Whaley Bridge Parish
Lent 2
Feb 28th 2021
I remember once I was leading a school visit to church from a group of year 1 children. We did a treasure hunt, and listened to the organ, and talked about the stained glass windows, and the children asked lots of questions. When it was time to end, I said, OK there's time for just one last question. One little boy put up his hand and asked, "Why did Jesus have to die?"
I have great respect for this six year old's ability to zoom in on the heart of the Christian faith. Never mind all these peripheral bits about stained glass and organ music Let's just do the basics, shall we. If this kind man Jesus was the Son of God, why he had to submit to this nasty death-on-a-cross thing? And could you give me that in one sentence please, before we put on our coats and go back to school?
What struck me about the boy's question wasn't just its directness, but also an unease that went with it: the sense of the cross as disturbing reality, sitting uneasily with the God of love I had been talking about. In this church a beautifully painted empty cross stood above the altar. Look at the lovely colours I said, the red and the gold, happy colours. They remind us that death on the cross wasn't the end for Jesus but he rose to a wonderful new life with God on Easter morning.
Was he satisfied with my answer? I expect he's long forgotten it, but I haven't forgotten his question, which reminds me of the power of the cross to ask questions of us, to provide a framework within which we can ask the big questions about pain and suffering, about human evil, and divine love.
In the wonderful Christian story of God's saving, redeeming, transforming love for his creation, the cross stands at the very centre.
Listen to our gospel passage again: Then he began to teach them that the Son of man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priest and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
As we read Mark's gospel, these words of Jesus are a literally a pivotal moment. The gospel is sixteen chapters long. Chapter 1 – 8 cover Jesus’s Galilean ministry. Chapters 8 – 16 cover his journey up to Jerusalem, the place of conflict, suffering and death. And halfway through chapter 8 – the exact midpoint – we have the lynchpin on which the gospel turns. Jesus asks his disciples who they really think he is: Peter has worked it out. You are the Messiah, he says. He is God's chosen one, the one who will restore the ailing fortunes of Israel. He will be like King David of old, a great military hero who will finally send the Romans packing and bring in Israel's golden age.
And now Jesus pulls the rug out from under the disciples feet by telling them what will come next. Rejection by the authorities. Death.
Peter is shocked and dismayed. And surely we can sympathise with Peter’s sense of horror and confusion here. Peter takes Jesus aside and they talk. Why is Jesus saying these terrible things about rejection, and suffering and death? How does this make sense?
Why, when the power of God is at work in him, announcing God's coming Kingdom with the Good News of forgiveness? Why when all over Galilee the sick and demon possessed are finding wholeness of mind and body? Why, when Jesus is establishing a new community, empowering his friends to go out and preach and heal just as he does?
Jesus dismisses Peter's objections in the strongest words. "Get behind me, Satan".
These words recall the Jesus’s temptation in the desert: the lure of earthly power, the easy win. Jesus rejected it then and he rejects it now. Get behind me, he tells Peter. Quite literally, get behind me, be my follower, follow behind me as a disciple.
We sense that Peter wants Jesus to be a successful messiah, a messiah who wields power, one whose kingdom movement will build to a sweeping climax. Why wouldn’t he? He has seen God’s truth and goodness and justice at work in Jesus and he desperately wants this to prevail. And of course it will – but not Peter imagines.
Forget the easy success story, Peter. What’s at stake here is a different kind of saviour. What’s at stake here is a different kind of God. a different kind of God.
And maybe, after all, this shouldn't have been such a surprise to Peter. All the way along Jesus has been inviting people to a new way of seeing the world, a way that turns the world's accepted values upside down. The Jesus who is will face a sham trial and a humiliating end is the same Jesus that values the widow's few pence over the gifts of the wealthy. The Jesus who urges the rich young man to give up his possessions. The Jesus who tells the disciples that whoever would be first must be slave of all. Poverty, humility, vulnerability, powerlessness: these lie at the heart of the kingdom Jesus comes to proclaim.
And he proclaims this kingdom, let us not forget, as the image of the invisible God. Jesus is for us God emptying himself of all but love to share our humanity.
In Jesus, God is showing us a new kind of power.
Forget the power that comes from status, from wealth, from the armies of the Empire. Forget the power that comes from a good education, good connections, the ability to win the argument. Forget all this.
What Jesus on the cross shows us is that only power the counts is the power of divine love, bearing the violence inflicted by evil and sin, absorbing it without returning it in kind. What Jesus shows us on the cross is love made perfect in vulnerability and weakness. This is power alright: the power of suffering, redemptive love.
We have been so exposed to suffering over the past year: the coronavirus has brought home to us our human frailty and mortality in a way that has been genuinely chocking for those of us who have grown up in the era of antibiotics and advanced medicine. There has been the ache of separation from those we love and the sense of opportunities curtailed for young people. There has been financial hardship for many people.
This has been a time when our faith has been tested, just as Jesus was tested in the desert. It’s a time when we have needed to dig deep, to discover that as we faith suffering loss God is Christ faces them with us. God doesn't give us a neat answer to the questions sufferings poses, but what he gives us is himself, Jesus, the embodiment of God's very being, suffering on the cross, with us and for us. As one theologian wrote, only a suffering God can help.
And that matters because it means there is no human experience that is beyond the reach of the redeeming, transforming compassion of God. Wherever suffering takes us we can be sure that God has been there already, that he can be found in that very place.
Then Jesus began to teach them that the Son of man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priest and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
May Jesus continue to teach us this as we follow our Lenten journey with him