God in Pain
Isaiah 53:7-9; Hebrews 4:14-16
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
April 28, 2024
Image: Image Fear Not: I Got You by Margo Humphrey, 2013
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4aZdiQNIrg
Two weeks ago, Jim and I had the great privilege of hearing the Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb speak at the Alliance of Baptists gathering. Dr. Raheb is a Palestinian theologian. He served as pastor of the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem for 30 years. He is the founder and president of Dar al-Kalima University which is the first and only university in Palestine focused on the arts and cultural heritage.
Dr. Raheb describes his homeland this way “The people of Palestine have been occupied, crushed, and oppressed by one empire the other. It is a distinct and unique challenge to be placed in a buffer zone that’s often a war zone. It is tough to see one’s country as a perpetual battlefield, to see it divided and torn apart. . . It is not easy to live in Palestine and survive physically and, even more, psychologically and emotionally. But this is the context in which the people of Palestine have repeatedly found themselves. This is the context in which the Bible was written. And it is the context Palestinians face today.”[1]
In 2003, the Church of Sweden held an international art exhibition called The Christ of the World. As a demonstration that the gospel crosses borders and ethnicities, they intended to display art from all over the world, and they wanted to include paintings from Palestine. At the time that submissions were to be made, Israel had imposed a 24-hour lockdown on Bethlehem, so it was challenging, but they persevered. In his book, The Cross in Contexts, Dr. Raheb reports that 60% of the artists who participated were Muslim. That did not surprise him, because over half of the student body is Muslim.
What did surprise him was that all but one of the Muslim students had submitted a picture of the crucified Christ, while only one Christian had chosen that theme. Islam understands Jesus as a prophet, but teaches that he was not crucified. The cross in any form is usually deliberately avoided by Muslim people. These artists might have safely chosen to paint the nativity or any other event from Jesus life. Dr. Raheb concluded that Christ on the cross best represented the context in which they were living. He writes “In a God sharing their bitter destiny, they find strength, comfort and power. . . It is the suffering and crucified Christ that can best speak to us, an occupied nation, in our suffering. It is he who can best tell our story to the world. Palestinian identity is best described by the cross.” [2]
I am continuing on a theme that I started at the beginning of this month, exploring the meaning of the cross two thousand years after Resurrection. Today, I am focused on the cross as the ultimate expression of God’s solidarity with humanity. I am interested in the power of Jesus becoming like we are, as Hebrews says, “in every respect.”
There’s a well-known incident related by the professor and activist and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel. In his book, Night, he writes, “ The SS hanged two Jewish men and a youth in front of the whole camp. The men died quickly, but the death throes of the youth lasted for half an hour. ‘Where is God? Where is he?’ someone asked behind me. As the youth still hung in torment for a long time, I heard the man call again, ‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice in myself answer: ‘Where is he? He is here. He is hanging here on this gallows…’”
That may sound to us like a distinctly Christian interpretation, but it is also consistent with long-time rabbinic teachings that God suffers on behalf of humans.
One of the primary ways that I understand the cross is from the work of German theologian, Jurgen Moltmann. As he dies, Jesus cries out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Moltmann says that Jesus, the son, suffers being abandoned by God and dying. And simultaneously, God the parent, suffers the death of a child. Jesus enters so completely into human experience that something new happens in the life of God. A new kind of suffering and grief is born out of love for human beings.
Moltmann and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, both German citizens, were profoundly shaped by World War II. Moltmann survived. Bonhoeffer did not. Writing from prison, Bonhoeffer said, “The same God who is with us is the God who forsakes us. The same God who makes us to live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before who we stand continually. Before God, and with God, we live without God. God consents to be pushed out in the world and onto the cross; God is weak and powerless in the world and in precisely this way, and only so, is at our side and helps us.” [3]
On the cross, Jesus is God-forsaken. God enters into the very depths of our pain, even into solidarity with us when we feel that God has abandoned us. This Trinitarian lens offers us a different understanding of the cross, one that is not transactional or substitutionary. It is not Jesus enduring a punishment that we deserve, but Jesus taking on human suffering in the most profound outpouring of love.
