What does Jesus' suffering on Good Friday tell us about God and our suffering?

I recently wrote an op-ed piece as an assignment for a class I am taking through Mars Hill Church in Seattle. That article can be seen here. The assignment was to interpret and comment on a particular aspect of culture from a Christian worldview. I have invited some of my friends from the Albuquerque portion of the class to share their papers as a guest post on this blog. I will be sharing some of their pieces over the next few weeks. As a side note, several of their papers deal specifically with Albuquerque culture. However, all of them have some great insights that are relevant and applicable to a variety of cultures. Enjoy!

What does Jesus' suffering on Good Friday tell us about God and our suffering?

By Daniel Schuman

Albuquerque is no stranger to suffering.  The violent crime rate in 2010 was higher than the national violent crime rate average by 94.92%.  Probably every one of us have grieved the senseless murder of a friend or loved one. Others of us have experienced the suffering of growing up without a Dad, leaving us vulnerable to poverty, emotional scars, and physical abuse.  Single mothers birthed more than half the babies born in New Mexico in 2005, which is higher than the national average.

At the same time, our beloved state has deep religious roots.  During Holy Week, especially on Good Friday, some thirty thousand people will make pilgrimage to the Catholic church- Santuario de Chimayó.  Some will walk hundreds of miles.  Others will carry crosses.  Why?  For example, Elisabeth Sacco had buried four of her loved ones during the last week, and it was all she could do to keep herself together as she reached the Santuario de Chimayó.  The walk, she said, helped her cope with the deaths.

One of the most troubling issues for people, whether they consider themselves religious or not, is understanding the presence of suffering in the world.  In fact, a Barna research poll found that the one question people would ask God if they had the opportunity was: “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” As New Mexicans, we are familiar with suffering, and most of us are familiar with the term Good Friday, but many of us don’t understand what it means.  I want to identify what Jesus’ crucifixion on Good Friday tells us about God, and secondly, what Good Friday shows us about how God relates to our suffering.

Like Albuquerque, the God of the Bible is no stranger to suffering.  The Bible teaches that Jesus was fully God, and that He came to this earth, born of the virgin Mary, taking on flesh.  Jesus was 100% God and 100% man.  This is called the “incarnation.”  Being God, Jesus was completely sinless.  Being human, Jesus experienced things common to humanity such as: hunger, thirst, pain, and even death. 

The murder of Jesus on what is called “Good Friday” is the most horrific event in all of history.  It is physical trauma, it’s ribbon-shredded flesh, it’s nakedness and shame, it’s the wrath of God being poured out, and it is glorious!  But, you interject, “How can this be good?”

 

Hebrews 12:2-3 states, “...looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”

First we need to realize that Jesus was not suffering because of His sin.  He was sinless.  The Bible teaches that those who place their confidence in Jesus as their substitute, trusting Jesus lived the perfect life that you could never live, and took the punishment that you deserve; you can be the beneficiary of all that He achieved.  So, on Good Friday Jesus was suffering because of my sins and your sins!  By placing your confidence in Jesus’ sacrifice on your behalf, you can know that the just punishment you deserve for breaking God’s commands can be erased. 

Furthermore, on Good Friday Jesus was also suffering taking upon Himself the shame from the ways that we have been shamefully sinned against by others; and thus, Jesus removes our shame.  This is called “expiation.”  This is great news for those who feel violated and defiled by heinous acts committed against them.  Jesus was publicly shamed, abused, and crucified.  For those trust in Him, Jesus can and will restore their dignity and identity.

Suffering is not something most of us would choose.  However, Jesus willingly chose suffering!  Why?  So, He could sympathize with our suffering, and so we could have the opportunity to be reconciled to God.  But, why does God still allow suffering?

I believe one reason that God allows suffering in this life, is so that we realize something is wrong with this world.  Things are not as they should be.  Things need to be set right.  Towards the end of “The Lord of the Rings”, Samwise Gamgee awakens after much suffering.  He says, “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead! Is everything sad going to come untrue?” Pastor and author Tim Keller, who spoke at the 9/11 fifth anniversary responded, “The answer is yes. And the answer of the Bible is yes. If the resurrection is true, then the answer is yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue.”[4]

God knows and feels what we do. He has wept, He has suffered, and He too had a beloved Son violently murdered.  And because Jesus, the God-Man died, and rose again victoriously; those who trust in Jesus can be assured, in time, everything sad is going to come untrue!  In Revelation, the last book of the Bible, Jesus promises that He is preparing a new home for His children, where there will be no more suffering, no more death, and no more tears.

Let’s enter into Good Friday, with all it’s suffering, and remember that even the most bitter of circumstances can be sweetened by the hope in the promises of God’s redeeming grace through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  Therefore, Jesus’ suffering on Good Friday and your suffering are not meaningless.  Rather, they are the doorway to enter into hope, healing, and where everything sad can come untrue!

