Tag: cross bearing

The Lies We Tell About Suffering: Why This Matters Now

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Easter, Sermons Year ALeave a comment

1 Peter 2:19-25

As you know, my mother has been living with excruciating pain, pain from spinal stenosis that grew so severe, that just a couple of weeks ago, it overwhelmed her body to the point that she had to be intubated.

Whenever you stand close to suffering like that, you hear things differently. For one, you start to notice how quickly people reach for explanations for the suffering.

And one of the ways good-intentioned people of faith do that, often without even realizing it, is by spiritualizing the suffering.

We say, “God must have a plan” or “everything happens for a reason” or “This is just a cross she has to bear.”

So today, I want to say this as personally and as plainly and as faithfully as I know how:

This pain my mother has been enduring is not God’s will. Her suffering is not something God has ordained. There is nothing holy about the agony that takes her breath away. There is nothing sacred about a body pushed to its limits by disease.

God is not the author of this pain. But also hear me say this: neither do I believe God is detached from it. My faith tells me that God suffers and grieves with my mother and with her family. As much as I love my mother, I believe God loves her more. That means that God longs for her healing and comfort, even more than I do.

One of the reasons people spiritualize pain is because they also spiritualize relief from pain.

When they narrowly avoid an accident, they say, “God was with me.” When the test results come back clear, they say, “God protected me.” Anytime things go their way, they are quick to assume divine favor.

And while their words may come from a deep place of gratitude, they carry a dangerous implication. Because if God gets the credit for our protection, then what do we say about those who were not protected?

If God is the reason one person survives, what does that say about God for the one who does not? Without meaning to, we begin to build a theology where God is selectively or arbitrarily present: showing up for some, absent for others; protecting some, abandoning others; healing some, afflicting others.

And that is not the God revealed in Jesus. The God of Jesus does not stand at a distance, pulling strings or pushing buttons, deciding who suffers and who doesn’t. The God we meet in Jesus enters into suffering, weeps at the bedside, stands alongside the broken, and refuses to let pain have the final word. The God of Jesus is always a healer.

Another reason we spiritualize suffering comes from misinterpreting scripture, like this morning’s epistle lesson.

The letter we call “First Peter” was written to people who knew what it meant to suffer, to people navigating systems that did not value their lives, to people learning how to hold onto hope when the world around them felt hostile, uncertain, and unjust.

And into that reality comes this word: “if you endure when you do good and suffer for it, this is a commendable thing before God.”

Here the text is talking about a completely different type of suffering than what my mother and some of us are enduring.

Jesus was talking about this kind of suffering when he called people “to deny themselves and take up their cross” (Matthew 16:24).

This is where a dangerous confusion has crept into the life of the church. People have started calling burdens that Jesus never asked anyone to carry, “the cross.”  Diabetes: “it’s the cross I bear.” Arthritis: “it’s the cross I carry.”

But hear this: heart disease, cancer, auto-immune disease, spinal stenosis, COPD: they are not crosses. They are not divine assignments. They are part of a broken world, a world that God so loves that God is always moving toward its healing.

And when we call sickness “the cross we bear,” we do more harm than we realize. We justify pain that needs care, treatment, and compassion. And we excuse systems that deny people the resources they need to live.

So, hear me again: God does not desire disease. God does not will sickness. God is not glorified when bodies break down. And it is not commendable to God when people are denied healthcare in the richest nation on earth.

So, if sickness is not the cross Jesus asks us to carry, then what is?

The cross is the suffering that comes from a faithful life. The cross is what happens when we stand up in a world organized around injustice and violence and say: “This is not right!” The cross is what happens when we refuse to go along with systems that harm, exploit, and destroy. The cross is what happens when love refuses to stay quiet.

This is the kind of suffering 1 Peter is talking about: “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps” (verse 21).

And what were those steps?

Jesus didn’t suffer because he was passing out free tickets for people go to heaven when they die.

Jesus suffered because: He told the truth in a world built on lies; He stood with the poor in a system that depended on their exploitation; He practiced nonviolence in a culture addicted to domination; He challenged both religious and political leaders when they used their power to harm rather than to heal.

And then the text says: “When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten” (verse 23).

That sounds like weakness, but it’s far from it. It’s disciplined, courageous, unyielding love. It’s moral defiance. It’s the refusal to become what you oppose.

And church, that is the way we are called to live right now. Because we are living in a moment where we are being lied to about human suffering.

There are voices right now telling us to accept rising costs as a necessary burden, to see it as patriotic sacrifice during a time of war. But we must clear: that’s not the cost of following Christ. That’s the cost of poor, corrupt, immoral, egotistical decisions made by dishonest people in power who rarely bear the consequences themselves.

