meeting in Heidelberg. It was in this presentation that he first explicitly introduced the rudiments of his theology of the cross.

Transcription

1 The Great Refusal The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 19, Year B); September 14, 2003 Advent Lutheran Church, Morgan Hill, CA Rev. Anita R. Warner Text: Mark 8: Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" 28 And they answered him, "John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." 29 He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Messiah." 30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. 31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." 34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." A few months after he had achieved notoriety through the unexpectedly wide circulation of his Ninety-Five Theses to be specific, in April of 1518 Luther was required by the head of his Augustinian order to present an account of himself at the Chapter

2 meeting in Heidelberg. It was in this presentation that he first explicitly introduced the rudiments of his theology of the cross. [19] That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened. [20] He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross. [21] A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is. Here we have a contrast: the way of glory and the way of the cross. It is this contrast that is at the heart of the conversation between Jesus and Peter in today's Gospel reading. Jesus has been teaching and healing and feeding and trying to take a break from the ubiquitous crowd. This week, Jesus heads northeast to Caesarea Philippi. Come on, let's go with him. This setting is one of the most beautiful and luxuriant in Palestine. We find ourselves on a terrace 1,150 feet above sea level, overlooking the north end of the Jordan Valley. To the northeast, Mt. Hermon towers 9,100 feet high. To the west stretch coveted fertile plains. The terrace is watered by one of the sources of the River Jordan, a spring from the cool cave. Let's go in. Here is housed an ancient Greek shrine dedicated "to Pan and the nymphs." This spot is one of those places where your soul sits up and takes notice. Over the years, it has been dedicated to the worship of many deities. What a perfect spot for Jesus to turn to his disciples and invite them to confess what exactly is on their hearts concerning him. [1] Peter confesses, rightly, that he is the Christ, that he is God's Messiah, the one God would send to the world. "Then [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." He said all this quiet openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and

3 said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting you mind not on divine things but on human things." There is something very human about wanting to be on the winning team. As baseball season is in mid-september, and the Giants and A's keep their winning records, fans like me are glad. I'm grateful that this year I no longer have to follow the Detroit Tigers! Football fans are happy when their team wins whether their college team of pro team. We want to have a winning team. Perhaps this is why, as Jurgen Moltmann said of the theology of the cross, "There is a good deal of support in the tradition for the theology of the cross, but it was never much loved." What is the way of the cross? What do we mean by the theology of the cross? Sometimes the most important things can first be described by what they are not. Jesus rebuked Peter because there, surrounded by the glory of that place, Peter wanted to substitute a way of glory for the way of the cross. (In my descriptions of the way of glory and the way of the cross I am indebted to Douglas John Hall, who wrote The Cross in Our Context (Fortress, 2003).) The way of glory is, first of all, triumphalism. Triumphalism refers to the tendency in all strongly held worldviews, whether religious or secular, to present themselves as full and complete accounts of reality, leaving little if any room for debate or difference of opinion and expecting of their adherents unflinching belief and loyalty. The only antidote to religious triumphalism is the readiness of communities of faith to permit doubt and self-criticism to play a vital role in the life of faith. Luther, (as was Shakespeare a little later on), was highly conscious of the complexity and mystery of the world; he was therefore skeptical of systems that explained the world too handily, and especially when those systems had to back up their explanations with force (with papal bulls and inquisitions and burnings-at-thestake). Luther wanted a faith that allowed him, with all his warts, to be honest both about the limitations of human comprehension

4 and the hiddenness of God. In the Heidelberg Disputation, Luther said, "A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is." At the very least, the theology of glory confuses people. But it is a particular kind of confusion. It is a confusion that substitutes an obvious, nonparadoxical, unconditional, and immediate awareness of divine presence and glory for the more concealed, tentative, indirect and paradoxical knowledge of God revealed through the crucified one. A theology of glory confuses and distorts because it presents divine revelation in a straightforward, undialectical, and authoritarian manner that silences argument, silences doubt silences, therefore, real humanity. It overwhelms the human with its brilliance, its incontestability, its certitude. Yet just in this it confuses and distorts, because God's object in the divine self-manifestation is precisely not to overwhelm but to befriend. [2] Christian theology was and is made for humankind, not humankind for theology. So if, in order to hold onto doctrine, I have to lie about life (which is the way of the theology of glory), or repress what is actually happening to me and my world, then doctrine is functioning falsely. As the modern French mystic, Simone Weil, wrote, "One can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of a pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms." [3] Because for Luther human existence is a frail and uncertain business, divinity for him is not first of all sovereign omnipotence, but astonishing compassion. The theology of the cross is first of all a statement about God, and what it says about God is not that God thinks humankind so wretched that it deserves death and hell, but that God thinks humankind and the whole creation so good, so beautiful, so precious in its intention and in its potentiality, that its actualization,

