Some facts are just harder to accept than others

For all my friends who suffer- with grief, with loss, with illness, with tragedy, with the unanswered

According to those people who research and calculate such things, it was probably April 7 A.D. 30, that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified outside the city walls of Jerusalem.  The gospels do not agree on exactly what time or which day of the week that occurred, nor do they agree on who was or wasn’t there.  But one thing was very clear from the gospel accounts, Jesus was killed. Sometimes the most important facts are just harder to accept.  That God should will the death of Jesus is perhaps the single hardest fact for of Christianity for me to believe.  The virgin birth, changing water into wine, walking on water, feeding the multitude with just a loaf of bread and a fish, making a blind man see with spit and mud, make a lame man walk just by a word, and a bodily resurrection – those stories give me pause and to be honest with you,  one can still practice Christianity and not accept those things as factual.  Truth and facts are two entirely different things.  One does not preclude the other.   But the crucifixion is non negotiable.  It happened.  

I heard Barbara Taylor Brown say once in a Good Friday sermon, “Good Friday is the day we receive no answer and must suffer that silence with the crucified one-wondering what it says about us, wondering what it says about God.”  Physical pain is not the worst agony of the cross.  The betrayal of friends who were silent and ran when he needed them the most, a good friend selling him out for money, a close friend saying he never knew him. Those are nails driven through his heart.  But to me the worst agony is the complete utter silence of God.  God did not act that day.  God did not appear to be there.  God who by a single word could have made the pain bearable that day – did not speak.  I have always wanted to know where were the angels?  At the end of the day, the only one who speaks is Jesus.  Jesus screams at God that day, asking essentially, “Where are you?”

But I think that maybe God did speak that day.  “Jesus became victorious over his suffering that day by refusing to avoid it or to even lie about it.” He made suffering holy that day.  We are not supposed to enjoy suffering.  We can hate it. We can do every thing in our power to end it. But we cannot avoid it. We do not have that choice. Jesus is not outside of our suffering but in the very heart of it with us.  And maybe that is what the gospel said to us that day,

“When God is silent, people of faith cry out.  When people of faith cry out, it is God who speaks.”

Christianity is the only faith in the world that believes in a God who suffers.  It is not a terribly popular idea.  Jesus didn’t die just to pay a bill we owed God. The power of God in the cross is not to end human pain, but to enter into it.  God took the carnage of that day and worked with it to change it.  He held on to it for three days and returned it to us ALIVE.  God doesn’t prevent suffering rather He goes through it with us. 

There is a story that one day in Auschwitz; a group of Jews put God on trial.  They charged God with cruelty and betrayal.  They appointed prosecutors and defenders. They heard both sides of the argument. At the end of the proceedings, the verdict came back unanimous. The rabbi stood up to make the final pronouncement.  “This court finds God guilty as charged,” he said and “Now let us go pray. Amen.”