The call of Jesus is to reject the lies and to tell truth—

To say that war, no matter how it is justified, is a failure to obey the greatest commandment love one another as we love ourselves and a direct contradiction of God’s will for the world

 To say that peace is not naïve, but it’s the only path that reflects the heart of God.

And to say that we will not stay silent when violence is blessed with religious language or injustice is wrapped in patriotic rhetoric.

         The call of Jesus is to reject all the lies we are told about suffering.

Today, we are told that some lives are expendable in the pursuit of security or power. We are told that environmental destruction is simply the cost of doing business. We are told the lie that poverty is inevitable. And if we are not careful, we will begin to accept these things as truth, as normal, maybe even necessary.

But the gospel, the gospel will not let us do that: insisting that no child, anywhere, should be sacrificed for the ambitions of empire; insisting that healthcare is not a privilege but a human right; insisting that the earth is not a commodity, but part of our very being; insisting that the poor are not a problem to be managed but beloved members of our human family.

And when we begin to live into that truth, when we speak it, when we organize around it, when we embody it, we will face opposition, and we will inevitably suffer. We will be dismissed. We will be labeled unrealistic. We will be pushed to the margins.

That’s the cross of Jesus. That’s the cross we carry. It’s not the suffering imposed on us by a broken system. It’s the suffering that comes when we refuse to cooperate with it. It’s the pain we endure understanding that Jesus did not go to the cross because he was sick. He went to the cross because he confronted everything that makes us sick.

He exposed the lies of empire. He disrupted systems of exploitation.
He proclaimed good news to the poor and release to the captives. And the powers could not tolerate that kind of love. So, they crucified him.

And 1 Peter reminds us: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness” (verse 24). Do you hear that? Not just believe in righteousness. But to live for it, to embody it.

It’s the kind of righteousness that looks like communities organizing for accessible healthcare. It looks like neighbors showing up for one another when systems fail. It looks like people of faith standing in the public square, refusing to let policies that harm the vulnerable go unchallenged. It looks like protecting the earth, not just in word, but in action. It looks like building a world where nobody is disposable.

 And that kind of life will always come with a cost. But here’s the good news:

The suffering that comes from love, from justice, from truth, is never wasted. Because “by his wounds we have been healed.”

The good news of Easter is that the cross was not the end of the story. It was the exposure of everything that is wrong with the world and the beginning of God making it right. It was God taking the very worst of humanity and transforming it.

And if we are to live as Easter people, then we must answer the call to be people who refuse to waste the wounds of this world, to be people who take what is meant for harm and turn it into healing:

rejecting disease as God’s will and fighting for healing;

rejecting poverty as inevitable and working for justice;

 rejecting environmental destruction as the cost of progress, and protecting the creation as sacred;

and rejecting war as necessary and laboring for peace.

And when the cost comes, and it will, we carry it not as a burden of despair, but as a witness:

a witness that another world is possible;

a witness that love is stronger than violence;

a witness that truth is stronger than lies.

Our text ends with this promise: “You were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls” verse 25).

Which means we do not belong to the systems that harm us. We do not belong to empire.

We belong to a Shepherd who walks with us, who guides us, who sustains us, even in the face of suffering. And more than that, we belong to a God who is already bringing resurrection out of crucifixion.

So, let’s not be afraid of the cost and boldly carry the cross that love requires.

Let’s speak the truth that justice demands.

Let’s live the life that reflects the heart of God.

And let’s trust that the wounds of this world will not be wasted.

Because in the hands of God, even suffering becomes a seed. And resurrection is already breaking through. Amen.

There’s a Cross Involved

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Year A7 Comments

I have a confession this morning. This preaching thing is hard. It’s hard on me, and I know it’s hard on you. And there are some Sundays I wished I didn’t have to do it. Not because it’s Labor Day weekend and half the congregation is out of town, but because as a lectionary preacher, as someone who does not choose my own scripture to preach, I sometimes have to preach scripture that I don’t want to preach.

This morning’s lectionary gospel lesson is especially problematic for a new preacher, one who really likes their new congregation, and who really wants their congregation to like them.

Sometimes preaching can be fun, like last Sunday when the text speaks of the church possessing the keys to break loose some heaven on earth, of the church being on the offensive, confronting the forces of death, darkness and despair, with the promise that, in the end, love always wins! Now, that will preach!

But then you have a text like the one we have this morning. After Jesus announces that love will indeed win, freedom will ring, death will be defeated, Easter will happen, he says, “but before any of that can take place, somebody needs to pick up and carry a cross.”

Peter immediately takes Jesus aside and rebukes him. Of course, he does! For who wants to hear a sermon like that?

And then we hear what are perhaps the most offensive words Jesus ever spoke: “Get behind me Satan.”