Daniel is the worst sinner that he knows, but as He reminds himself of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection on his behalf, he is realizing that he is more loved and welcomed than he ever dared dream!  Daniel serves as the Director of Biblical Living at Mars Hill Church Albuquerque.

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Hymns vs. Contemporary Choruses

Some thoughts as a worship leader:

Worship through song should engage the whole person-mind, affections, and will. It should not just give us an emotional experience, but should leave our attitude and posture towards God and life changed. Many argue over whether hymns or contemporary choruses are a better vehicle for worship. This is often an argument over the value of engaging the mind verses the value of engaging the emotions. 

What is often left out of this discussion is the role of the will, that which leads to actions. If our worship through song is unconnected to how we live our lives then we are hypocrites. We can rise to the heights of passion or we can fill our minds with lots of great theology but if the 30 minutes of singing is unattached to how we live the rest of our lives we are fools. 

It is my opinion that both hymns and contemporary choruses can be a great tool for engaging the whole person in worship. I say this with the following warnings:

Those with a heavy bent towards contemporary choruses should be aware of the following risks: 
1) Neglecting to engage the mind, 
2) Singing songs that are more "me and my feelings" focused than God focused, 
3) Engaging a narrow set of emotions, namely, joy and thankfulness, 
4) Losing the men in the congregation who struggle to connect with songs that sound eerily similar to 8^th grade love songs (is it any wonder that most churches have many more women than men?), 
5) Never dealing with rich theological truth that people need, 
6) Losing the more heady, intellectual type in the congregation

Those with a heavy bent towards hymns should be aware of the following risks: 
1) Boring the people to sleep, 
2) Singing 500 words in three minutes without an opportunity to stop and consider what the heck was just sung, 
3) Forsaking the benefits of simplicity, especially in cries and pleas to God, 
4) No matter how “cool” you make an old hymn, some people will naturally have aversions to hymns because of the church they were raised in, 
5) Losing the more emotional, feeling type in the congregation.

New Mexicans: Thirsty for Justice

I recently wrote an op-ed piece as an assignment for a class I am taking through Mars Hill Church in Seattle. That article can be seen here. The assignment was to interpret and comment on a particular aspect of culture from a Christian worldview. I have invited some of my friends from the Albuquerque portion of the class to share their papers as a guest post on this blog. I will be sharing some of their pieces over the next few weeks. As a side note, several of their papers deal specifically with Albuquerque culture. However, all of them have some great insights that are relevant and applicable to a variety of cultures. Enjoy!

New Mexicans: Thirsty for Justice

Justice in Albuquerque has a name.  When no one else seems to be willing or able to help the people, we call Larry Barker.  Minus the mask, cape and high-tech gadgetry, he’s the Batman for our own Gotham City, taking on corruption at the highest levels.  The mere mention of his name brings hope to the downtrodden and fear to wrongdoers. 

Barker’s reputation is not undeserved.  Over a 38-year career in broadcasting, his name has become synonymous with investigative reporting in the state.  Just in the past year, he’s uncovered illegal horse racing linked to Mexican drug cartels, life insurance paid for by the state that it’s employees rarely can collect, a NM law that gives licenses back to DWI repeat offenders who cause the majority of the state’s fatal car accidents, and numerous cases of wasted tax payer monies at the city and state level.  Year after year, Barker relentlessly speaks for those who find it difficult to speak for themselves…the ordinary people of New Mexico…and we love him for it.  All the tired, huddled masses need to say is, “Don’t make me call Larry Barker.”  You can even get T-shirts and bumper stickers to show your allegiance and put would-be wrongdoers on notice.

Barker’s popularity in the state made me curious about the history of investigative reporters, those journalistic dirt-diggers that President Theodore Roosevelt famously once called “muckrakers.” In doing so, the president was alluding to a character in John Bunyan’s seventeenth-century allegory Pilgrim’s Progress who could not be troubled to take up the journey to the celestial city because he was so focused on raking the “filth of the floor”.  Roosevelt meant it as an insult, but the muckrakers adopted the term as a badge of honor.

It turns out that our own muckraker, Barker, follows in the footsteps of a long line of journalists who thought it their duty to gather and boldly present facts that challenge authority and oppose the abuse of power on behalf of ordinary citizens. The decade of 1902 to 1912 is known by many as “the golden age of public service journalism.”  Government corruption, corporate wrongdoing and social injustice dominated the journalism of the day and the people loved every written word of it because there was someone who saw what wasn’t right and had the courage to stand up and say so.  The cause of right-ness or more religiously, righteousness, was claimed by the first muckrakers and embraced by their eager audience.  Lincoln Steffens, one of the most famous muckrakers during this time declared, “I was not the original muckraker.  The prophets of the Old Testament were before me.”  Always controversial and frequently persecuted by the powerful they seek to expose, the muckrakers do have a prophetic quality to them.  They are first and foremost proclaimers of the truth and defenders of an ideal form of government where the eyes of lady justice truly are blind and the guilty are always punished. 

