{"id":308,"date":"2009-03-20T18:05:18","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T18:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/newswire\/?p=308"},"modified":"2010-12-22T13:08:42","modified_gmt":"2010-12-22T18:08:42","slug":"6940","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/newswire\/2009\/03\/20\/6940\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent: No Easy Easter"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO, IL (March 20, 2009) – John Weborg is Professor Emeritus of Theology at North Park Theological Seminary and a longtime columnist for The Covenant Companion<\/a>. Each week during Lent, we are sharing one of his columns that originally appeared in the magazine.<\/em>
\n
\nBy Dr. John Weborg<\/p>\n

Diane Komp is a pediatric oncologist at Yale Medical School. Integrating medicine and ministry, she brings both divine gifts to bear on disease and despair. In a recent article in Theology Today (October 1988), Komp cites the most frequently chosen Scripture texts by parents of young cancer patients, many of whom are terminally ill. They are not the conventional texts given by pastors that have to do, I gather, with promises of eternal life or victory over death.<\/p>\n

The parent-chosen texts were three: 1) The story of Abraham\u2019s call to sacrifice Isaac; 2) the book of Job; and 3) Jesus at prayer in Gethsemane. Such parents sensed their place in a larger community of sufferers, including major biblical figures. An instant rapport was experienced with those who knew the questions sufferers ask, who knew the silence of God, yet waited for God to come to their assistance.<\/p>\n

“Loss does not have to be explained to God.”<\/h5>\n

Maybe, if they could be asked, they would agree with Alfred North Whitehead\u2019s suggestion that coming to know God might take one through three phases: God the void, God the enemy, God the friend. Such faith can be more exacting at times than exhilarating, more taxing than triumphant. Sometimes God is more endured than enjoyed.<\/p>\n

J\u00fcrgen Moltmann of T\u00fcbingen has argued that only the grieving ones know what death does and is. Death is loss. What does death do? It deprives people of those whom they deeply love. Even the dying do not know death because they do not have to deal with the results of their death. The living are left alone. Moltmann, using for example the latter part of Romans 8, thinks this can be applied to God. While we can only use human language at this point, our language does point to a profound reality in God. God knows what death is because God lost a son, which puts God in some fashion in the community of sufferers. Loss does not have to be explained to God. The stone silence of grief, the \u201cwinter of the heart\u201d to use Martin Marty\u2019s phrase, is intelligible to God. This is the God who freely gave up his son for us all, the one to whom Jesus lifted up loud cries. (Hebrews 5:7-8).<\/p>\n

If, in some sense, God is \u201cone with us,\u201d then suffering is not a sign of divine rejection as some of Job\u2019s friends tried to show. If suffering were the sign of divine rejection, then God would have to reject God\u2019s self. This is not weakness on God\u2019s part, but the strength to love, to use one of Martin Luther King\u2019s expressions. Speaking this way, it is not trite to say, \u201cGod knows,\u201d and it is not a clich\u00e9 to say, \u201cGod understands.\u201d<\/p>\n

In and with the life of Jesus, God knows<\/em> the complete cycle of life from birth to death. God\u2019s communion with Jesus was a communion in suffering as well as in joy. If in the incarnation of God in Christ, God<\/em> tasted everything human, then in the resurrection, we<\/em> can taste that which endured and then overcome sin and death. On the cross sin found its end in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 9:26), then at Easter death found its end.<\/p>\n

Woody Allen, in the March 1987 issue of Rolling Stone<\/em>, said: \u201cI do occasionally envy the person who is religious naturally, without being suckered into it. It would just never occur to such a person that the world isn\u2019t about something.\u201d What the world is about isn\u2019t always clear. But the lingering suspicion is that it is about something and that one needs to wait for it, even in grief and when faith is under siege. Abraham did. Job did. Jesus did. Even Komp\u2019s patients must have sensed that the world is about something more than disease and death. That\u2019s why they looked for God even where pain seemed to defeat all faith and grief falsity all hope.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, we who wait have Easter, and the One who made Easter possible is about something big.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: to read previously published columns as part of this special Lent series, visit the following links:
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Lent: Standing By Your Word<\/a>
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Lent: Tears Can Do Double Duty<\/a>
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Lent: Encountering the Divine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Report This Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO, IL (March 20, 2009) – John Weborg is Professor Emeritus of Theology at North Park Theological Seminary and a longtime columnist for The Covenant Companion. 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