5 its fulfillment, its redemption is worth dying for. [4] The theology of the cross begins with a great refusal. It refuses any system of belief that capitalizes on and exploits the human need to control and repress truth, to hold to comforting and comfortable partial truths or even downright falsehoods that can seem to assuage the soul's thirst for certainty and ultimacy. Barbara Brown Taylor: "The dumbest people in the world are those who think they know. Their certainty about what is true not only pits them against each other; it also prevents them from learning anything new. This is truly dangerous knowledge. They do not know that they do not know, and their unlearned ignorance keeps them in the dark about most things that matter." There is a persistent warning in the theology of the cross to avoid the facile, the simplistic to offer easy religious answers to difficult human questions. The questions are never abandoned, because the world God loves must not be abandoned. The theology of the cross is sometimes accused of having a fixation on the negative indeed on all forms of suffering. It is not because Christianity is predisposed to pain, but only because there is pain. The world is full of pain, and God loves the world. This is why the Japanese theologian Kazuo Kitamori placed at the center of his theology "the pain of God." A religion, Christian or otherwise, that wishes to accentuate the positive without doing business with the negative may, in affluent and powerful societies like ours, enjoy a certain temporary success. But, as Dostoevsky insisted, it will turn to ashes in the face of one dying child. Certainly our God does comfort, and finally overcome, all pain, and will wipe away all tears. Death is the enemy "the last enemy" (I Cor. 15:26). But the message of the cross is that this enemy, and all other enemies, may only be overcome from within, not from above. And therefore the faith the emanates from this cross is a faith that enables its disciples to follow the crucified God into the heart of the world's darkness, into the very kingdom of death, and to look for light that shines in the darkness and only there. [5]

6 The virtues St. Paul names are faith, hope, and love. Remembering the importance of the via negativa what is not the three positive virtues should be stated together with what they negate: faith (not sight), hope (not consummation), love (not power). Without remembering what they are not, then these virtues too easily become platitudes. The theology of glory always tempts us; we are always tempted by sight, not faith; finality, not hope; and power, not love. [6] The ship's captain in the mid-atlantic Ocean called one of his passengers to the bridge of the ship and said, "To the best of my calculations, Mr. Spafford, this is where the tragedy occurred and your four daughters were drowned." Horatio G. Spafford had planned a family trip to Europe in November, Business affairs delayed his departure, but he sent his wife and four daughters to France on the ship as scheduled with a group of friends. At mid-ocean, the Ville du Havre was struck by another ship and, in only twelve minutes, disappeared under the waves. Mrs. Spafford was one of the survivors, but the four little girls perished. Now on board the first possible ship out of New York, Spafford stood on the bridge contemplating the loss of his girls. He stayed there for some time and then went to his cabin and wrote the poem that begins "When peace, like a river, attendeth my way " Sorrow and tragedy were no strangers to the Spaffords. After the 1871 Chicago fire, 300 had died and 100,000 were homeless. Spafford, a lawyer, spent two years trying to help those devastated by the fire, which had also wiped out the Spaffords' own extensive real-estate holdings on the north shore of Lake Michigan. Their four-year-old son, Horatio, Jr., died of scarlet fever. Christian friends in the Presbyterian congregation to which the Spaffords belonged maintained that some great sin in their lives had caused the Lord to inflict on them all these tragedies. The controversy grew until finally the Spaffords were asked to leave their church. With unwavering faith and trust in God, they departed.

7 This week, family members of the victims of September 11, 2001 have gathered to mourn their losses. "Religion kills!" proclaimed some students on college campuses following 9/11. The way of the cross invites us to mourn with those who mourn and continue to suffer; to reject the temptation to triumphal answers or responses to the sin of the world; to allow the truth to teach us for as long as we live; and to walk with Christ, as we are called, to face the darkness of our own deepest fears and to lose our lives for the sake of the good news of Christ's cross. The theology of glory claims to vanquish all that negates by presenting a triumphant positive. The theology of the cross provides a basis of trust and courage enabling faith to enter more deeply into the sphere of the negative, and to engage it engage, not conquer. This theology makes a foundational assumption that God, as God has been shown in the crucified one, is faithful: that is, that God has an abiding self-commitment to the creation, that God will not abandon the world and its creatures. And we, who are called by our crucified Lord to follow in the way of the cross, will be sustained as we engage our own suffering and the suffering of any of God's children. [1] Jean Lebbert, Currents in Theology and Mission (June 2003: Vol. 30, no. 3), p. 237 [2] Douglas John Hall, The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), pp [3] Quoted ibid., p. 28. [4] Ibid., p. 22. [5] Ibid., pp [6] Ibid. p. 33.