Suffering For Glory 1 St Luke’s Maylands, St Patrick Mt Lawley 5.10.25
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NMnUNnTWadM&si=eDg-ONYeHnt2ML76
Bible Readings: Ps 2:1-12; Ex 15:1-18; Rev 19:1-16; Mark 15:33-39 [] = unspoken text
Background
I’ m pleased to be able to fill in for Fr Steve, again, and have his authorisation to choose today’s readings. As you know the Conway’s are visiting the Thai border with Myanmar to support the Karen refugees there. I have visited inside Myanmar itself 5 times (once with my wife), most recently last January, and a team is hoping to return in Jan 26. Despite government travel advice not to go, and protests from those weak in faith (Rom 14:1), the worst thing that’s happened to me there, (where I have always felt safe), is to pick up various intestinal parasites. Despite various protests from those weak in faith (Rom 14:1), we are called to minister there until the Lord of all (Acts 10:36) directs otherwise. An emerging topic for ministry there, and indeed globally, is the healing power of the Gospel over long term trauma. Having suffered, and been delivered, from PTSD, primarily due to “sheep bite”, to use a metaphor, I have a measure of practical authority to speak into this issue. [Having one to one chats with LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) survivors in Uganda and having met someone whose testimony included numerous miraculous deliverance from “certain” death during the Rwandan genocide,] I am firmly persuaded that the Lord has a special purpose for Myanmar, a nation where the Church has faithfully endured devastating COVID, typhoon, flood, earthquake and decades of ongoing savage civil war. Most of we comfortable Christians fail to discern that great trauma is needed on the way to great revelation.” Jesus declared to his disciples, “Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”” (Luke 24:26). That trauma is the means, rather than the cost, of glory (GC Bingham) has always been the path of prophets, wise people and apostles (Matt 23:34; Luke 11:49). My topic for this week and next, Suffering For Glory, seeks to address the difficult theme of Christ’s cosmic victory over cosmic trauma.
Evil Traumatises the World
It is hard for us born as troubled “children of wrath” (Ps 51:5; Eph 2:3) to imagine the shalom- filled tranquil life in Eden (Gen 1:31). The tough but loving decree that Adam and Eve would die for disobedience to the divine foundational command declared (Gen 2:17) a stripping off the glory of God (Rom 3:23 cf. Isa 61:3). “Original trauma” means something more devastating than ageing, frailty and ultimate perishing, it meant subjection to the devastating power, penalty and pollution of sin. From birth on, no one has full control over their body, mind or emotions. The dimensions of trauma have been rapidly enlarging. Due to advances in technology, we are witnessing the dissolving of degrees of separation between the sight and sounds of a suffering planet. From witnessing the horrors of Gaza to the sinking of islands in the South Pacific [I’ve met Christian folk from Tuvalu] we are being constantly exposed to horrors in a way hitherto unprecedented. As I travel down Guildford Rd I am confronted by a group of protest flags decrying Gaza as genocide. When in excess of 100k people hit the streets of laid-back Australia something more than political need is being registered (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_war_protests_in_Australia).
Trauma has opened (cf.1 John 4:18) the door (cf. the thread of the book of Revelation) to the demonisation of the world, which “lies under the power of the evil one “(1 John 5:19). The God-given order of humans over evil spirits was been reversed from Eden on. Though originally given total authority over the devil (Gen 2:15, 19-20; Eph 2:2) fallen humanity has become subject to the tyrannies of him “who has the power of death” and who reigns through “fear of death (Heb 2:14-15). Sin, idol worship and God’s wrath have opened (cf. Rev 9) a gateway between our fallen state and what Revelation calls “the bottomless pit” (Rev 9:1, 2, 11). Catastrophically, this means demonic powers project onto lost humans their own utter hopelessness before God’s holy presence (Mark 1:24; 3:11; 5:10; Luke 4:34). Marauding demonic powers plunge men, women, teens and children into a “pit of despair” (Ps 40:2), more commonly called “clinical depression”. In his comments in the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:41) Jesus made clear that hell was never part of God’s original plan for humans but is the true destiny of evil powers.
