Mark 8.31-38
In this season of Lent, we Christians do something quite extraordinary. Although we spend the rest of the year trying to avoid pain and suffering—inventing fixes for disease and pain, alleviating suffering with charitable deeds, and even entertaining ourselves to distract us from the suffering of the world—in Lent we choose to spend 40 days entering into the suffering and death of our God. It is not natural; some would even call us masochistic.
As Mark tells it, Jesus has just laid out the plan: great suffering…rejected…killed. Awful stuff! No wonder Peter is horrified. This is not what the world expects from a messiah, a savior, a king. The world expects triumph and glory, not nails pounded through bone, thorns pressed into flesh, the agonizingly painful wait for death while hanging on a cross. Our God, who promised Abraham a bright future, our God who gives life to the dead, will suffer excruciating pain and die a shameful death. It IS a gruesome scenario.
This week’s gospel points unflinchingly to the distinction between what Martin Luther calls theology of the cross and the theology of glory. While we would like to see God in the triumphant and beautiful things of the world, Luther reminds us that God’s own self-revelation is accomplished through suffering and the cross (Heidelberg Disputation, thesis 20).
Just in case this is not ghastly enough, Jesus says we, too, must take up this cross and prepare for death. No wonder Peter protests!
It’s easy for those of us who live in relative safety and security in North America to become very attached to a God of glory and triumph and winning. But this is a God of our own making, not the God who revealed God’s own nature in Jesus Christ.
This is why I like to go to Bethlehem. There, in the midst of the suffering of God’s own peoples, in the very places where God entered into our human condition, I encounter the God who knows suffering. Visiting Bethlehem and other areas of Palestine and Israel I cannot escape into the world of the God of glory and success and better-and-better. Bethlehem grounds me.
That is not to say that Bethlehem is a gloomy, depressing place. On the contrary, it is a place full of hope—hope based not on our efforts to become better people and change the world, because that has not been their experience. Living under the control of an occupying army, the Christians in Bethlehem rely on a hope given by God in a most impossible promise to Abraham.
Standing in line at the checkpoint in Bethlehem at 5:00 am in the press of 2000 bodies, as they wait for the guards to recognize them and motion them forward to one of the two stations open this morning, the people of Bethlehem cannot rely on the world’s promises, for the world’s promises have failed them for sixty years as they have waited for a just resolution to the conflict. Theirs is not the hope of Camp David or Oslo, but a hope built on God’s promised future even where no future seems possible.
Photo: Dar al-Kalima (school) in Bethlehem
So the Lutherans of the Christmas Church in Bethlehem build for this unlikely but promised future. A school, a wellness center, a cultural center with an auditorium for concerts and locally-produced films. An academy that teaches filmmaking and news reporting. A craft center for women to learn pottery and stained glass-making so they can provide food and shelter for their families. A senior center where the elders visit with one another and eat a nutritious meal. In a time of uncertainty and despair, these Christians live as if God’s promises are true, as if there is a future for them.
O God of the nails and thorns, you know our suffering and pain. May those of us who live in security bear some of the load of suffering that burdens our sisters and brothers living in uncertainty and fear in so many parts of the world, especially those in your Holy Land. Amen.
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