Graceland

Scripture: Colossians 2:13-14

I do not believe in ghosts. But, if I did, I would also believe that Memphis, Tennessee has more than its share of them.

That thought crossed my mind recently as I stood in a hallway of the Lorraine Motel, which now houses the city’s Civil Rights Museum, and looked through a large plate glass window into room 306.

As you may recall, room 306 is where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rested briefly, took some coffee, met with fellow civil rights leaders, and joked with friends before stepping out onto the balcony where he was assassinated. That balcony marks the place where one of God’s beloved prophets and poets was martyred. In my view, that balcony is holy ground.

But it was room 306 itself that really captured my attention—indeed, almost hypnotized me. It is a dingy, tired, cramped little space that has been preserved just as Dr. King left it when he stepped onto the balcony. The sheets on the bed are rumpled. Cups are scattered around in disarray. It looks indescribably ordinary.

An exhibit I had passed earlier in the museum left me with the same impression. That exhibit described the story behind Dr. King’s famous letter from Birmingham jail—one of the most significant documents in the history of the civil rights movement. You know some of the lines from the letter: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.” “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” It is a document of signal importance.

Part of the exhibit features a glass case that contains the satchel that one of Dr. King’s lawyers used to carry the letter out of the jail. It is a humble, beaten up old briefcase—another indescribably ordinary thing. One can hardly imagine that this scarred leather bag served as a vehicle to carry words of inspiration to millions of people and multiple generations.

We know that God often chooses to speak to us through indescribably ordinary things. Indeed, at certain times of the year we make it a point to remember that He does so. At Christmas we talk about a stable that was even more dingy, tired, and cramped than room 306. On Palm Sunday we talk about a donkey that was even more humble and beaten up than that scarred leather briefcase.

We might think of the cross in these terms as well. It is a sparse geometric figure, the joining of single horizontal and vertical lines. It can be drawn with two strokes of a pen. It can be signaled with the simple gesture of a hand. It can be made out of two sticks and a tack. In a sense, there is nothing more ordinary than a cross.

Of course, we know that on a dark afternoon two thousand years ago this ordinary thing became the vehicle for an extraordinary message. And we know that this ordinary place became the focal point of extraordinary events. So, understandably and rightly, we glorify the cross.

But when we do so we risk losing sight of just how ordinary, basic, and simple a thing it is. And, more importantly, we risk forgetting that, in the time of Jesus, the cross was a political weapon, a method of state-endorsed terrorism, a means of inflicting unspeakable torture. We risk missing the fact that in its time the cross was a feared and cursed and wretched thing.

And yet—and yet—through His use, God transformed it. God transformed the cross—even the cross. God took this symbol of misery and despair and contempt, this “emblem of suffering and shame,” and turned it into a symbol of eternal life and enduring love, an emblem of audacious hope and amazing grace. How could we believe—how could we believe—that God can so fundamentally transform even the cross itself and yet cannot fundamentally transform us?

Indeed, in this passage in his letter to the Colossians, Paul assures us that God has already begun the work of that transformation. We come to God weak and uncertain and confused and hesitant and jealous and angry—in short, we come to God as human beings, and therefore come to God as human beings have always come, as those undeserving of the love of the one who made us. But God casts all of that aside.

God takes the ledger sheet—the list of foibles and failures and frustrations that we accumulate as we stumble through this mystery called life—and nails it to the cross …. nails it to the cross. God nails it to the cross, and in doing so makes our burdens His. Is there any greater act of love and grace imaginable? Is there any better Good News than this?

Now, there is a subtle difference here between what Paul is saying and what we often hear said. Perhaps you’ve been at a worship service where someone urged you to write your burdens on a piece of paper and throw it at the foot of a cross. Or perhaps you’ve had a well-intentioned friend encourage you to take a burden and “give it to God.”

These sorts of expressions of faith are all well and good, but they may not help us much. We may feel as though we no longer have the strength to carry our burdens, even to the foot of the cross. Or we may hear the kind advice to “give it to God” and think to ourselves “well, I’ve been trying to give this thing away for some time now, but without much luck!”

Paul is saying something different. He is saying that you do not need to carry these burdens to God or give them to God. God has already taken them. God has taken them, and has “nailed them to the cross.”

* * *

Well, I mentioned that I was recently in Memphis, Tennessee, but I didn’t tell you why. Lisa and I were there because Lisa’s mother is a passionate fan of the late Elvis Presley. So, for Christmas, Lisa invited her mother and father to join us for a trip to Elvis’s famous mansion, Graceland.

Now, I have a confession: I’m not all that big an Elvis fan—my father held the view that music went downhill after Bach. But I love my mother-in-law and this is the sort of pilgrimage you make out of love. So off we went.

But, before I talk about the trip, I have one more confession. A few weeks before I was going to preach this sermon I told our senior pastor that my sermon would be called "Graceland." I also told her I had no idea what the sermon would actually be about. I just felt certain that if I was going to a place called Graceland I would have an experience that, as the saying goes, “would preach.” And I think I did.

We drove just south of downtown Memphis and met the tour bus at the building near the parking lot, which houses fourteen different gift shops to meet all your Elvis needs. The bus took us across the street to the mansion, where we fell into a group that got into line with all the other groups. And there we were: the four of us, and every other flavor of humanity that God ever put on this earth. I thought of the Paul Simon song called “Graceland,” where he summarized the diversity of the visitors with the succinct phrase “poor boys and Pilgrims with families.”

Well, there were poor boys and Pilgrims with families. And there were also the young and the old, the fancy and the slovenly, the educated and the unschooled, the gay and the straight, the tattooed and the clean-cut, the hares and the tortoises, the uninitiated and the veterans, the Southerners and the Northerners and the Easterners and the Westerners, the deeply devoted and the mildly curious, the English speakers and the Spanish speakers and the Japanese speakers, the ones who would pause in the Jungle Room to laugh over the shag carpeting on the ceiling, and the ones who would pause at the gravesite to cry over the death of someone who had meant something special to them.

I watched all these people—every one unique, every one with their own hopes and dreams and burdens and problems—work their way through the twists and turns of the various buildings until they found themselves on a winding outdoor path. And I watched as they followed that path until they arrived in the meditation garden, literally at the foot of a tall stone cross. And I thought of the Paul Simon song again. And I remembered these lyrics: “I have reason to believe we all will be received at Graceland.”

I do not know what is on your list. I do not know whether it is a list of things done or undone, words said or unsaid, pain that you have suffered or pain that you have caused, dreams that have been denied or dreams that have been deferred or dreams that have died.

But I know that each of us has such a list, a list of our burdens, a list that is uniquely our own.

And I know this: that no one’s list is greater than God’s power to transform the person who writes it; that God has already taken that list from you; that God has nailed it to the cross; and that God waits to meet you there.

Amen.