Lesson 26: How Does God Operate?

I can best explain my position on suffering by enclosing below a short paper I wrote decades ago to start discussion at a Lutheran conference. I think the Christian faith is contrarian by nature. We have some trouble seeing that, because it is so closely aligned with Northern American society. Most of the time I feel that the only way out of this mess is to go back to the bare bones that I read a Luther’s Theology of the Cross.

A THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS

About a third of the way through the twentieth century there was a great revival of Martin Luther’s theology. People found his Theology of the Cross offered a realistic perspective on what was going on around them. The century had begun with great hope that the Kingdom of God on earth would be realized in the near future. Events proved this
optimistic forecast greatly flawed.

Luther had spoken against the Theology of Glory by which the medieval Church operated. This theology assumed the Risen Christ already ruled the world through his Church. In opposition to this perspective Luther argued we still live between the times. Christ’s glory will be manifest in the future. Until that time the Church is to proclaim Christ crucified as Paul counseled in I Corinthians.

The Theology of the Cross goes something like this: God is always hidden in our world and things are not what they seem to be. We can make sense of what is happening about us by looking at Jesus, where the divine and human meet. And we must begin by looking at the Cross which is the ultimate symbol of our faith.

The Cross reveals we live in the kind of world in which God comes expecting respect and finds he is unwanted; the kind of world in which people can be cheered on Sunday and jeered on Friday, welcomed as savior one day and executed as criminal the next; the kind of world in which our trusted friends can become our betrayers, our most loyal followers can become our accusers, our most courageous heroes can become shrinking cowards; the kind of world in which we can call God Father one day and ask why he has abandoned us the next, we can feel close to God one moment and far, far away from him the next.

The Cross reveals an upside world where things are not as they appear to be. Real power often is weakness, real righteousness often is forgiveness, real wisdom often seems foolishness. The first are last, and the last first. Those offering the wisest leadership are often killed. The twin founders of our Western society, Jesus of Nazareth and Socrates were both executed as enemies of the people. The true Old Testament prophets were killed by the people they came to help. The New Testament church was built on the blood of the martyrs. The powerful in our present world continue to kill the Bishop Romeros, the Martin Luther Kings, the civil rights workers, the Roman Catholic social workers, the clergy in East Timor, and on and on.

The Cross reveals a mean streak in all human nature, including my own, a mean streak that is demoniac and self-destructive, finding its most terrible expression in violence against neighbor. Every one of us, despite our best intentions, does what we do not want to do, refuses to love God, fails to love other people, even finds it hard to love ourselves in a healthy manner.

When we speak like this we are not justifying pain or sanctioning suffering. We are simply acknowledging their reality in our world. The cross keeps us from closing our eyes to the millions of people languishing on the edges of our prosperity, often suffering because of our inexhaustible consumption. The Cross prevents us from thinking silly thoughts such as the best way we can help others escape their poverty is to make more and more money ourselves. The Cross asks us to share all we have to help those who suffer. At the same time, it forces us to acknowledge the limitations of our efforts to save the world. Our successes are short lived and too often self- centered. We do not expect divine things from human institutions.

When we speak this way we are not being pessimistic or fatalistic. The Cross also reveals God’s presence here and now among us. The one crucified is God suffering in his love for us, defeating evil for us. God shares the pain of all those who are crucified in any way in our world. So long as humans suffer, God suffers. He makes quite clear that the last are first with him. This might seem preposterous to the powerful, the Pilates of the world, who make cynical jokes, such as “Here is your king, Jews”. But God and we respond, “You are quite right, Pilate. Jesus is our king.”

We are called to repentance, to rethink our lives, and then to change our actions. Jesus claimed that would involve denying ourselves and taking up our own crosses. If we seek only to save our lives, making survival our goal, then we shall lose everything. However, if we give up our lives for his sake, we shall find what it is truly to live. The Cross also calls us to action. It draws us after God, deep into all the ambiguity and confusion of this world. The world is full of broken relationships. To rebuild them means some self-denial. The world is filled with hatred. To love involves some suffering, not abuse but healthy suffering so others might be healed. Jesus warns we achieve nothing of value if we gain the whole world but lose our souls in the process. And he promises we shall not perish if we work with him for the good of all. In the midst of death, we are embraced by life

And finally, when we speak this way we are not giving up. Death is not end of the story. Our hope extends to a transformed creation beyond creation’s end. Survival is not humanity’s only standard and goal. Sacrificing oneself for God and other people is a way of taking up one’s own Cross and following Jesus.

The Church is Body of Christ raised from dead to represent God in this world, make him present, model his love, give hope and purpose to our history, and to care for his creation. We should be more concerned with healing the world than gaining our personal salvation. I used to use an image of God claiming none of us are saved unless all of us are saved. If we truly thought this way, we would look at our mission in a more urgent manner.

Tags: body of Christ, brokeness, hope, human condition, suffering, theology of the cross