Unbreakable

Luke 23:44-49

This isn’t how Jesus was supposed to die.

At least not according to the practices of Rome, or the intent of the chief priests and Temple lawyers who were trying to get rid of Jesus.

As far as they were concerned, Jesus is supposed to die alone and abandoned, a bitter embarrassment to his friends, and especially his followers. Crucifixion, in Roman rule and culture, was supposed to erase the one crucified, to obliterate not just their life, but their relationships and reputation.

But that’s not what happens here.

No, here, at the end of the hours of darkness, at the peak of the cross and at his final breath, Jesus is actually surrounded by witnesses, attended by friends, and completely at one with God.
Jesus, dying on the cross, right in the middle of grief and suffering, is the absolute opposite of abandoned or alone. We hear it when he says: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

Father, he says, addressing God as he always does, the way he taught us to do, with intimate confidence.

Into your hands I commend my spirit, he says: quoting directly from the 31^st Psalm with its expression of trust, refuge and relationship.

He does not die alone, abandoned. He dies in total confidence, trust, and committed purpose, upheld and protected and whole in the hands of God.

I’d like to die like that, when I have to. (Well, honestly I’d like to slip quietly away in my sleep, because that seems easiest.) But if I’m awake for it – if I see death coming – I want to be able to die like that, my spirit shouting out confidence, throwing myself into the hand of God in trust and commitment and expectation.

And I think Jesus wants that for us, too. Wants it so much that he uses the moment of his death to inspire us to live like that. To live confidently and completely committed into the hands of God.

You can’t miss that, if you’re there at the cross – or here at the cross, today. Because the people who were there for the most part, knew the scripture Jesus was quoting.

They knew Psalm 31, which may have been used at times as a bedtime prayer, an anchor for the day and for rest.

In you, O Lord, I seek refuge;

do not let me ever be put to shame;

in your righteousness deliver me.

Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily.

Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me.

You are indeed my rock and my fortress;

for your name's sake lead me and guide me,

take me out of the net that is hidden for me,

for you are my refuge.

Into your hand I commit my spirit;

you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.

They knew how the words of the Psalm go on weaving back and forth from fear and pleas for rescue to complete trust and commitment to God’s purpose; from grief and anger and pain to confident assurance and overwhelming love.

They would have heard, in Jesus’ few words proclaimed out loud, that in every very real pain and sorrow and anger and loss that Jesus suffered on or before the cross there is also confident assurance of God’s presence, protection, and salvation.

And they respond to that.
Luke puts the recognition of this truth into the mouth of a centurion, a servant of Rome:
“Truly, this was a righteous man,” he says.

An innocent man, some translations say. Dikaios, righteous: one whose way of thinking, feeling, and acting is wholly conformed to the will of God. One whose soul and self and spirit cannot be separated from God’s purpose or God’s self.

Psalm 31 is a song, of the righteous life: the life that turns to God, over and over and over, in trust and commitment, obedience and confidence, in every single trouble or fear or anger or loss. This song of refuge utterly refuses to let us stay abandoned or alone, no matter what fear or force or pain can do to separate us from God, or to separate God from us.

Jerusalem recognizes this in Jesus, as they hear him speak from the cross. The crowd – the watching multitudes – respond not in words, but in actions, “beating their breasts” in mourning and self-reproach. Far from Jesus being abandoned as an embarrassment to the people who wanted to follow him, the uncertain crowds now acknowledge their relationship with Jesus, showing open grief and regret at his death.

Rome has failed.

The chief priests and Temple professionals have failed.
They’ve used their power and influence, every trick of the system, to isolate Jesus, to divide his followers and friends from him, erase his influence, break his power and his confidence in God.

And Jesus is unbroken.

In this death that was meant to break and divide, to erase and abandon, Jesus is recommitted to God in a commitment that has never wavered. Jesus is reconnected to God’s people, and God’s people are reconnected to Jesus, brought with him into that refuge where sorrow and pain, terror and loneliness and lies are all disarmed by God’s protection, deliverance, and steadfast love.

That’s good news.

Really, really good news, here at the end of a long, dark deathwatch.

The power of the state, the powers of envy and fear, have done everything they can to break Jesus, and have only shown him to be more connected, stronger and more whole than ever.

So nothing we can do – nothing – can break Jesus either.

God can not be broken.

God’s love is the only unbreakable thing in the universe.

So you and I cannot break Jesus, either. Not with neglect, or ignorance, or doubt. Not with anger, or despair, or participation in ongoing evil of the world.

The sorrows that threaten to break us; the loneliness of feeling out of step with the world, with our loved ones, or with God that tell us we’re already broken; the burdens of the sins we’ve committed and the work we’ve left undone that tell us we’ll never be able to put ourselves back together – none of that can break Jesus either.

Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
As Jesus proclaims his utter commitment and trust, he invites us into the same.

Jesus invites us to commit ourselves wholly, entirely, into the hands of God, letting go of every other purpose and direction, every other shred of protection or self-sufficiency we’ve ever tried to grasp. To entrust every bit of our soul and spirit, our best and our worst, to God’s care, protection, and direction.
Because that is how we, too, become unbreakable. How we become enfolded in and filled up with the indestructible strength of divine love.

I know I would find it a lot easier to commit myself that completely at the point of death, the way we hear Jesus do today, than in the middle of everyday life. Because even with the assurance of God’s unbreakable love, it’s hard – so hard – to consciously give up my claims to control, all the mildly or seriously selfish habits and tricks I’ve taught myself to protect my heart from risk, and my definite preference for trusting mostly myself – or some few carefully selected others – to get things right.

But in the words of his last breath, in his unbreakable love at the moment of his death, Jesus is calling us to live unbreakably.

Jesus invites us to live every day with a trust that lets us risk new places and relationships we don’t feel ready for, confident that we will find God’s love in what’s new and strange. To take down the protective barriers that define anyone else as opponents – at the office or on Facebook, in our families or neighborhoods, in the politics of the day or the nightly news. To love generously, joyfully, freely, even those who you know will never love you back, or those whom I’m afraid I’m going to lose.

It’s living like that, after all, that has made Jesus unbreakable, pouring out love and trust, radiating deep, unshakable, renewable connection in spite of everything that pain and betrayal and sorrow can do in the failed attempt to erase him, to separate him from us, and us from him, and all of us from the love of God.

And if – no, when – you and I enter into that trust, when we throw ourselves entirely into the hands of God, then we become unbreakable, too.

When we leap or fall completely into the hands of God, we can never ever be completely alone, never lose our selves to loneliness, never break by being abandoned.

When we commit ourselves entirely to God’s care and purpose, we can’t be defeated by our own failures, or the failures of others.

When we trust God with complete assurance of protection, fear cannot force us to betray others, or ourselves.

Wrapped in and filled up with the unbreakable love of God, we are free to love without fear of grief, and to grieve our losses and our pain honestly, never separated from the love we have for one another, and the love God has for us. For us each and all.

The love and trust that refuses to die at the hands of the powers of separation and division, refuses to be silenced by death itself, invites us, every one of us who hears, to live in the power of that unbreakable love and trust:

today, at the foot of the cross,

tomorrow, in the silence of the tomb,

soon, in the world-changing upheaval of resurrection,

and always, in our most daily, ordinary lives, fragile but finally unbreakable.