John 12:20-33 | Cruciform Charisma | Last Sunday After Epiphany – January 21 2024
By Pastor Clifford Reinhardt
Charisma — the power to attract or draw to oneself.
I’m pretty sure that one of the reasons that federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was elected Prime Minister of Canada is his charisma. He’s handsome and photogenic, and he has personal drawing power … just like his late father, Pierre Elliot Trudeau — that rose-festooned, Alberta-snubbing philosopher-king who variously made us swoon or swear.
Actually, the really charismatic Prime Minister in recent decades was Jean Chrétien. He wasn’t the most photogenic man, and we could say that he was bilingual in a special way: he was uniquely prone to slaughtering both official languages! But people who met him – or even just heard him live – said that he had amazing personal drawing power. Surely that served him well on his way to becoming one of the most durable leaders our country has ever seen.
It certainly is no drawback for a leader to possess personal charm. This is also true in the church. Whether it’s a bishop, a congregational chairperson, a committee head, or a pastor – it helps if the person is easily liked. And if that person possesses what we call “charisma” – well, so much the better.
What about Jesus? What was it about Jesus Christ that drew people to the movement that he started in ancient Galilee?
In the popular sense, Jesus the man must have been truly charismatic, for in the short time that he walked through the cities, villages, and countryside of Judea and Galilee, he attracted followers and sympathizers in numbers and with enthusiasm that a wanna-be prime minister would have envied.
People brought their sick to him because of his fame for healing. They flocked to him on the hillsides to feast upon his authoritative teaching … and then they stayed because he also fed their hungry bodies. He welcomed to his table people who were otherwise shunned by a purity-obsessed legal system. (No wonder his contemporary religious leaders and political governors became resentful!)
In every instance, there was a force involved that seems to be irresistible. Each time, personal will or volition seemed negligible or completely irrelevant.
The Greek word that gives us our word “charisma” conveys a sense of forceful attraction. In other places in the Bible, the same word is used to tell of the powerful emotions that draw a mother to her children when they are in danger; or the compelling attraction that lovers have for each other; or the scooping up of fish in a net and the action of dragging them into a boat even though they are wriggling to get away.
Jesus seemed to possess such charisma in spades.
But to our surprise, in today’s Gospel reading where Jesus himself tells us of the drawing power that God the Father has invest in him, it’s not his personal charisma that he points to. Rather, he says, it’s when he’s lifted up on the cross that he will draw all people to himself. St. John tells us that Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
Here is what we know about that kind of death. The cross was reserved by the Roman Empire for the public punishment of non-citizens who committed capital crimes; for slaves who rose up in rebellion; and for anyone who was an enemy of the empire and its social system. The cross was a tool used to preserve a society built upon honour and shame.
The raising up of the condemned person, naked upon his or her cross, was intended to send a message. It was designed to make an example of anyone who defied the social structure and its system of righteousness.
You see, the social order needed despicable people at the bottom in order to elevate the honour of those higher up. Crucifixion was the brutal means by which the society safeguarded itself. The cross served as a very public warning to anyone who tried to disrupt the system.
God sent the only beloved Son into the world to take on that social order and every system like it. God comes among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth for the sake of all people, no matter where they might be slotted in somebody’s social order … including the unlovely, those who are despised and shamed. That as much as anything explains why the society of Jesus’ day — and why the world as a whole — wants to get rid of Jesus: in Jesus, God comes among us with unbounded grace and mercy … for one and all, regardless of apparent virtue, lawfulness, or social standing.
The cross is at the heart of the gospel story. It’s about God giving up the Only Beloved Son for the sake of a wounded and dying humanity, broken by the power of sin. What propels Jesus to the cross – and likewise draws you and me, too – is the God’s love for us in our plight and God’s desire to forgive sin. That’s what the charisma of the cross is all about: our desperate human need, and the persistent divine love by which God seeks us and embraces us. It signifies forgiveness of sin and the new life that God gives us in our rebirth as God’s children.
I call this Cruciform Charisma. “Cruciform” means in the shape of a cross. Cruciform Charisma — the drawing power of the cross, the heart of the Gospel.
Now, we know that we are still members of honorific structures. We can’t help that. Every social system – from our families to our circle of friends to our places of work and even our churches – every social system inevitably assigns honour and shame.
But because God reaches right into the heart of our brokenness and puts it to death on the cross together with the only beloved Son Jesus, you and I do not need to shame other people. We do not need to create and maintain a class of despicable people in order for us to have status.
For God does not disdain our flesh. In the Word-Incarnate, God embraces us and our plight. With or without us possessing any charisma of our own, God gives us our identity and God’s righteousness – the only status that we need for the sake of confident, courageous life.
That’s what God accomplishes for us through Jesus Christ. That’s why his cross — as humiliating and shameful as it is — actually draws us, actually attracts us. The precise mechanism by which that changes us is beyond our knowing, and yet its charisma is captured and conveyed by some simple but powerful words that I and all pastors are authorized and commissioned to proclaim:
• In the name of Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sin.
• Take and eat; this is my body given for you.
• Drink of it, all of you; this cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin.
This is the Gospel. This is the Good News by which God draws us to the divine self, in order to set us free for new life that begins now and comes to perfection when finally God fulfills all that God has promised in Christ.
That means that you and I are free to treat all people with respect and love – friends and strangers alike. It means a warm welcome for one and all, together with the acknowledgement that we are all in this world together.
For you and I have charisma – not necessarily because of our personalities or because we’re hip or woke – but because when Jesus is lifted up from the earth upon his cross, he draws all people to himself.
Let us take up this new life together. Let us attend to a world in need. Let’s start today by being who we are, recreated by God through Jesus Christ … and by trusting and proclaiming Cruciform Charisma.
Peace be with you all.