Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday C April 10, 2022
Is. 50: 4-9a Ps. 31: 9-16
Phil. 2:5-11 Luke 23:1-49
Is. 50: 4-9a Ps. 31: 9-16
Phil. 2:5-11 Luke 23:1-49
The genocide in war that is taking place in Ukraine now is the last in a historical train of mass slaughter of people by other people for no other reason than one group with power find another group of people inconvenient to their lives, so their solution is to get rid of the people or at least dominate them into oppression, totalitarian control, and slavery.
We as people of European descent know our own history of how our nation has come into existence in practices that have come to be called genocide. And genocide was not really defined as such until after the great holocaust of the World War II era in Europe, Eastern Europe and in Stalin's Russia.
As we agonize daily over the killing of the innocent in Ukraine for no reason at all, we are forced to ponder the non-intervention habits of the Great One whom we confess to be God.
The words of Psalm 22, which were carried onto the words of Jesus from the cross, echo for us again. "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" My God, my God, why have you forsaken us? My God, my God, why have you forsaken the people of Ukraine?
And it is really the wrong question, isn't it? The real questions are these: All you people, who conspired against Me, Jesus, as God's messenger of Peace and Love, why have you forsaken me and brought me to death? People of the earth, why do you often forsake each other with extreme acts of inhumanity committed against each other?
And these real questions regarding the freedom for human beings to do really awful things to each other, begs the theological question: God, why do you allow us to behave so badly without intervening? Even a good earthly parent intervenes when a bully child is threatening a weaker child?
And this brings us to the topic of the weakness of God, which is a strength and power of another order.
Why the weakness of God seen as God's non-action and seeming passivity in face of massive human bullying?
The weakness of God is seen chiefly within the inner contradiction of the Divine life. And what is that contradiction? God is perfect freedom, pure creativity, and for creation to share something of the divine nature, means that a degree of that freedom has to be shared with the created order for creation not to be but a robot. If God intervenes as direct external intervention, then morality based upon having true freedom has no significance.
God's apparent weakness in allowing genuine freedom is contrasted with God's greatness of being the entire sustaining environment within which all actors of the created order live.
So why do these events of genocide and wrongful deaths and harm seem significant? Evil in its individual performance is like the news. How so? Badness and evil get more attention on the news than just plain everyday ordinary goodness. So Evil gets a megaphone and can present the lie that evil is indeed "normal." No, evil gets the megaphone of recognition precisely because it is the exception from the general normalcy of goodness.
But for those in the throes of evil, like the people of Ukraine, it is hard to feel the normalcy of goodness; it feels like forsakenness, it feels like goodness and the God of goodness are not apparent in this specific instance.
So, what is our response? First we continue to uphold the normalcy of Goodness and the God of Goodness. Next, we teach the real significance of moral freedom, which proves that we are not predetermined robots; we are significant moral agents. And we recognize the heroic goodness which even now is responding to the terrible evils; people of goodness rally to provide defense, provide help for refugees, provide food, provide political pressure to end this. As bad as this evil is, the heroic of the assertion of goodness is even more powerful, and we pray that in time this goodness will reassert itself as the goodness of peace and restoration for the people of Ukraine.
Yes, we would rather that heroic goodness in the face of evil not be needed. We wish that people always and everywhere could be convinced about the superior excellence of kindness and goodness. But freedom means that evil probabilities can always lurk, which is why we want to be at the task of persuading people about the Gospel of Goodness about the love of God in Christ.
What happened to the event of the forsakenness of Jesus on the Cross? It became in St. Paul the message of heroic goodness being undefeated by the event of death. The death of Jesus because a spiritual identity for the early Christians who in the general oppression of the Roman Empire, often felt like sheep being led to the slaughter. Identity with the death of Jesus as a spiritual practice became the means of learning how to convert our freedom to express the goodness of God and to reject the evil selfishness in its minor and major forms.
The cross of Jesus became a spiritual method to access the inside job that God's Holy Spirit would use to help us promote and live the normalcy of goodness that is proclaimed since creation when God created everything and said, "Everything and you are Good." Now go live in that goodness and learn to die to every unworthy impulse which challenges that Goodness.
The greater power of God's restraint to honor true freedom and moral significance is seen in the power of the Holy Spirit to be the inside job that God is always, already doing within us to be perpetually overcoming evil with goodness.
Our mission of the Cross of Jesus today is this: when and where God and goodness seem to be inapparent in the lives of people today, let us rise to be the apparent love and goodness of God and so help restore the normalcy of goodness to each life situation. Amen.
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