Sermon: Suffering, Courage, Redemption

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Suffering, Courage, Redemption

By Charles Rush

April 4, 2004

we turn our thoughts this week toward the Passion of Christ, it is probably not possible not to comment in some way on Mel's Movie. The New Yorker this week had a cartoon where a couple is leaving church and they say to the Minister as they go, "Reverend, the sermon was good, the movie was even better."

I almost feel sorry for Mel Gibson. As Charlton Heston and Jane Fonda have learned, consensus adulation for your on-screen persona doesn't translate into consensus adulation for your political views… So Mr. Gibson is learning that just because they adore the parts you play doesn't mean they will adore your theology.

That we invest too much in celebrities is a given. Rob Rogers of the Pittsburgh Gazette had a cartoon on the Op-ed page with a bunch of people leaving the theater after seeing the movie. The fist guy says, "So are you a Mel Gibson Christian?" The second guy says, "No more of a Richard Gere Buddhist." The third person says, "I'm a Cat Steven's Muslim." The fourth guy says, "I prefer Madonna's Kabbala". And the teenager concludes with "I'm an Adam Sandler Jew". [He wrote the Hanakah song- 'Drink your gin and tonica, smoke your marijanica, …. And have a hapy, happy Hanakah']

Mr. Gibson said that he wanted to underscore for us just what Jesus went through. He achieved that. Actually, he overachieved that because no one could actually live through what is depicted in the film, not even the Son of God. It is just physically not possible. But, it is true that Roman torture was intentionally designed to be maximally cruel, slow, and ignominious. Unlike other imperial conquerers, ruthless brutality was one of the main ingredients in Roman expansion. They invented 'scorch and burn' tactics. They were the first to routinely use 'rape and pillage' for non-payment of taxes. They invented crucifixion.

It is true that we Christians wear instruments of torture around our necks as religious symbols. And it is true that we ought not sanitize that or abstract it too much. The Christian story is quite gutsy, despite being also transcendent.

But there is some real sense in which the film moves out into the no man's land between graphic realism and masochism. The Catholic scholar Jeff Carr, noted on NPR recently that the movie veers towards religious pornography for this very reason. I don't know. But it did make me reflect on our rating system. If you depict full frontal nudity that is X or NC-17, even if it is two grandmother's dancing. But you can beat someone on screen to a bloody pulp for 90 minutes and still be R. It strikes me as odd that violence is not a greater threat to our social well being.

One of our seminarians sent me a note that certain Christian radio stations were selling family four packs to the movie. This is not a film for children of any age. You do not eat popcorn in this theatre.

The suffering of Jesus was a fact. I should point out the obvious, that how we interpret that suffering religiously has varied quite a lot over the long haul of Christian history.

I was struck by the comments of one of America's more popular theologians, Robin Lovin. He was part of a discussion about subsitutionary atonement, the theology that says that Jesus had to die for our sins. This theological tradition has a long history in Christianity. The tradition tends to emphasize just how much suffering Jesus went through as it correlates to just how sinful we actually are and how grave is our need for redemption. This tradition also has a long history of critics, myself and Professor Lovin included.

Just after the graphic depiction of torture for an hour and a half, Professor Lovin sees a woman interviewed on T.V. She says something like, ""It's just amazing to see how much Jesus loves me." The question that Professor Lovin had, a question which most of the rest of us would not ask for fear of being seen as impious, is "What does is say about the self esteem and self-worth of this young woman, that she would think that beating and death had ANYTHING to do with love?!"[1]

By the way, that is not an impious question. In fact, it was perhaps the question of the earliest Church. Why? Because there is no tradition in Judaism that says the Messiah must suffer and die. Sure there are the passages in Isaiah that we regularly read, "By his stripes we are healed… He was wounded for our iniquities." But the Rabbi's always interpreted those as referring to Israel collectively, not to the Messiah.

It is true that many Jews thought Jesus would be the kind of Messiah they had hoped for, an ordinary man, a righteous man, who would free Jerusalem from the tyranny of the Romans and bring about peace with justice. Most scholars today believe that Judas was probably not so much betraying Jesus as trying to force his hand. Judas probably had the misguided, but understandable, idea that if Jesus was arrested, he would rally the beginning of the Messianic revolution that the people had long hoped for.

And it was the prospect of actual revolution happening that led Pilate to kill Jesus. The real Pilate, unlike the movie version, had already been brought back to Jerusalem twice for excessive and wanton use of force. It is highly unlikely that he dawdled over Jesus or was in any way lenient. He had him tortured and crucified. Boom.

The earliest Christians were in a quandary as to what this all meant. They rifled the scriptures and developed novel interpretations of Isaiah, showing that the scriptures had meant that the 'Suffering Servant' was the Messiah or that the Messiah really was supposed to suffer on behalf of the rest of Israel.

