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Friday, Sept 03
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Sunday, March 09, 2003
Genesis 9:8-17, Ps. 25:1-9, 1Peter 3:18-22, Mark 1:9-15
First Sunday in Lent
Rev. Kwanza Yu
Jesus Alone to Lead Us
It is natural that human beings search to find a religion of “glory”. That is, people seek a religion that will shower them with blessings of health, wealth, and happiness. Naturally when Christians try to win converts to our faith, it is most tempting to hold out promises that acceptance of our faith will bring the converts success beyond their dreams.
When we lived in Dallas Texas there was a well-known pastor of a Pentecostal “mega-church called the Church on the Rock. Driving around town you would see billboards advertising this ministry. The billboards were always the same. They showed the pastor with gaudy diamond rings on every finger standing in front of his new Mercedes with a slogan such as “the road to success begins at the Church on the Rock.”
Most church growth strategy emphasizes “feeling good”. They appeal to the natural urges of the prospective converts by trying to show that it pays to be religious.
In the season of Lent we are reminded that Christianity is not a religion of glory, it is a religion of the cross. The reading of Mark helps us to understand what this means. It raises the problem that Christians must always face: again and again. Our experience of brokeness in life seems to contradict our faith. In the face of so much suffering, evil, and adversity, how can we believe in God’s goodness? How dare we affirm that he is a God of love?
Do you remember the story of Abraham and his son, Isaac? God tests Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son. To any parent this would be a painful test of faith. Down through the centuries parents have been asked to sacrifice their sons in war for the sake of their countries. When the grim word has come, “your son has be killed,” most parents have wondered deep in their hearts how God could allow such things to happen. They have asked how they could continue to believe that God is good and loving, but in Abraham’s case the problem went even deeper. Not only was he, a parent, asked to sacrifice his son, but also Isaac was the son who made the link between Abraham and the promised people.
Isaac was the living sign that God would keep his promise. If he were dead there would no longer be any reason to believe that God would keep his promise to make a covenant with Abraham and his peoples. How can Abraham keep his faith in such a situation? How can he trust a God who cannot seem to make up his mind? Abraham must have been tempted to turn away from God’s promise, tempted to turn away from a God who asks for sacrifice.
Mark, in his succinct way, sums up the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. When Jesus was baptized by John, he received like Abraham, God’s word of promise. And like Abraham, he was tested. Immediately he was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. At the baptism Jesus had been told that he was God’s beloved Son in whom God was pleased, and yet here he was being tempted like any other human being. Only Satan, wild beasts and angels were with Jesus. Surely there must have been times during the 40 days in the wilderness, Jesus wondered whether he could take seriously God’s words about his sonship.
And the problem did not end when Jesus came out of the wilderness. He heard the news that John, the Baptist had been sent to prison. Could Jesus hear of this without knowing that it was a foreshadowing of what fate would hold in store for him too?
I believe that these two passages powerfully remind us of the fact that Christianity is not a religion of glory. In our hearts we all desire a God who will use his power to protect us from the ills that beset those around us. Jesus, however, again and again warned those who would follow him that they had to take up their crosses. These scripture passages help us to see the meaning of the cross that lies at the center of Christian discipleship. Christian faith is not a form of magic that will preserve the believers from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. On the contrary, it would seem that Christians might be in for more than their share of the hardships and sufferings of life.
But these lessons have more to say than that our faith will not protect us from the difficulties of life. Each of them also affirms that it is in the moments of suffering and testing that the triumph of faith appears. Abraham goes out to sacrifice his son hoping against hope. And at the last moment, God provides the ram as the alternative sacrifice.
It is clear that Jesus is not on an evening walk in the wilderness; he is being tested intensely. He is with the wild animals and angels. For 40 days the struggles continue.
So the Christian can continue to believe in God’s love despite all that seems to deny it because the Christian knows that God himself has suffered and continues to suffer with us. The love of God that is manifested in Jesus Christ is a love that carries us through all of life’s struggles.
Yet I want to remind you that there is one great difference between the experience of Jesus and the experience of Abraham. The Christian cannot read about Abraham’s testing without remembering that God gave his own Son and there was no ram offered as a substitute
During the Korean War a story was told about a Sunday School class that was studying the death of Jesus. When the teacher had finally finished telling how Jesus died, one little boy leaped up in anger and cried out, “But where were the marines?” And that is that point of Christian faith. Jesus died without the marines coming in for the last minute rescue. No legion of angels intervened to rescue God’s Son from the cross. Had an intervention saved Jesus, Christianity would have been a religion of glory rather than a religion of the cross. We would seek the evidence of God in our triumphs and successes. But because God did not spare his own Son we find God’s love in our sufferings and defeats.
The religion of glory always wants to have Easter without Good Friday. The Greeks denied that a God could suffer. To them it seemed obvious that God could not share the finite and human weakness of suffering. But Christianity is a religion of the cross because it is the Good News of a God who did not stay in the remote protection of heaven, far from the struggle of earth. On the contrary, God came into our life through his Son and here he drank the full cup of suffering, temptation and sorrow. Jesus could call his followers to take up their crosses because first he bore his own cross. God’s love can come to us in our sufferings because God himself has first suffered in, with, and for us.
Several years ago I visited Bette, a member of Nebo Lutheran Church in Chicago. Betty was dying a painful death from cancer. I marveled to see that in the midst of her suffering she had a radiant and triumphant faith in God’s love. The next day I sat in a religion class on a seminary campus where the students were arguing that it was impossible to believe in God because of the suffering in the world. I could not help but compare the two events. The dying woman, in the very midst of her suffering, knew the love of God and gratefully expressed her thanks to God for his goodness. The students, most of whom had no firsthand knowledge of any real suffering, could not believe in God because of the suffering in the world.
What was the difference? The students were wrestling with a philosophical question upon the intellectual level alone. On that level, we have few answers. But Bette was speaking from out of her experience of life, suffering, and approaching death. She knew from her life about the love of God in Christ and because she knew it, she had an answer to suffering. It was not an answer to a philosophical question, but it was an answer to a suffering of life. It did not give Bette any glib solution to intellectual puzzles but it enabled her to live and die with Christ.
Bette was in her pain but she was not alone. Even when it seemed she was alone, she was not. In the painful times and places in her life, she knew that she could rely on Jesus and Jesus alone to lead her through this difficult time. She understood that Jesus was like us in many ways. He understood her because he had gone through human experiences she was experiencing. He was lonely. He knew rejection. He suffered and experienced pain.
Our circumstances – grief, loneliness, and uncertainty – may be the wasteland through which we walk during the 40 days. We can still rely on Jesus who promised he will never fail nor forsake us, Even difficult times can serve to drive us closer to Christ if we turn to him for the power of strength. The Bible reminds us that “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it (1 Cor.10: 13).
Repenting, believing, and relying – this is how we are to respond to Jesus inaugural address: ”The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.” As we journey through Lent to the cross, let us give thanks that the way of salvation is prepared for us, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen.
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