When I first read the Bible as a nonbeliever, I was daily plagued by an overwhelming fear of dying and going to hell; [since according to Jesus, the only remedy for my traumas was the Gospel (n.b. 2 Tim 1:9)!] At the core of trauma is a sense of hopelessness and separation from God (Isa 59:2; Rom 8:35, 39; Eph 2:18), [“shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thess 1:9),] no amount of ordinary human therapy can finally heal the lost soul from the unnatural ravages of trauma (cf. Rom 2:8). We need supernatural release from the power, penalty and pollution of sin because we were created to share in the exhilarating other-worldly pleasures in God (Luke 3:21-22 cf. 1 Pet 1:8-9). “”You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You”” (Augustine) While the whole life of Jesus prophetically points to his passion, crucifixion and his all-pleasing resurrection and ascension. [Unlike others, in being sinless, he had nothing to confess (Matt 3:14; 2 Cor 5:21; Heb 4:15; 1 Pet 2:22).], his baptism was his taking the way of lowliness (Phil 2:3ff) and identifying with us in our traumas (Heb 2:14; Rom 8:3).
Gospel Power without Limit
On the verge of the cross Jesus intimately confesses God as “Holy Father…Righteous Father and Abba Father” (John 17:11, 25; Mark 15:24), so registering for our sakes his preparedness to take the opposite of eternal blessedness on the cross (Mark 14:62; Rom 9:5) in becoming our Mediator (1 Tom 2:5), leading to full reconciliation with his Father through resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven
Given the prophet Habakkuk protests, “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, …” (Hab 1:13 cf. Ps 5:5), how do we account for Jesus’ conscious cry of dereliction, “And when the sixth hourhad come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, [“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means,] “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:33-34). At one level the answer is simple, as Paul expounds the atonement, “he who knew no sin was made sin for us” (2 Cor 5:21 cf. 1 Pet 2:24), here Jesus takes responsibility for what we have refused to own as ours. As the punishment for sin is [the everlasting wrath of ] God handing us over to ourselves (Rom 1:24, 26, 28) Jesus must “become” the perfect idolater. (cf. https://www.kimriddlebarger.com/the-riddleblog/tag/Luther+on+Galatians+3%3A13), blinded and deafened under the wight of all our idols he can neither see nor hear God as the Father (cf. Ps 115: 4-8; Isa 6:9-10). The weight of the sin of the world must crush his life into making perfect atonement (Mark 14:33; Isa 53:3). The “cup” he receives from God is the fierce ultimately inescapable holy anger underlying the eternal traumas of the world (Isa 51:17, 22; Jer 29:12; Ezek 23:33; Hab 2:16; Isa 2:10; Rev 6:15-16). If Luther said of the anguish of Gethsemane, “no man ever feared like this man”, https://www.faithtacoma.org/mark/2008-06-01-am , we must say of the cross, no-one was ever traumatised like Jesus. The crucifixion of God the Son is a fiery baptism (Mark 10:38 cf. 3:16) into our Fallen state of physical, emotional mental and spiritual trauma.
I was greatly helped by a comment made to me that the death of Jesus made him to be our Ichabod = the place of “no glory” (1 Sam 4:21-22) (cf. Ezek 8-11). The Son of God uniquely and consciously experienced was stripped of all “the glory of the Father” (Rom 6:4 cf. “power went out from him” (Mark 5:30)) so that through a wonderful exchange (Tuomo Mannermaa on Union with Christ & the Christian life – Theology Forum) he becomes all that we are, [apart from actual sinning (Heb 4:15)], so we might become all that he is in the restoration of the glory of God [in his exaltation].
