[This sermon is excerpted, at great length, from Two Bubbas and a Bible: http://lectionarylab.blogspot.com/2012/03/year-b-fifth-sunday-in-lent.html]
+When I was younger, I was sure that Jesus didn’t really suffer on the cross. I somehow rationalized that Jesus’ horrific death as outlined in our passion Gospels really wasn’t that bad. After all, Jesus is God’s son and God isn’t about to let God’s Son suffer such humiliation and agony, right? I ‘m sure I wasn’t alone in this rationalization—after all who wants to think about a parent letting their child endure such agony.
Jesus begged God to relive him from the horrors of Good Friday.
We don’t talk about this much, but it’s true.
On Maundy Thursday, in the garden, Jesus asks God to, if possible, remove this cup from him. On the cross he cries out, my God my God why have you forsaken me.
The author of today’s Epistle, the letter to the Hebrews writes: Jesus offered up prayers and supplication with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard.
He was heard, God heard Jesus’ pleas, yet Jesus died, a painful agonizing death.
Why? Why in the world didn’t God save Jesus from such a painful death?
The biblical commentator The Rev Dr Delmer Chilton relates the following story:
When I was about 12 or 13 I was in the Boy Scouts. One night at Scouts we were running a race and I tripped. I fell face down in gravel on the side of the road [and] lodged a piece of gravel [in] my forehead.
The rural medical clinic was a mile or so down the road from our meeting place. The Doctor and my father were both assistant Scoutmasters so they gathered me up and took me [there].
The doctor was good but his bedside manner was a bit on the brusque side. As I lie there on that cold, hard metal table he came at me with a huge needle to numb my forehead. I’m still not very fond of needles, but then I was deathly afraid of them.
I looked over at my Daddy and began to cry out, “Daddy, Daddy, daddy, please Daddy. Don’t let him hurt me, please Daddy. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.
The doctor threw a leg over me to hold me down, put his left arm down on my chest and proceeded to inject the needle. All the while I continued to cry and beg and plead for my Daddy to make him stop. And just as the needle entered I saw my Daddy’s hands, knuckles white as he clutched my jacket. I looked up and saw a tear in the corner of his eye. It was the only time I ever, ever saw him cry.
Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. I was heard, oh yes, I was heard. And I was denied.
Chilton continues by remarking:
Just like Jesus. This is the great and wondrous mystery of our faith:
Wherever are, God in Christ has been; fully, completely, totally.
Think about the most scared, lonely, and troubled you’ve ever been.
And Jesus has been there.
Think about the moments when you’ve felt ignored and abandoned by God.
And Jesus has been there.
Think about all the times when you just didn’t know if you could make it.
And Jesus has been there.
The Promise of the Gospel is not that if you are a Christian life will be easy. The Gospel is not about ways to make your life, your marriage, your career, your children or anything else work out in a way pleasing to yourself.
The Gospel is the call to follow Jesus to the cross and beyond:
To follow Jesus in serving the poor and needy.
To follow Jesus in reaching out to the despised and rejected.
To follow Jesus in standing up for those who are oppressed and ill-served by the world.
To follow Jesus in fighting against illness and evil wherever they may be found.
And sometimes—sometimes-- following Jesus to the cross means we will suffer for our commitments, that we too will be rejected and scorned as much as those with whom we take our stand.
Yes, Jesus calls us to follow him.
It’s not an easy way.
It’s not a painless path.
It’s not likely to be smooth sailing.
It’s the Way of the Cross.
The promise of the gospel is that where God calls us to go, Jesus has already been, and as we go, Jesus is going with us.
So my friends. I offer you a late Lent challenge. Spend this weak preparing yourself: prepare yourself to enter into the full anguish of Holy Week—not because you are masochistic and wish to experience pain and suffering, no….I invite you to enter into the anguish of God as parent. I invite you to spend the rest of Lent holding onto Jesus’ hand as he walks through his terror, as he walks through our betrayal, as we walks smack into death and comes out the other side. I invite you to shed a tear with our Divine Parent, a loving God who knows the only way to be with us is to walk with us, through everything, even the anguish and the pain. Yes Jesus had to suffer. Not because God is mean, and not because we should feel guilty for his death. Jesus had to suffer because we suffer, and God needs, God must, God LONGS to share that with us.
I invite you to remember that wherever life takes you, no matter how scary no matter how wondrous, God is there, shedding tears of sorrow and exclaiming shouts of joy.+
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