It is then that our scripture lesson becomes even more difficult to hear: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Jesus is implying for love to win, for heaven to break loose, for freedom to ring, there’s a cross involved. And it’s not just Jesus who has to carry a cross, it’s anyone who wants to follow him, anyone who wants to bring some heaven to this earth, some wholeness to this fragmented world. Although we possess the keys to break loose some heaven on earth; to use those keys, for love to truly win, we must be willing to sacrifice everything.

Can you see why I don’t want to preach this text this morning? Nobody wants to hear that!

So, what we preachers do with a text like this, especially preachers who want their congregations to like them, is to walk it back, or dial it back.

 To avoid upsetting too many congregants, preachers interpret carrying a cross (a symbol of execution, assassination and murder) as simply doing things for the church that we might not want to do.

For example, we say things like:

“Somebody needs to carry a cross by volunteering one Sunday morning to help in the nursery” (By the way, Gretchen did call me this week and asked me to mention that).

“Somebody needs to carry a cross by stepping up to chair a ministry team” (By the way, I understand that the Christian Education team currently needs someone).

Or “the preacher needs to carry a cross by showing up on Sunday morning to preach a sermon, even a sermon he doesn’t want to preach.

Now, that’s a sermon we can all tolerate. Right?

However, I often wonder how much better this world would be if preachers did not walk or dial back these words of Jesus? What if we preached these words the way Peter heard them, in a way that was so offensive, that made Peter do something as audacious as pulling aside and rebuking the Messiah and Son of the living God?

Jesus said: “…he must go to Jerusalem” (notice the urgency here. “He must”). “He must go to Jerusalem” to serve on a ministry team?  No. To preach a difficult sermon? No. “To undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed.”

In other words, I believe Jesus is saying: If you follow the way of love that you see me demonstrate. If you love all people and teach others to love all people, especially those who have been pushed to the margins by self-serving religion: sick people, Eunuchs (who, today, would be considered a part of the LBGTQ community); poor people; people of other ethnicities, and people of other religions—if you teach people that God even wants us to love our enemies—if you point out, speak out and call out the demonic forces of evil that are oppressing people, if you stand up to hate and attempt to disarm hate, then there will be some people, probably religious people, who are going to want to kill you.

This past Monday, I attended a beautiful gathering of clergy on the campus of the University of Lynchburg to consider ways we can work together in this city. Meeting in that room vowing to partner with white and black pastors, male and female pastors, along with a Jewish Rabbi, I could not help to think how far we have come in the last 100 years. But in order to get here, the truth is: somebody had to pick up and carry a cross.

I believe Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood this.

Bonhoeffer did not have to return to Germany to stand against the Nazi aggression. After all, he was safe and sound visiting New York City in the early 1940’s. He was free to stay in America and preach the gospel from the safety of a free church pulpit or teach New Testament in the peace and freedom of a university. But when he decided to follow Jesus, he knew there would be a cross involved. Bonhoeffer understood “saying ’yes’ to God requires saying ‘no’ to all injustice, to all lies, and to all oppression” even if it gets you killed. So, he returned to Germany, and for helping Jews escape and flee to Switzerland, he was arrested and executed by the Nazis just days before the war ended in 1945.

Ten years later, the Rev. George Lee, one of the first black people to register to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi, used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote, despite the many death threats he received. White government officials offered Lee protection on the condition he end his voter registration efforts. However, Rev. Lee understood that if justice was going to prevail, if heaven was going to break loose, somebody needed to pick up and carry a cross. So, Rev. Lee kept preaching, and he kept printing, until he was murdered by White Supremacists.

William Lewis Moore, a postman in Baltimore, could have remained safe and comfortable in his home in Maryland in 1963. But instead, he decided to pick up a cross and travel to Mississippi.  There, Moore staged a one-man march against segregation to deliver a letter to the governor urging an end to the hate. But before making it to Jackson, he was shot and killed.

In 1964, the Rev. Bruce Klunder, a Presbyterian minister, was aware he was carrying a cross every time he demonstrated for fair housing and spoke out against segregation and discrimination. But when he decided to follow Jesus, he decided that there were things more important in this world than his life. And one day, while out protesting the construction of a segregated school in Cleveland, Ohio, he was brutally murdered when he was crushed to death by racist operating a bulldozer.

The following year, after watching state troopers attack civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, the Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston, drove to Selma, picked up a cross and joined the marchers. After the march, while he was walking down a street in Selma, he was attacked and beaten to death by white men.

After Viola Liuzzo, a housewife and mother from Detroit, saw the televised reports of the attack on the Edmund Pettus bridge by state troopers, she decided to pick up a cross and follow Jesus alone to Alabama to help with the Selma march. Though none went with her, she still followed. And while she was helping to ferry marchers between Selma and Montgomery, she was shot and killed by a Klansmen.

