lethal injection,” of course, it
sounds so tame and sanitized. Three chemicals: one to sedate the victim, one to
collapse his lungs and diaphragm, one
to stop his heart. . . . Injected in that order. Smooth, isn’t it? Humane.
Tasteful.
Don’t you believe it. First sodium pentathol—a
hypnotic drug, an anesthetic—will sedate him. Then, a dose of pavulon will
collapse his lungs and diaphragm, compelling him to gasp violently for breath.
Finally, a shot of potassium chloride—a potent salt, flaming hot as it reacts
with his blood chemistry— contracts his muscles, driving that most vulnerable
muscle, the heart, into a crunching, excruciating cramp. If he were not
strapped to a gurney he would jerk bolt upright at the pain; if his lungs and
diaphragm were not destroyed, limiting him to desperate, violent gasps,
rising up he would scream, then
lapse into convulsions, take his last gasp, and die. All this in perhaps
three to five minutes. There is something almost pornographic about it.
But friends, this is the simple justice done in our
name. This provides the closure assumed by the families of the 168
victims. This is the crisis designed to
balance the good and the evil, to match wrong with wrong, to vindicate the moral against the immoral,
to eradicate the unutterably demonic from the general flow of our common life.
But is that all we see? To be sure, most of us here are Americans, but in addition, and
perhaps even more fundamentally, we are members of this community where John,
through the lips of Jesus, reminds us the world will know who we are because we
love one another, because we claim to be the beloved community.
And so I ask, shall we continue the so-called cycle
of violence? Shall we allow violence to
call the shots as we seek to alleviate and to heal a social fabric so badly in
need of healing? Is Timothy McVeigh finally the arbiter of our nation’s moral
tone? Is there not some alternative to save the social fabric from another
albeit legal, deliberate, premeditated, violent, murderous assault?
And what do we do with this premise we stand on,
live and die for, that each of us is a child of God? All of us sinners, all of
us frail and failed, and doers of injurious deeds to ourselves and one
another—yet confessing even in this condition that we live by grace. To be
sure, most of our cases are infinitely smaller than Timothy McVeigh’s monstrous
crime, his fierce defense of it, his casual reference to the children killed as
“collateral damage”—monstrous—but our faith contests that the love of God weeps
not only for the innocents killed in the Murrah Building, not simply for the
loved ones surviving, still wounded and angry, stunned, outraged, heartbroken,
but the heart of God is rent also by this man, so soberly irrational, so
perversely patriotic, so wickedly self deceived, so far beyond the orbit of
understanding a love, itself crushed by and sorrowed by his immeasurable,
amoral distancing. Tragic. Sad. Yet, perhaps like the prodigal child in any of
our families carving a special place in the Divine heart. Is there not some
alternative to closing this case other than the violence of chemical injection?
Life in prison without parole?
81 percent say execute him. Again, just 17 percent
say, “Televise it.” How come? Again, as
Thomas Lynch writes, “For a generation, we debated the justice and humanity of
existential issues—war, abortion, euthanasia, cloning— the things that have to
do with being and ceasing to be. The national dialog on the death penalty has
been carried on by a nation of pundits, commentators, politicos and preachers,
policy makers and coffee-clutch advocates on either side. It is time a nation
of opinionizers became a nation of witnesses. It would up the ante on this
difficult conversation and bring us that much nearer to a clear view. We cannot
declare closure or proclaim justice done. We can only hope to achieve them by
confronting our most difficult realities. If we cannot watch, then we should
reconsider. We did not look away from the crime. We ought not to look away from
its punishment.
If what we intend to do to Timothy McVeigh is
justice, indeed, why would we not watch it?
To be a deterrent, should it not be seen? If it is good riddance, sweet revenge, the working out of
righteousness, an ultimate balancing of right and wrong, if it is any of these
things, why should we not look? If
ultimately, it is none of these things, why do it at all?
The Old South Church in Boston
645 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
(617) 536-1970
SCRIPTURE READING
John 13:31-35
When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of
Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in
himself and will glorify him at once.
Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for
me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot
come.’ I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one
another. By this everyone will know
that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”