A Strange New God

Introduction

The Passion of the Christ

The gospel for Palm Sunday is always announced with an age-old venerable introduction: Passio Domini nostri Iesu Christi secundum Matheum. The passion (the pain, the agony, the suffering) of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew. There’s where Mel Gibson, a conservative Catholic, got his title for his very lucrative movie The Passion of the Christ. We use that same age-old venerable introduction to the gospel also on Good Friday: Passio Domini nostri Iesu Christi secundum Ioannem. The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to John.

The Passion is a long scriptural account of the sufferings of the Lord found in all four gospels. It’s a blow by blow description of the Lord’s physical sufferings: the scourging at the pillar, the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the cross, the thirsting in his throat, the piercing his heart by the centurion’s spear. It relates, also, Jesus’ spiritual sufferings: the jeers of human beings who have lost their humanity, the painful sight of his mother weeping at his side, the disappointment of betrayal by one he had chosen and, worst of all, abandonment by God, his father.

Bad News

In the wake of the worst act of foreign terrorism ever perpetrated on American soil, preacher Jerry Falwell uttered those famous or rather infamous words of his, which he later toned down mostly with his lips: “I point my finger in the face of the pagans and abortionists and feminists and gays and lesbians and the A.C.L.U. people, and the People for the American Way, and I say `You helped this happen!’” An angry god who uses Islamic extremists to punish American immorality is himself a terrorist. Such a god is not gospel—not good news. Such a god is bad news.

The day after Christmas, 2004, the worst tsunami in recent memory burst upon south eastern Asia ruthlessly sweeping away 140,000 people. The worst casualties were those left living and crying for clean water to drink, or crying for their mamas and papas, or crying for their babies. Along thousands of miles of costal regions people were crying out in their own languages and gestures of grief, “God, why did you do this to us? What did we do to upset you so? Why are you making us suffer so much?” Soon clerics in synagogues, churches and mosques all over the world were offering age-old and worn-out explanations.

Israel’s chief rabbi Shlomo Amar said, “This is an expression of God’s great ire upon the world.” A priest of a New Delhi temple said, “This disaster was caused by a huge amount of pent-up man-made evil on earth and was driven by the positions of the planets.” An Islamic cleric said, “The disaster was a reminder from God that he who created the world can also destroy it.” An angry god who uses tsunamis to punish human evil, or to show that he is boss, is a terrorist. Just as an angry god who concocts AIDS to lay low immoral sinners is also a terrorist. Such a god is not gospel—not good news. Such a god is bad news.

Good News

A God who suffers

Into this age-old lingo and bad news about a god who himself does not suffer but makes everyone else suffer comes the gospel—the good news about the Passio Domini nostri Iesu Christi—the good news about a God who makes no one suffer but he himself suffers. That is not only good news, it is also new news, for the old gods were and still are always making people suffer, while they themselves go scott free of all pain. On the cross Christians have a strange new God who is in pain—a strange new God who suffers. I am told that The Passion of the Christ by Gibson from beginning to end is untiringly about a strange new God who suffers--a strange new God who decids to join us in the human race and suffer on the cross. St. Paul writes,

Have this mind in you

which was in Christ Jesus:

though he was very God,

he let go and humbled himself

and became one of us--

became obedient to death,

yes, even to death on a cross.

(Phil 2: 5-8)

A God who suffers our suffering

This great good news gets better still. This strange new God who suffers suffers because we, his children, suffer. In his book The Divine Milieu Pierre Teilhard, a noted theologian with a mystical bent, whose voice echoed through the halls of Vatican II, writes that “it is fully in accord with the Gospel to regard God as a father weeping across the ages over the sufferings of his children, ceaselessly trying to heal their wounds,” and inviting us to help him in that struggle. God, he writes “wants me to help him take the cup of suffering from me.”

Conclusion

A God who suffers his own suffering

This marvelously good news gets better still: God not only suffers because of the suffering of his children, God also suffers because of his very own suffering.

Some time ago the news reported that spokespersons from the War Department drove up to a home, knocked at the door and announced to a father that his marine son—a dearly beloved young man—had been killed in Iraq. In an overwhelming rage the father tore out of the house and torched their car. I’m sure that he fired his rage also at God that night asking, “Where were you, and what were you doing when my son was killed in Iraq?”

After the Incarnation in which God begot an earthly son, God can now fire back at the grieving father saying, “I, too, am a father. I, too, have a son. And I was doing just what you are doing now: weeping over a dearly beloved son of my own who was crucified, who died and was buried.”