That same year, Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal Seminary student in Boston, decided to pick up a cross and go to Alabama to help with black voter registration. He was arrested at a demonstration, jailed, and then suddenly released, only to be immediately shot to death by a deputy sheriff.

In 1966, Vernon Dahmer, a wealthy businessman from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, picked up a cross when he offered to pay poll taxes for those who couldn’t afford the fee required to vote. The night after a radio station broadcasted Dahmer’s offer, his house was fire-bombed. Days later, Dahmer died from severe burns.

Two years later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister and leader of the Civil Rights Movement, knew that if freedom was to ever ring, if his dream of a beloved community was ever to be realized, somebody needed to pick up and carry a cross. Thus, despite receiving countless death threats, King kept preaching. He kept marching. He kept protesting. He kept carrying a cross, no turning back, until he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

As the late Frank Tupper, my seminary professor of theology, once said: “There’s a lot of correlation between what happened in Memphis in 1968 and what happened in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.”

Whether we like it or not, when Jesus talked about carrying a cross, he wasn’t talking about working in the nursery or serving on a ministry team, as important as those things are. He was talking about a passionate, courageous willingness to put it all on the line. His words are nothing less than radical. For he doesn’t say that we cannot be exemplary disciples, super-hero disciples, unless we carry a cross. He says that we cannot call ourselves disciples at all unless we are willing to sacrifice it all.

I recently saw a sign outside of a church which boasted: “We help people win.”

The problem with that is that our faith is not about winning. Our faith is about losing.

This thing called “discipleship,” this thing called “church,” is not about achieving a good, better, happy or successful life, or even gaining an eternal life. It’s about dying to self.

It’s not about receiving a blessing. It’s about a willingness to risk it all to be a blessing.

It’s not about having our souls fed. It’s about sacrificing it all to feed the hungry.

It’s not about finding a home. It’s about giving it all to provide a home for the homeless.

It’s not about prosperity. It’s about giving everything we have to the poor.

It’s not about getting ahead. It’s about sharing with people who can barely get by.

It’s about courageously taking risks. It’s about challenging the powers-that-be. It’s about raising our voices in front of the city council, getting arrested if we must. It’s about an unwavering, fearless willingness to lose it all while fighting for the marginalized and standing against the haters.

The Rev. Dr. William Barber, a Disciples minister who has been arrested 17 times for protesting injustices, says that one of his arrest records reads: “praying too loud.”

When we call ourselves disciples, we are saying that we have decided to follow Jesus, which always involves praying loudly for God’s peace and justice, standing on the side of love, even if it costs us our very lives. We are saying that we’re going to follow Jesus wherever he leads us, even into dark, dreadful, dangerous places. Though none go with us, though friends and family forsake us, though proud boys threaten us, we still will follow. Our crosses we’ll carry, forward together, not one step back. Until we see Jesus. No turning back, no walking it back, no dialing it back, no turning back, no turning back.

-Sermon inspired the prophetic preaching of Rev. Dr. William Barber

Pastoral Prayer

Before he was executed by the Nazis in 1945, German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the following words that I believe the American Church needs to hear again:

Cheap grace is the preaching of…forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession…  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate. Costly grace is…the gospel which must be sought again and again. The gift which must be asked for, the door at which one must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs us our lives. It is grace because it gives us the only true life.

The following pastoral prayer was inspired by Bonhoeffer’s timeless words:

O good and gracious God, we come to this place this morning to recommit ourselves to being faithful disciples of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. However, if we are ever going to truly follow Jesus, we will first need to repent of our sins that are derived from our love with what your servant Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.”

We gather in this place to hear preaching that will remind us that we are loved and forgiven; not to hear that we need to change our selfish ways.

We gather to remember the way we came up out of the waters of our baptism to symbolize life abundant and eternal; not to remember our immersion into the waters to symbolize death to self.

We come to gather around a table to receive the gift of Holy Communion; not to confess our sins and our shortcomings.

We come to this place to be accepted with grace and love; not to be encouraged to accept others with grace.

We come here to worship at the foot of the cross; not to pick it up and carry it ourselves.

We come here to worship Christ in the safety and comfort of this sanctuary; not fully realizing that the Christ is actually alive today, present here, calling us, prodding us, pulling us to follow him out into a risky and uncomfortable world.

So, O God, forgive us of our love for “cheap grace.” Help us to truly repent, turn from our selfish ways and seek to live for a grace, in a grace, and by a grace that is worthy of your sacrificial love for us, even if it is “costly.”

May we keep asking, keep knocking at your door, keep giving our lives away to you, keep denying ourselves, and keep looking to you for the strength we need to pick up our crosses and follow our Lord and our Savior wherever he leads. Because we know that this grace, although it costs us our very lives, is the only way to experience life now and forever.