But what is it within us that wants to see the powerful and corrupt brought down?  It seems that the rise of the muckrakers and their crusade to restore justice is built upon an objective sense of right and wrong, to which we all instinctively adhere.  It seems surprising in the 21^st century, the age of tolerance for so many things that were condemned by previous generations, that there still remains in us a moral outrage against certain actions that makes our blood boil in righteous indignation. 

However, rather than condemn Barker and his colleagues for their hubris to keep digging until they expose the corruption hidden within the corridors of power, we embrace them as folk heroes in the vein of Robin Hood or the Caped Crusaders of the comic books we all read as kids.  There is something in us that knows that right is right and wrong is wrong, no matter how often the evolutionary theorists try to tell us otherwise.  From earliest childhood we can see evil in others even if we are slow to confess it in ourselves.  It is human nature to cry out for justice when we are wronged or when we see others wronged who have neither the strength nor courage to make it right.  And therefore, we cheer our own Larry Barker when he gives a voice to those who would otherwise have not been heard. 

Maybe Steffen’s claim to be a modern-day prophet isn’t merely religious self-promotion.  Like the Old Testament prophets we read about in Sunday school, Muckrakers assume the worst, dig till they find it, and proclaim what was once in darkness from the rooftops.  But perhaps, the muckrakers should look to the Bible’s most famous prophetic voice for courage to face their most powerful opposition.  The language Jesus used against the political and religious elite of his day would make even Larry Barker blush. 

The “brood of vipers” and “white-washed tombs” of his day had failed the oppressed and marginalized masses living under the heavy hand of Rome, instead using spiritually exploitative practices to line their own pockets.  Not above overturning tables and driving out purveyors of corruption with a whip, the gospels paint a very different picture than the modern-day conception of Jesus as a good moral teacher, more fond of feeding the poor than opposing the powerful.  But that’s not how Jesus’ own mother described his ministry.  She proclaimed:

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.  He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.  He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:51-53)

Mary had the longings of all people who are oppressed and want someone to come and right the wrongs of this world.  She raised a reformer who, in true muckraker tradition, opposed the powerful and was persecuted for it, ultimately costing him his life after a mock trail and brutal public crucifixion.

New Mexico loves Larry Barker because we love justice.  Perhaps deep in our bones we are also longing for Mary’s son to proclaim a truth that won’t just expose the guilty but will free us from the evil that we know lurks within us as well.

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Matt Kelley works as a corporate recruiter at Summit Electric Supply and is also a lay leader at Mars Hill Church at 4100 Sant Mateo NE in Albuquerque.

New Confession 2

Here is another confession that I wrote for us to use during our worship service.

Pastor: “And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!’” 

Less than a week later, the same crowds cried out, “Crucify him!” 

Congregation: Our Lord and Savior, we confess that we are prone to wander from you. We confess that we honor you as king one day and forget about you the next. We confess that we run to you in times of need and wander from you in times of comfort and abundance. We confess that we lift you up as first in our lives one day and then worship our own selfish ambitions the next. We repent of our wanderings and forgetfulness.

Pastor: As Jesus was crucified, he cried out concerning his murderers, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In that moment it was our forgiveness that was accomplished.  It was our sins that held him there. To all who turn their back on him, to all who wander away from him, to all whose sins cry out, “Crucify Him!,” Jesus says, “Father, forgive them.”  Through God’s mercy in Jesus Christ, you are forgiven and cleansed. Through Jesus’ death your sins have been cast as far away as the east is from the west. Rejoice, for you are free!

Letting our freak flag fly

I recently wrote an op-ed piece as an assignment for a class I am taking through Mars Hill Church in Seattle. That article can be seen here. The assignment was to interpret and comment on a particular aspect of culture from a Christian worldview. I have invited some of my friends from the Albuquerque portion of the class to share their papers as a guest post on this blog. I will be sharing some of their pieces over the next few weeks. As a side note, several of their papers deal specifically with Albuquerque culture. However, all of them have some great insights that are relevant and applicable to a variety of cultures. Enjoy!

