Sermon 2/17/13
Philippians 2:1-8
New Arrangements: The Old Rugged Cross
This Lent, our worship theme is New Arrangements. Pastor
Aaron and I chose some traditional Lenten hymns, and we will sing one each week
during Lent, but we’ll also hear an alternate arrangement of the hymn.
Sometimes we’ll hear special piano music, sometimes a special anthem or a
soloist, sometimes a recording, but always a variation of some kind on the
traditional hymn. In this Lenten journey, as we prepare ourselves to travel to
the cross with Jesus, we find ourselves in a season of contemplation and reflection.
I was trying to find just the right image to accompany the theme to use on our
church facebook page and in our powerpoint presentations during worship, and I
was asking for suggestions. One of my pastor friends suggested using a
blueprint image, with furniture that could be rearranged in a room. I really
like her concept.
Lent is
a time when we try to open up our lives for God’s rearranging. Are we open to
God coming into our lives and rearranging everything? It doesn’t always mean that God needs to throw out
the furniture or knock down the walls or demolish the house altogether –
although we need to be honest with ourselves and with God when we do need that.
Will we let God rearrange our lives? We might have good contents to offer, but
the way God pictures our lives is so much different, so much more than we’ve
settled for. Marianne Williamson, one of my favorite poets, writes, "When
you ask God into your life, you think God is going to come into your psychic
house, look around, and see that you just need a new floor or better furniture,
and that everything needs just a little cleaning - and so you go along for the
first six months thinking how nice life is now that God is there. Then you look
out the window one day and you see that there's a wrecking ball outside. It
turns out that God actually thinks your whole foundation is shot and you're
going to have to start over from scratch." (2) Being a Christ-follower, we
declare that we are ready to open our lives up to God, to be examined thoroughly
by God's probing eyes, to rid our lives of sin, wrong-doing, injustice, and
failure to love God and neighbor. When people decide to “give up” or “take up”
something for Lent, I see it as a way of making some room in our lives,
changing things around, so that God can create some new arrangements in us. What
are you doing that signals to God that God is invited in, not just to
redecorate, or freshen up the paint in your life, but to make some major
renovations?
Today, we’re starting our New Arrangements theme by
focusing on the Old Rugged Cross. You can see crosses everywhere these days. You
can find cross tattoos or cross jewelry. The cross you’ll see me wear most
often is one that is more ornate than my typical style, but it was a gift my
grandfather gave to my grandmother when they started dating, and was worn by my
grandmother, mother, and aunts when they got married, so it is particularly
special to me. Churches are adorned with crosses, some simple, but some quite
ornate. Crosses on bumper stickers and billboards, crosses made out of every
imaginable material. There’s a certain poignancy, irony, that the cross is
portrayed in so many ways when it was actually an instrument of execution. It’s
an irony that we’ll explore again when on Palm Sunday this year we find crosses
fashioned out of palm leaves. The primary purpose of the cross, of course was as
something used to put people to death, including Jesus, the Christ. But our
understanding of resurrection, our understanding of Jesus’ victory over that
very death with life leads us to see the cross transformed – not a symbol of
execution, but a symbol of forgiveness, salvation, and re-creation. Still,
sometimes I wonder if our frequent use of the symbol of the cross leads us to
forget the impact of its meaning. Do we lose sight of the cross by our very
frequent use of it? This fear, fear of losing sight of the meaning of the
cross, was actually what motivated George Bennard to write The Old Rugged Cross
in 1913.
According
to the Christian History Institute, George Bennard was struggling with personal
problems that were causing him a great deal of trouble and anguish. In his
suffering, his mind returned again and again to Christ's anguish on the cross.
This, he thought, was the heart of the gospel! The cross he pictured was not
ornate, or pretty, or gold or silver. It was "a rough, splintery thing,
stained with gore." "I saw the Christ of the Cross as if I were
seeing John 3:16 leave the printed page, take form and act out the meaning of
redemption," he said. “The more I contemplated these truths the more
convinced I became that the cross was far more than just a religious symbol but
rather the very heart of the gospel.” Bennard wanted to put this theme, these
thoughts, to music. The History Institute writes that, "In a room in
Albion, Michigan, Bennard sat down and wrote a tune. But the only words that
would come to him were "I'll cherish the old rugged cross." He
struggled for weeks to set words to the melody he had written.
As a
Methodist evangelist, Bennard was scheduled to preach a series of messages in
New York. He found himself focusing on the cross. The theme of the cross grew
increasingly more urgent to him. Back in Albion, Michigan, he sat down and
tried again to put together the words. This time the lines came. He later
shared, "I sat down and immediately was able to rewrite the stanzas of the
song without so much as one word failing to fall into place. I called in my
wife, took out my guitar, and sang the completed song to her. She was
thrilled!" On June 7, 1913, according to his own account, George Bennard
introduced the new hymn in a revival meeting he was conducting in Pokagon,
Michigan. "The Old Rugged Cross," soon became one of the top ten most
popular hymns of the twentieth century." (1)
I keep
coming back to Bennard’s words about wanting his hymn to give the sense of the
gospel coming off the page, taking form, and acting out redemption. Our
scripture today is from Paul’s letter to church at Philippi, and Paul is
encouraging the Philippians to be of the same mind as Christ. That’s a lofty
goal, isn’t it? But Paul clearly expects these Jesus-followers to do just that
– try, in every way possible, to be like Jesus. “Make my joy complete,” he
writes, “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of
one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard
others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own
interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was
in Christ Jesus.” He goes on to talk about what he means by the mind of Christ:
Jesus, though he could call himself equal with God, though he was in the form
of God, instead, Jesus surrendered
any power, any advantage he had, emptied himself, took the form of a slave,
became one of us, lived a life of deep humility, and obeyed God’s direction
even when that direction led to Jesus’ death on a cross. This is what Paul
wants us to model. When God asks to rearrange our lives, we’re not being asked
to do anything that God did not already do in Christ.
George
Bennard didn't want a pretty cross, a soft and delicate cross, because he
didn't want to lose sight of what the cross signified. Jesus told us that to
follow him, we must take up the cross, the cross which symbolizes the
difficult, life-sacrificing journey that Jesus ultimately had to make to be
faithful to God's call. The Old Rugged Cross is a reminder to us that the faith
we claim is more than a tradition into which we are born, more than a gathering
of friends once a week. The life we choose is one that sets us apart if we are
faithful to Jesus' teachings, one that invites God in, to take our lives, and
make them new creations, new arrangements. And as Bennard penned in his tune,
we cherish this old rugged cross - the symbol of peace, the symbol of obedience
and challenge, the symbol of glory, the symbol of humility, the symbol of the
life we choose in Jesus Christ. Amen.
(1) Williamson, Marianne, as quoted in Pulpit
Resources, William Willimon, for August 15th, 2004, pg 30.
(2) Christian History Institute,
http://www.gospelcom.net/chi/DAILYF/2002/06/daily-06-07-2002.shtml
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