By the time the gospels are actually written, decades, in some cases almost a century after the fact, they write the story in such a way that obviously this had to happen. The author of the gospel of Luke even has a Greek word that he uses dei- that translates something like 'it had to be', 'this had to happen'. Often when we look back we can think that way. We are all great Monday morning quarterbacks… Right now, we have a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacks in Washington that are asking how we could have missed the attack on the World Trade Center. It is all so clear now. But I will never forget the absolute incredulity of that morning. We were watching something on T.V.- but not only not expecting it, not even understanding what we are seeing… it was so far off the radar screen of predictability.

Our gospels were written like that, obvious now, but not obvious at all when you were going through it. So it is understandable if you just dramatize the text as we have it and you depict Jesus actually embracing the cross as some kind of superhuman spiritual exercise to fulfill his destiny. At one point in the movie, Mr. Gibson has Jesus actually do just that. The crucifixion did happen, it was taken up by God, but it is not likely that it had this sense of destiny about it.

One indication that Jesus destiny of Jesus was not so obvious is in the teaching from Jesus that we read earlier in the service. When Jesus actually teaches us about God, in Luke 15, there is no mention of a scapegoat. There is no payment for sin. Jesus says, you want to know what God is like, God is like a Father whose has a son that wants his inheritance early. We know about these kids. We all have two or three of them.

Then the kid squanders his money on loose living, wine, women and song. He decides to come home, says he is not even worthy to be called a son anymore. The kid starts back for home.What does the Father do??

I told this parable once to one of my classes at Rutgers University, and I stopped right here. I could tell from the expressions on their faces that they had never heard the story before, so I asked them "What should the Father do?" I got some great answers.

1. My brother Julio was like that… went through all his money on Coke. You can't let him come home. No way, not unless he gets over the drugs. You got to show some tough love.

2. Uhh.. I think like maybe the Father should make the son should apologize and like pay back the money that he lost I guess.

I got lots of answers like that. One's we would all give too. No, says Jesus, when the Father saw the boy a long way off, he dropped everything and ran down the road. He hugged the boy and kissed him.

We call this the Parable of the Prodigal Son because he was extravagantly wasteful. But it should be the Prodigal Father because he is extravagantly gracious. God is like that, says Jesus.

God drops everything to look for the one lost sheep. God sweeps the whole house to find the one lost coin. God is extravagantly loving. No one has to die in this teaching, no scapegoat has to suffer.

It didn't have to be like that for Jesus… But it was.

But it is important, spiritually, to note, [as my colleague, Bob Morris has] that there is nothing about suffering that is necessarily redemptive. Suffering itself never saved anybody and the amount of Jesus' suffering is not what is significant about his passion.

I remind us of this because "there is an ancient, dark, masochistic undercurrent in some spirituality that sees some sort of spiritual power in pain itself. Primitive beliefs all over the world have it that self-inflicted punishment can get the attention of the Spirit or spirits. The more pain the better. The priests of Ba'al, in their contest with Elijah on Mount Carmel, “cried aloud and, as was their custom, they cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed out over them” (1 Kings 18:28 NRSV). Some Christians have worn hair shirts, lashed themselves with whips, or mixed ashes in their food to “share the sufferings” of Christ.

The Gospels do not say that suffering itself is redemptive. Rather, Jesus shows a way to meet it redemptively. That way does not begin by seeking out suffering. Jesus prays earnestly, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup (of suffering) pass from me” (Matthew 26:39). Rather, when faced with inevitable suffering, Jesus goes to meet it with courage. He doesn't stand passively accepting abuse, but actively faces what he must do to deal with it in order that good may come out of it. Nobly, without fear, he faces his enemies with courage and compassion, because he is rooted in a goodness deeper than the suffering. This is Jesus' secret of facing life in this wild, wonderful, and terribly difficult universe: the taproot of his spirit is deeply anchored in the goodness of God."[2]

It is precisely God's goodness that we celebrate together… a goodness so great that it can take even unjust, ignominious suffering and create redemptive meaning out of it… A goodness so great that torture and death cannot destroy it.

"Jesus shows the redemptive way: how to live in the same world in ways that bring good out of evil instead of adding to the suffering. When Jesus invites us to “take up our cross” it's an invitation to develop courageous, caring ways to deal with suffering. Suffering may come to us unbidden the form of disease or disaster, or we may provoke it by taking a stand for righteousness that incurs opposition and wrath. But either way, it's up to us, God being our helper, to work with it so that good, rather than evil, comes from it. Because Jesus did that, we still call it “Good” Friday."

So this day, let us come to the table and celebrate the goodness of God, the God who came to give us life, life that we might live abundantly, the God who can take up all things and heal them, whose goodness can redeem the most awful of tragedies. Come taste and see that God is good. Amen.

[1] This comes from a fine sermon by Eric Folkherth entitled "Free in God". Likewise, the sermon itself stimulated the idea for this section of this sermon. It was preached at the Northaven Methodist Church in Dallas and can be found at http://www.northaven.org. My thanks to my colleague Jeff Markay for sending me the sermon.

[2] Bob Morris is the Director of "Interweave" in Summit. This came from an article he wrote for the Morristown Daily Record on March 29, 2004.