 

Letting our freak flag fly.

by Shawn Honsberger

Forget the Final Four. We don't need it. I've often heard our culture sing its praises. We are the Land of Enchantment. We are the cultural landmark of the American Southwest. We are the home of the Zia, the Navajo, the Hispanic, and the Spaniard. We are the cultural current and hub that links Hollywood with history. We draw people of multiple communities from Washington, California, Colorado, Europe, and beyond. We wear our culture on our flag, our art, our skin, and we wear it well. We are Albuquerque, New Mexico - and we won't let you forget it.

We're no strangers here to bloody war, inquisition, sour economic downturns, armies of fatherless children, gangs, porn, addiction, assault, murder, sex trade, government sequestering, drunkenness, and the dreaded 'Death Spiral.' Yet it seems our committed resolve will carry us through. Our liturgy and legacy is loud and proud. You won't find us backing down in defense for our beloved Lobos, The International Balloon Fiesta, MMA, The State Fair, 'Sh*t Burquenos Say,' New Mexican cuisine, or a good local beer. These things are all part of what reinforces and defines the deepest source of meaning in our lives - our identity as a people. We're happy with who we are here, and we have the visible and visceral scars to prove it. You won't find our women losing any battles, unless that battle is with crippling disappointment and loneliness. You won't find our men backing down from any fight, unless that fight is to get off the couch for a job or maintain any rightful manly or domestic responsibility.

I recently wrote an op-ed piece as an assignment for a class I am taking through Mars Hill Church in Seattle. 

We've raised our freak flag high on the world's stage and embroidered it with the

Message, "Look here, look at me!" We've made our battle cry clear. However, through the myriad of opponents we face, we've yet to face our single greatest opponent-ourselves. For all our proclamations, we don't know who are. We trust that our culture, causes, catharsis, confessions, and celebrations will get us through it. Perhaps we should embroider the flag with, "We don't have a clue! Let's be honest."

Breaking Bad News: we won't come out on top. Our gospel is broken, bankrupt, and hopeless.

Here's the good news: the very God who created culture is on a mission in our city. Jesus is on a mission to seek and save the lost. He invites you to a different Gospel; in which all of the broken-ness, sin, and death that our culture creates was healed, forgiven, cleansed, and defeated at the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Conqueror. The Son of God died in our place for our sin, and gifted us with his righteousness and love instead. Three days later Jesus rose from death, defeating sin, death, and our mutual enemy Satan. God entered his history as the man Jesus to love the unlovable, forgive the unforgivable, adopt the fatherless, heal the spiritually sick, and bless the cursed. He rules and reigns as King over all. Give your sin to Jesus, repent and believe.

We are currently in the midst of a storm. The mission that God accomplished in Christ creates an unbreakable and unstoppable community. The church. Every week at Mars Hill Albuquerque, our fellow Burquenos are being forgiven, saved, and reconciled to God and each other through saving faith in Jesus. They are living life together every week in different rhythms in homes, restaurants, and bars as Community Groups that present the love of God. They are sharing the grace of God and a La Cumbre IPA. They love their families and their children. They are joyfully living, stewarding, and leading their homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods as disciples of Jesus in our great city. What makes them different than any of us? They are saints, saved by grace. That very grace is extended to all of us. We, who are called Christians, have been called out of darkness into God's marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9) by the resurrected Jesus himself. We are part of a replicating virus that will infect our city with the love and grace of God, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

As great and as broad as our culture is, we still need Jesus. Let's have a conversation about it. Let's order a burrito at Sadie's with red & green and hang out. Let's get some fry bread at Jemez and watch the purple sunset. Let's get a pizza at Giovanni's without getting shot. Let's get a pint at Two Fool's. Let's take our kids to the park. Let's raise a glass and talk about our city. Let's share a pool table or take in a day at the zoo. Let's discuss whether we prefer The New York Times or The Albuquerque Journal. Katy Perry or Demi Lovato? Matt Groening or Mike Judge? Corey Feldman or Neil Patrick Harris? Lawrence Taylor or Ronnie Lott? Pop-Rocks or Blue Ice Candy? Coldplay or The Shins? Freddy Mercury or Tony Vincent? You get the juxtaposition. We can even lament together about a certain basketball coach - yes a coach, leaving our team for more money. Apparently we're all about scandal now. The point is, let's not get all hurt. We can just get to know each other. I know you love it here. Or maybe you hate it here. Jesus loves Albuquerque, and so do we. I hope we can love and serve her together.

Come to Mars Hill Church and see Jesus for who he really is, and yourselves for who you really are. Be counted amongst us. Come take part in what God is doing with us. Okay, at least come have a beer at a Community Group in your neighborhood. You don't have to stay long. We're not that weird, we promise.

Shawn Honsberger lives and works in the North Valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife and daughter. He loves and serves Mars Hill Church Albuquerque as a Deacon and Community Group Head Coach. He enjoys music, community, friendship, Camel 99's, Coca-Cola, and cultural dialogue.