Conflict Resolved
My favourite theology lecturer did his doctorate on The God Who Fights, and the theme of all the Bible readings today encompasses this truth. Ex 15 is the victory song of Israelites at the triumph of God over the Egyptians at the Red Sea, Psalm 2 describes how the nations rage against the Lord and his chosen leader only to be totally crushed, Rev 19 records a triumphant cosmic procession over evil in which we will all share. All these conquests over evil are rooted in the manner of the victory of the cross. At the foot of the cross the soldier whose expertise was in brutalising others is moved to confess “Surely this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 14:39). The sharp sting of death has been plucked from us (1 Cor 15:55), “For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.” (2 Cor 13:4). It was this rhythm of weakness-and-power sent from heaven which healed Saul of the trauma of his sinful and violent life (e.g. Acts 9:1) transforming him into the apostle Paul cf. 2 Cor 7:10.
The Power and Authority of the Cross
The apostle who could raise the dead (Acts 20:7-12) was also the one who says he “despaired of life itself” (2 Cor 1:8) If traumas derive from conflict [and subsequent abuse], on a scale as large as war and as intimate as family/domestic violence, and if we are exhorted to “know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Phil 3:10), Christians must live in a state that encompasses weakness and strength as God-given gifts embraced for the sake of the Gospel. Decades ago, a godly woman passed a remark about Donna and I, [understandable at the time, but ] which has proved over the decades to be sincerely false. She described us a “survivors”, as long as this “survival mentality” persists amongst Christians [devastated by life’s hardships] trauma in the Body of Christ will remain unresolved. Jesus was not a “survivor” of trauma [revived by the cold air of the tomb, as some liberals have argued], Paul stoned by a violent crowd and dragged out of the city as dead (Acts 14:19) was no “survivor”. Examples of more than survival (cf. “more than conquerors” (Rom 8:37)) could be multiplied across millennia e.g. Dan 3; 6 and across the reaches of the globe wherever men and women are whole-heartedly following Jesus.
A counselling friend of mine loves to quote a trauma expert’s diagnosis, “the body keeps the score”” (Bessel Van Der Kolk), by which is meant that the lasting, physical impact of trauma is stored up as physical sensations: chronic pain, muscle tension, hypersensitivity interfering with the ability to regulate emotions, concentrate, and trust. Trauma is mediated/vicarious, multi-generational and pervasive so divine healing must be holistic. [In a time when other religions, including secularism, can only provide patch up remedies the earthiness of the Word made flesh for crucifixion and glorification imparts true shalom.]
Application and Conclusion
Only Jesus, only Jesus, once again and finally, only Jesus in the cosmic reach of his Incarnate life can heal the world’s limitless traumas by taking them into himself on the cross then into the glory of the Father through resurrection and ascension. As I progressively age, I receive increasing understanding that my many life traumas are all for the single great purpose of increasing Christlikeness. In the Wisdom of God the Gospel wounds to heal (1 Sam 2:6-7 cf. https://www.newcreationlibrary.org.au/books/pdf/162_WoundingHealing.pdf). Grievous disappointment and disillusionment were something which the apostles needed to experience in order for greater restoration through resurrection revelation (cf. Acts 3:21). This is the secret of the power of their ministry. On the Day of Pentecost Peter consummated his sermon with, “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” 37 When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:26-36), and a little later “15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. 16 By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see.” (Acts 3:15-16). An old song composed by African American slaves says, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord” going on to include the resurrection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Were_You_There). A Spirit-charged prophet-mentor once said to me that “prophetic preaching” along this vein would trigger revival in Australia (https://www.newcreationlibrary.org.au/about/GBingham.htm cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinners_in_the_Hands_of_an_Angry_God ) This is a necessary spiritual reality (cf. Luke 24:26) because such preaching evokes responsibility for personal sin and suffering without which comprehensive healing is impossible.
Next week, God willing, I will preach on how I believe that we are on the edge of a great divide, the direction the Church goes is poised between the difficult choice of total and unconditional forgiveness towards those who have traumatised us and the far easier but entirely natural response of refusing to pray mercy and compassion on our enemies.