Rethinking Suffering Under the Cross
By Pastor John Eich Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Alma, MI
Mark 8:31–38
31 Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things; be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the experts in the law; be killed; and after three days rise again. 32He was speaking plainly to them. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But after turning around and looking at his disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have your mind set on the things of God, but the things of men.” 34He called the crowd and his disciples together and said to them, “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36After all, what good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul? 37Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 In fact, whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Death is an uncomfortable subject for most people. When a loved is extremely ill and begins to talk about death, family members tend to change the subject or say, “that’s not going to happen, don’t talk like that.” If the person isn’t ill and starts talking about death, they are referred to a suicide prevention hotline. Death is uncomfortable for many people to talk about. When Jesus begins to explain that he will soon suffer and die, that’s too much for Peter. He rebukes Jesus. After all, who ever heard of a Messiah suffering and dying? That’s no one’s idea of how to save the world and rescue God’s people!
Yet from our perspective, we know Jesus’ death on the cross is exactly how God saves the world. God is revealed to us most clearly through Jesus hanging on the cross, willingly giving his very life for us. In that moment of suffering, anguish, and death, we see the full extent of God’s love. And as Jesus’ followers, we are called to testify to that love. We are called to bear that love into the hurting places of this world, knowing there is no suffering, no sorrow, no pain that is too much for God. As God brought resurrection and new life out of even the horror of the cross, so too God is bringing resurrection and new life for us and for this hurting, broken world. When the crowds that were following Jesus heard him say, 34 “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it,” that was too much for them. They were following Jesus for his miracles, for teachings about love and to hear him put the Pharisees in their place. But to be his followers you have to carry a cross, suffer and die? Ridiculous. Time to find a new spiritual leader.
When Peter confessed, “You are the Christ, the Son of God” his statement of faith is bold, but it’s incomplete. He’s looking for a messiah through a human lens. When humans come up with a savior, or a god, it looks a lot like mighty
military leaders, powerful, glorious, triumphant. That’s what Peter’s expecting.
Peter is on the right track—God is glorious and almighty—but his confession is incomplete because he doesn’t know about the cross. When Jesus tries to fill him in with the information he’s missing, telling him the Son of Man—that is, Jesus—must suffer and be rejected and die, Peter gets upset. “Lord, I think you’re a bit mixed up. You see, you’re the Messiah. You’re the Savior. I’m pretty sure you’re actually God. You can’t suffer or die. That doesn’t make any sense! Maybe go meditate, pray for a bit, and get your head on straight, Jesus.”
Jesus rebukes Peter, calling him Satan, telling him to get out of the way, to take his mind off human things and focus on divine things. Stop trying to make sense of Jesus’ mission—God’s mission—from a human framework. Stop trying to limit God to working the way you expect.
It’s a tough rebuke to hear, because we’re often on the same page as Peter looking for something glorious—at least I am. When I think about God I know better (at least, most of the time I hope I know better) than to picture some Greek titan, or an idol of a Roman nature deity. I hope we know better than to imagine that any politician or emperor or president can be the divine savior of the world. Yet, do we put our trust in them as if they were?
We do worship the Lord God, creator of the universe, maker of all that is, seen and unseen. We serve the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who rescued the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt into the promised land, the God who has the power to shake the foundations of the earth. We serve a mighty God, the Lord almighty.
And that God chooses to be revealed to us in Jesus. Our God comes not as a human king or emperor, but as an itinerant Jewish rabbi; born not in a palace, but in a humble home stable. Our God chooses to come and to suffer and die. That’s hard to accept. This savior who submits to suffering, humiliation, and death on a cross is hard to follow.
Why does Jesus, why does the anointed Messiah need to suffer? The answer is because we suffer. We need a God who understands our suffering because of sin. In Jesus’ suffering and death, we see how far God is willing to go for us. The cross reveals the extent of God’s love.
Martin Luther wrote that “the visible and manifest things of God [are] seen through suffering and the cross.” (Heidelberg Disputation, #20)
What he means by this is that the best way of seeing who God truly is, isn’t to look at the beauty of a sunrise, or the grandeur of a cathedral. God’s love for us is ultimately revealed in Jesus, God with us, hanging on a cross. That’s the gospel, the good news.
And we need that, because if God isn’t present with us in the midst of suffering, if we can’t enter into the deepest places of evil and suffering and find God has something to say there, what’s the point?
The cross gives us evidence that God is present in refugee camps, hospital beds, nursing home rooms, in bombed out buildings and living rooms filled with loneliness and loss. God is with you in those times when you feel like the Psalmist, entangled by cords of death, with the power of death and the grave gripping you.
God is the creator of beauty and joy. God is the giver of life, the source of all good things. We serve a beautiful savior who created a wonderful world, sparkling stars, blooming flowers, all of that.
But a god who isn’t present at the Ground Zeroes of our lives wouldn’t be worth following. A god who wouldn’t weep on the side of a highway next to a smashed car or at the side of a runaway teen selling herself on the streets, wouldn’t be worth following.
Jesus understands suffering, the worst our world can offer, because Jesus has gone through it. God has chosen to enter into our world. The Son of Man must undergo great suffering and rejection and be killed.
Most importantly, suffering is not the end of the story. After three days, Jesus promises, the Son of Man will rise again. And he does. On the third day, the tomb was empty. Death was defeated, and death remains defeated. God is in the business of life and restoration.
And we are called to be part of that mission. Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow him. We are called to be bearers of the cross into places of tragedy and pain knowing there is no anguish, no sorrow, no pain that is too much for God.
In the meantime, we will have suffering in this life. In our time—which I am sure is not unique—we often assume that this life should be free from suffering. We try to remove suffering at all costs. In truth, this is impossible. The reality is that we will still experience our sin, we will still experience death, and we will still experience the tyranny of the Devil over this world. We will still experience the cross and suffering in this life especially because we are Christians.
There is a special component to sufferings for the Christian. Not only has Christ made our suffering holy by joining in our suffering, but there is also special hope. There is the hope that points to this work of God which conforms us to the image of Jesus. This work points to God’s own words and promises to overcome the world and the evil one. This work draws us to eternal hope. There is hope in who this God is as the Almighty One who loves us and cares for us. He is the God who proved His love and sent His Son to suffer and die for us. If He has done this, will He not certainly in His love do what is best for us in all things? Yes, yes, it shall be so.
Our sufferings make sense not because of explanations that merely satisfy human inquiry or curiosity, but because Christ lives his life in us through our sufferings as a call to put our trust in him. We reflect the life of Christ who called us to take up our cross and follow him.
Lifting high the cross doesn’t mean waving it like a talisman in front of a conquering army (although Christians have done that). Lifting high the cross means proclaiming a God who comes into our suffering and suffers alongside us, proclaiming both the reality of suffering, and the promise that death never gets the last word.
As the hymn we’ll sing shortly says, it’s a call for us to follow where our master trod, an invitation for us to proclaim the hope of resurrection, even in the face of suffering and death.
Amen