Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Psalm 22:1-21

Hebrews 10:1-25

JOHN 18:1-19:37

Suffering and Glory

Attendance by St. Barnabas members at the three Good Friday services combined is a small fraction of the attendance we can expect on Easter. People don’t want to hear about the suffering of Christ, perhaps – just the good news, thanks. Forgiveness, new life, eternal life, all made possible by some means which is – embarrassing? God suffering? The rich and powerful don’t suffer – right? Isn’t that one reason why so many people strive to be rich and powerful as the prime objectives of their lives? And if God is both richer than rich – God owns the universe and all that is in it, after all – and if God holds all ultimate power, the idea of God suffering is – nonsensical, perhaps, or it calls into question how rich and powerful secular Americans could believe God to be. Or, for those without quite the faith to believe or the courage to disbelieve, the idea of a suffering God is…embarrassing.

It is different in countries where suffering is the most obvious and most widely shared fact of life. Perhaps in a country in which life expectancy is low – and dropping, due to H.I.V./A.I.D.S., or in which terrorists routinely murder civilians, or in which its own government makes war on its citizens, or in which a tiny elite controls the vast majority of the wealth while the majority of the people suffer, the idea of God suffering can be understood as what it is: Good news.

God suffers. Where people suffer, people relate to that. It means God really is Emmanuel, “God-with-us.”

That is why the images of the crucifixion I have seen from the Global South (what used to be called “The Third World”) can be so much more gruesome than the sanitized ones favored by prosperous Northern countries. For the crucifixion to make an impact, it had to be clearly more painful than normal daily life in places where people die regularly from diseases which usually exist only in textbooks in America, or from death squads, or by people of other faiths or no faith who routinely assault Christians.

Jesus himself, after all, lived and died in just such a country – not in a country where the cost of filling an SUV with gas is considered to be a Big Issue.

And Jesus used a word about his forthcoming death which certainly would sound bizarre to the ears of a prosperous, secular American. It is a word with special prominence in St. John’s Gospel, whose Passion Narrative we just heard. It is an old-fashioned word, also not much heard in America in 2006.

The word is “glory.”

The word was the title of a movie made a few years ago about the American Civil War, specifically about a black Union Army regiment fighting – at great personal risk – to win the war and to liberate the slaves. The soldiers risked not only life and limb as all soldiers do, they risked being enslaved themselves if they were captured by Confederate forces, for whom armed blacks fighting for freedom for “their” blacks was their worst nightmare.

So was there “glory” in 1864 in risking life, health and freedom for the potential freedom of other people whom one had never met and might never meet?

Yes, indeed.

In the Gospel for the Fifth Sunday in Lent this year, as he approaches the time of his crucifixion, Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.”

These are sobering words from a man who knew he would soon be tortured and left to die, not instantly, but over a period of hours, without anesthesia, abandoned by most of his followers and by all but one of his family members, mocked by passers-by and by at least one of those who died on another cross near him.

Glory? Giving his life so that other people, most of whom he had never met or were not even born yet, could be free? Free from slavery to sin in this life, free to live fully now, free from eternal death, free to experience eternal life?

Yes. That is glory.

And we are some of the slaves that he freed – if we accept both that liberation and the disciplines of freedom that he offers.

May we, who have taken the time to be here tonight, humbly accept our freedom bought by Christ’s suffering and death, accept the disciplines of being a freed disciple of Christ, and live so as to give glory to God by our sacrificial love for God and for our fellow creatures of God.

The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, New Jersey

April 14, 2006