NLC Sermon
March 28, 2010
Passion Sermon
- We serve a crucified God. What does it mean to serve a crucified God?
- As jennifer pointed out in her sharing of the Palm Sunday story
- A crucified God is not a victorious God – at least not in the way we typically think of victory.
- A crucified God is not a triumphant God – not in the way we typically think of triumph.
- A crucified God does not promise to us that everything is going to work out the way we want it to.
- We serve a crucified God. What does it mean to serve a crucified God?
- It means that in the moment of our deepest despair,
- In the hours of our deepest fears,
- During our seasons of greatest doubt,
- In those times in our life when the “all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good” God seems so distant.
- In precisely THAT moment, the crucified God we serve is closest to us.
- We serve a crucified God. What does it mean to serve a crucified God?
- It means that when our God given passion for life & light & love & peace,
- Collides head first into a world of death & darkness & hate & violence,
- And leaves us flattened
- That in that moment our crucified God is closest to us.
- When our plans for community fail to fulfill their promise
- When our marriages and families are filled with strife
- When our plans to begin a family are postponed or thwarted
- When our dreams for tomorrow are sidetracked by job loss or the inability to find one
- These are not the times when our God is furthest from us, but nearest.
- We serve a crucified God. What does it mean to serve a crucified God?
- It means that we serve a God that has suffered all that we might ever suffer and more,
- We serve a God who more than empathizes with us He is present with us in our suffering.
- Our God is not far off. Not ever.
- Does this mean that we celebrate or even minimize suffering? No. Especially not the suffering we see in others? Not ever. We fight it, as Christ did, whenever and wherever we see it.
- We do not seek out suffering for sufferings sake. This is not, what I believe, we see Jesus doing on the cross.
- This doesn’t mean we act recklessly with our life either. Jesus was strategic and intentional about when and where he stuck his neck out.
- And I’ve been doing this long enough to see a number of examples of recklessness, even for the sake of others, ultimately bringing more suffering into the world, not less.
- But it does mean that our life of faithfulness to our crucified God might just call us to follow him into suffering. And when that happens He will be there with us.
- I believe that there are two paths that we can take in our life. A path where safety is the highest goal which leads to a sort of living death. And the path of an openness to suffering that leads to true life.
- The only way to be safe in this life is to refuse risk. Including the risk to love, the risk to be part of a family, a community, the risk to follow a dream, the risk to stand up for what is right. Life that refuses to take any of these risks is not much of a life at all.
- But the path to real life, the path less traveled, is a path that is filled with suffering and the potential for suffering.
- To love is to increase by at least %100 your opportunities for suffering. Every pain of your beloved is a pain of yours.
- To love a child is to increase that ten more times. I suffer pain already from missing the 2 year old Ethan I will never get to hang out with again.
- To be in authentic community is to expand the circle of possible suffering even larger, and to reach out to our neighbor, to love our enemy, these things practically guarantee a level of suffering on our part.
- To stand up for what’s right, to proclaim the coming of the KOG, to preach good news as well as repentance into a world that doesn’t want to hear either is to invite the sort suffering that Christ endured into our lives.
- To serve a crucified God does not mean we honor suffering in and of itself, but it does provide for us an image of what following this God is all about.
- To live a life that pursues light & love & life & peace, in a world of death & darkness & hate & conflict will result in a life that has its fair share of suffering.
- The good news of the cross, the joy of following the crucified God is not that we get to avoid that suffering but rather that when we experience it we know that God is with us.
- We have a hundred choices every day. And most of the time we are going to choose the safest path, that’s just human nature.
- But what I would like to suggest to you today is that the crucified God is not afraid to call you out of that safety
- Not offering you any guarantees other then the promise that no matter what happens the crucified God is with you.