Was It Not Necessary?

There is probably no other question that gives me pause than this one.  Was it necessary that we kill Jesus of Nazareth?  Tomorrow we will celebrate Palm Sunday and physically and vocally enact the procession to Jerusalem.  We will cheer him on, lay down our garments, cheer and applaud; and then when he fails to live up to our expectations, we will turn on him and yell "crucify him" just that quick.

I don't question God's wisdom as wholly beyond anything we can grasp in this world.  As is asked of Job, "where you there when I laid the foundations of this world?"  No, I was not there.  That is something I hold on to dearly in faith.  I relish what Barbara Brown Taylor says: “I am not in charge of this House, and never will be. I have no say about who is in and who is out. I do not get to make the rules. Like Job, I was nowhere when God laid the foundations of the earth. I cannot bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion. I do not even know when the mountain goats give birth, much less the ordinances of the heavens. I am a guest here, charged with serving other guests—even those who present themselves as my enemies. I am allowed to resist them, but as long as I trust in one God who made us all, I cannot act as if they are no kin to me. There is only one House. Human beings will either learn to live in it together or we will not survive to hear its sigh of relief when our numbered days are done.” 

With a posture of humility, is the Cross a stumbling block or a stepping stone?  Maybe it is not either-or, but both-and.  I think the Theology of Glory gets a bad wrap for being solely focused on what God can do for us, a prosperity gospel of sorts.  While I stumble at the sight of the Cross, I also find it to reveal a truth about who we are and how we are wired.  At our crudest, when something disrupts our sense of well being, power, or prosperity, we seek to be rid of it.  The commerce of the world supports this reaction and gives us the tools to make such removals expedient.  But, for me, a true Theology of Cross and Theology of Glory are intertwined.

I find comfort in the three Solas of the Lutheran faith as I wrestle with the dappled wonder of divinity in so much of what I see as well as the broken travail of finitude.  These are my necessary things: grace, faith, and Word alone.  These are the stepping my stepping stones when I stumble.  This does not necessarily mean prosperity or an easy walk along the Way.  Perhaps this is where I find the heart of the Cross:  in being emptied of this life, in being emptied of my very own self in God, in finding less of me and more of God (I must decrease, He must increase as John says).  In emptiness I find resurrection and new life, freedom and resuscitation.  I like, once again, how Barbara Brown Taylor describes our awareness, our honest posture in faith:  If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God, then is it too big a stretch to declare that dumbfoundedness is what all Christians have most in common? Or that coming together to confess all that we do not know is at least as sacred an activity as declaring what we think we do know?” 

I am certainly dumbfounded.  God's power comes in what appears weak, foolish, and lowly.  That is a counter-intuitive wisdom that rings very true.  How can I posture myself this coming Holy Week to find that power in what appears weak, foolish, and lowly?  As we move through a healing service, stations of the Cross, vespers, foot washing, Holy Communion, and tenebrae there is the same truth sprinkled again and again:  Salvation comes in all the tight places where our lives are at risk, regardless of how we got there.  Salvation happens when we use a key to open a door we could have locked instead.  Sometimes that key is a human hand extended in love; sometimes that key is water, bread, wine, oil, tears or barrenness.  This is the Way, the way of life, and only God truly knows how it works.