Title: Creeping Slavery
Author: Bob Wickizer
Text: Isaiah 50:4-9, Psalm 116:1-8, James 3:1-12, Mark 8:27-38
Warning - we are going to turn some ideas you may have upside down
When I study scripture in order to write a sermon, I look for things that bother me, things I may have taken for granted in the past but now discover perhaps I really didn't understand them. If I were hiking in the woods or out in the wide open, the things I notice are not right in front, but out on the edges of my vision. On the periphery.
What emerged from the margins was the phrase "let them take up their cross and follow me." As I read translations of Roman history and studied the background of this very important word based on the verb for "standing," I realized that I have been wrong about many things. Today's reflection will be less a confession of where I may have erred, and more an illumination of how these new insights may help all of us.
Years ago, I preached a Good Friday sermon about the cross likening it to a state instrument of public execution, like an electric chair. I even got all worked up and sang the familiar "lift high the electric chair." But now I realize that my understanding then was incomplete and the comparison fell short of what was needed.
The word translated as "cross" here is based on the verb for standing as in "I stood my flag in the corner" or "I stood my ground." It can mean literal or metaphorical standing but, in this context, it meant a common Roman government technique of putting troublemakers and insurrectionists on public display. Standing them in a place for all to see, flogged, broken, smelly, disgusting.
The place for public viewing of executions wasn't about executing the troublemaker at all. The Romans had far more efficient means of doing that. The place for public viewing of executions was designed as a deterrent to kill the spirit of anyone watching who might be planning to do something crazy like that as well. It was ...
Author: Bob Wickizer
Text: Isaiah 50:4-9, Psalm 116:1-8, James 3:1-12, Mark 8:27-38
Warning - we are going to turn some ideas you may have upside down
When I study scripture in order to write a sermon, I look for things that bother me, things I may have taken for granted in the past but now discover perhaps I really didn't understand them. If I were hiking in the woods or out in the wide open, the things I notice are not right in front, but out on the edges of my vision. On the periphery.
What emerged from the margins was the phrase "let them take up their cross and follow me." As I read translations of Roman history and studied the background of this very important word based on the verb for "standing," I realized that I have been wrong about many things. Today's reflection will be less a confession of where I may have erred, and more an illumination of how these new insights may help all of us.
Years ago, I preached a Good Friday sermon about the cross likening it to a state instrument of public execution, like an electric chair. I even got all worked up and sang the familiar "lift high the electric chair." But now I realize that my understanding then was incomplete and the comparison fell short of what was needed.
The word translated as "cross" here is based on the verb for standing as in "I stood my flag in the corner" or "I stood my ground." It can mean literal or metaphorical standing but, in this context, it meant a common Roman government technique of putting troublemakers and insurrectionists on public display. Standing them in a place for all to see, flogged, broken, smelly, disgusting.
The place for public viewing of executions wasn't about executing the troublemaker at all. The Romans had far more efficient means of doing that. The place for public viewing of executions was designed as a deterrent to kill the spirit of anyone watching who might be planning to do something crazy like that as well. It was ...
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