I remember day dreaming when I was just starting out in my career, how as a young soldier I jockeyed for promotion as an officer of Imperial Rome. I envisioned myself riding to victory after victory with Caesar’s conquering legions. I pondered how my men and I would fight for justice everywhere and bring enlightenment and prosperity to the uncivilized subjects of our realm. Even this assignment to a remote outpost in Jerusalem I hoped to turn into an opportunity for service to others and recognition for myself. But today, I don’t know. Something’s going on that just doesn’t feel right. I can’t talk to my commander; I certainly can’t approach Pontius Pilate. This barren, rocky, forsaken country is filled with fanatical people, with strange religious customs: a belief in just one God who cares about them individually and some messiah who would one day come and deliver them. And they honestly believe it! They’re dead earnest! Some around here even claim the messiah has already come – walking about the hinterland as a homeless pauper until the fool’s harmless preaching started to get so pointed and so popular that it threatened the civil and religious hierarchy. So there he is, hanging until he dies…We trapped him in a garden just outside the city; it was easiest arrest I’ve ever made! We took him to some kind of emergency meeting of the Sanhedrin during the night and then to Pilate very early this morning. Everyone seemed to want him dead and when he was finally condemned my men and I actually felt relieved. We were finally taking control of the situation. This is what we soldiers do best – we bring order and stability to the masses, even if it causes some individuals a considerable amount of pain. In my military career I’ve pretty much seen it all: dungeons, mockery, beating, torture, execution… They’re just necessary tools to maintain order in a civilized society. Not much turns my stomach, but something is making my heart turn today.I’ve seen scores of criminals writhe with pain and curse and swear when I drove the nails. I’ve seen their anger and agony when I’ve hoisted crosses into place. I don’t intentionally relish in their pain, but justify it in my mind as a necessary deterrent to any further pain like what they’d already been convicted of afflicting on others. Even so, I’ve never seen a man hang from a Roman cross like this man. He uttered no word of protest. He refused the pain deadening medication that we routinely offer. He never screamed nor swore. He just looked at us. From his view from the cross I and my fellow soldiers were causing him excruciating pain. We didn’t know him, he didn’t know us, we didn’t have anything against him personally, we were just doing our job. Usually the faces of the crucified fade into ambiguity as we throw dice for their sandals and robes, but this man, with this face, with these eyes, is boring a hole right through me. I don’t think I’ll ever forget his view of me. It’s like he’s literally looking down at me, but figuratively lifting me up at the very same time. It’s like he feels the pain I’ve caused him, but sees that I’m not fully aware of the significance of this event I’m caught in. Maybe the Galileans are right. Maybe this man is the Son of God! None of us have been crucified, but all of us have experienced pain at the hands of others. Part of the healing power of the cross is that in that cross event God embraced the range of human experience, most fully identified with who we are and transformed such vulnerable experiences of our lives into moments when we can relate more intimately with God. That’s the healing power of the cross for us as individuals. And then there’s the healing power of the cross for us collectively – when from Jesus’ perspective we see ourselves as those who in some way contribute to the pain in the lives of others, even of innocents, and our calling to rectify such atrocities. I invite us to reflect this morning on both of these views from the cross, the individual pain we experience and the collective pain we aggressively or passively inflict on others.For most of us here today, the pain we experience individually is not from nails driven through our hands and feet, but from blows delivered to our hearts and minds. We feel the pain of lost love, of betrayed friendship, of spiteful words, of frustrated dreams, of abusive action, of unfounded accusation, of embarrassing comments, of gossip, of abandonment. We’ve all had such times of individual pain --- times when it feels like our patience and self-esteem and relationships are stretched about as thin as they can get before breaking. Sam Alexander talks about such thin places in an article by the same title (November 30, 2003. http://oldfirst.org/s113003.htm): “[Thin places] is an idea that came out of Celtic Christianity, a mystical movement of Christianity between the fifth and the 12th centuries in what is now the British Isles. Thin Places. This movement sought a kind of mystical connection to the divine. [Its adherents] wanted to reach behind what is the reality of this world to that world behind the world, to that movement of Grace behind all that is. They wanted to touch that divine one in whom we live and move and have our being. So they talked about thin places, thin places between this world and that world of grace that surrounds us, holds us, creates us. Thin places are those places and occasions when you can just touch the grace of God, when you know that God is present to you, a thin place, a thin veil between us and the grace of God.” When it comes to individual pain, we can rarely change the behavior of others; we can only change our response. Healing comes when our view from the cross allows us to see individual pain as thin places for us to connect more closely with God. Now for our view of collective pain that we aggressively or passively inflict on others. I was the Minister of Outreach at Brooklyn United Methodist Church back in the late 1980’s when the first waves of Liberian refugees started arriving in the Twin Cities. Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park were common places for these immigrants to settle and a number started attending Brooklyn Church. I was often involved with these families for housing, food, clothing, transportation, employment and medical care in addition to spiritual needs. In the process, they shared stories about government corruption, property destruction, beatings, rape, torture and murder from which they fled. For the past 27 years, violent coups have bounced political and military leadership back and forth between indigenous tribes and black emigrants from the United States including descendents of freed American slaves. The refugees I met ranged from common laborers, to a seminary president to an ambassador’s daughter, all of whom were displaced from their homeland. When I came to Good Samaritan, similar stories were shared by the Bosnian and Somalian families that we have helped to resettle in our area.As United Methodists, it is not our heritage to silently and idly stand by when pain is collectively inflicted upon others because of race or ethnicity or faith or gender or sexual orientation or any other contrived reason for exclusion and violence. A movie released this past Friday reflects Methodism’s historic influence in helping people take the view from the cross in recognizing our contributions to and our responsibilities for collective pain. Amazing Grace, based on the life of antislavery pioneer William Wilberforce, was written by Steven Knight and directed by Michael Apted. I haven’t seen it yet, but reviews I’ve read in both the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the United Methodist Reporter, observe that Hollywood downplays the role of Christianity as a motivation for Wilberforce’s social activism. Nevertheless, faith was integral to his work and witness around the turn of the nineteenth century. Wilberforce was raised by a Methodist aunt and uncle in Wimbledon. This aunt and uncle were close friends of John Newton, a former slave ship captain who wrote the Hymn “Amazing Grace” in response to the preaching of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Wilberforce’s aunt and uncle were also good friends of George Whitefield, an influential preacher and a member of John and Charles Wesley’s “Holy Club”. In addition to this religious influence, Wilberforce also had family connections to British politics and was elected to Parliament at the age of 21. Within a few years, Wilberforce began a relentless campaign to end Britain’s participation in the slave trade. Over a period spanning two decades, Wilberforce confronted powerful opposition from the lucrative slave business and declared the equality of all people in the eyes of God. It is fitting that John Wesley happened to write his last letter--sent in February 1791, days before his death--to William Wilberforce. Wesley urged Wilberforce to devote himself unswervingly to his antislavery campaign, a “glorious enterprise” that opposed “that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature…If God be for you, who can be against you?” Wesley wrote. “Oh, be not weary of well- doing. Go on in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.” People who cause us pain. At times it happens to us. At times it happens because of us or in spite of us… but it breaks hearts nonetheless. If we look from Jesus’ point of view from the cross, we can no longer turn our heads away…