It is important to note that Jesus does not die of natural causes, at a ripe old age, but the violent death of the criminal on the cross. Moltmann says, “Jesus takes upon himself the eternal death of the godless and the godforsaken, so that all the godless and the godforsaken can experience communion with him.”[4]
Suffering is part of human existence. Everyone endures it, and, in putting on human flesh, Jesus chose to enter fully into it.
German theologian Dorothee Soelle reminds us that “the cross is not something religious – it is a terrible, bloody reality.” She writes, “[the cross] stands for the small girl who was sexually abused by her father and lives many years in the silence of denial. The cross means the merciless violence which people carry out on people, the strong on the weak, rich on the poor...men on women...caretakers on the sick, the powerful on the powerless.... It surrounds us, penetrates our lives. And if we deny it, then we begin not really to see ourselves correctly.”[5]
This solidarity is understood particularly well by those within oppressed groups, those who routinely suffer the kind of unjust and violent death suffered by Jesus. Those of us who enjoy the privilege of systems that work mostly in our favor may learn much from them.
Enslaved people in this country seized on this power of the cross. Eminent black theologian James Cone said that “Christ crucified empowered them to believe that they would not be defeated by the troubles of this world, no matter how great and painful their suffering. . . Black ministers preached about Jesus’ death more than any other theme because they saw in Jesus’ suffering and persecution a parallel to their own encounter with slavery, segregation, and the lynching tree.”[6]
Mitri Raheb says that “the climax of the New Testament could not have been anything else but God on the cross. Palestine was the unexpected place for God’s self-revelation. And that meant that defeat in the face of empire, was not an ultimate defeat. For it enabled the people of Palestine to survive all defeats. It made the defeat lose its teeth, death lose its sting, and empire lose its victory. It ensured that empires were incapable of celebrating their victories, because while they crushed the people they occupied, they weren't able to crush their spirit. It helped them not surrender after each defeat, but to pick themselves up and start over again.” [7]
Contemporary black theologian Kelly Brown Douglas echoes this. She writes, “Maintaining the connection between the cross and the empty tomb is essential to the meaning of the resurrection itself. It grounds the resurrection in history. It makes clear that the evil that God overcomes is historical, that is, that God really defeats that power of this world. . . . It is the connection between the cross and resurrection that has enabled black people to know that God, as revealed in Jesus, intimately understands their suffering and pain. It also lets them know that God can and will overcome it.”[8]
Somehow, paradoxically, the God who suffers, the one who is god-forsaken and powerless, brings a powerful hope.
Friends, this sermon has been theologically dense, more like a seminary lecture than a sermon, rightfully speaking. These are ideas which I find profound and hopeful, and truly life-giving, but I have not done justice to them. I hope that I have perhaps enlivened our imaginations.
I believe that one of our tasks in understanding the cross is to recognize when and where crucifixion is happening in our time. If we perceive the similarities between the cross and the lynching tree, then perhaps we can also see that black and brown bodies suffering the repeated violence within our criminal legal system are also being crucified. Perhaps we can see the migrants and refugees who are dying because of systematic denials of safety and shelter and recognize them as crucified people. Or when we consider Gaza and the continued oppression of the Palestinian people, may we recognize the cross once again. Wherever we recognize it, may we follow Christ in embracing the path of solidarity. And thanks be to God who understands and has overcome the power of this world. Amen.
[1] Mitri Raheb and Suzanne Watts Henderson, The Cross in Contexts: Suffering and Redemption in Palestine, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), p. 16
[2] Mitri Raheb and Suzanne Watts Henderson, The Cross in Contexts, p. 20
[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, trans. Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol I, ed Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, and Renate Bethge, with Ilse Todt (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010) p. 478-479.
[4] Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 276
[5] Dorothee Soelle, Theology for Skeptics: Thinking about God, ( Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), p 101
[6] James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2013), p 2, 75
[7] https://www.mitriraheb.org/en/article/1487339798
[8] Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God.
( Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2015), p. 187