Lent 2

Lent 2 (Mark 8:31-38)

“The Son of Man must undergo great suffering”.

In Jesus, God experienced directly the human condition.

Most forms of religion teach that God is so pure, so perfect and so transcendent that He does not and cannot experience the world as we experience it. Certainly, Peter and the other disciples were shocked when Jesus gave them this teaching. In their minds, Jesus was anointed by God to establish the true religion, the true government and the elite nation to rule the world. In their minds, the anointing of God protected the person from pain and suffering.

Most atheists I’ve listened to share one experience in common. What they share is personal pain and suffering. They have told me that they stopped believing in God when tragedy struck their family or they themselves. Usually this tragedy involves an illness and death. Sometimes the tragedy is failing out of college or being jilted by a romantic partner.

The line of reasoning is that if God is real then He would not have allowed my loved one to suffer and die. On a broader scale, some say that the level of evil that exists in the world is incompatible with the theistic concept of a personal God. Since there is ample evidence of evil and little to no evidence of a benign deity then the only reasonable conclusion is that God does not exist.

Our Heavenly Father’s answer to this very real and insistent objection is Jesus.

The answer is not a book. The book (the Bible) records the observations of many people over the course of many centuries that helps us to understand the human condition. The Bible also points to the answer. But, the Bible is not the answer,.

Neither are Law or ritual or spiritual discipline the answers. They have their place. But, they are not the answer.

The answer to the pressing question of pain, suffering and evil is Jesus Christ.

Peter and the other disciples thought that Jesus would bring the answer. They believed he would bring the answer in the categories of knowledge and power. They were unprepared to receive the answer in more personal terms. Jesus just does not bring the answer, He is the answer.

Jesus fulfills the fourfold aspect of the Law. Those aspects are the civil laws that governed the nation of Israel, the ritual laws that governed the priesthood as well as Temple worship and Synagogue study, the moral laws, and the pattern of natural law.

The fourfold aspect of the Law confused most people in Jesus’ day and most people today. As the rightful King of Israel, Jesus fulfilled the civil aspect of the law. As the great high priest of Israel Jesus also fulfilled and completed the ritual laws. Those aspects of the Law are no longer in effect.

Jesus also fulfilled the moral law within the context of natural law. Moral law is part of the fundamental design of our species. Natural law is part of the fundamental design of the universe.

In some ways it is obvious how people violate the moral laws. In other ways it is not so obvious. As in Jesus’s day different religions and religious sects focus on different aspects of the moral law. Generally, the more self-described conservative groups focus their concern on who kisses whom. The more self-described liberal groups focus on who is helping whom. The moral law encompasses both polaries and much more.

Jesus just doesn’t reaffirm the moral law. He tells us that left to ourselves we will fail to fulfill the basic principle of the moral law. He lived the perfect life we cannot live. He experienced all of our sins and rebellion on the cross. He suffered the consequence of those sins. Then, he transformed sin back into virtue. Now, he offers to fill us with the Holy Spirit to help us appreciate the value of the moral law so we can seek divine assistance to live by the principles of the law.

Jesus does something similar with natural law. The very essence of original sin is the appeal to human pride. Human pride is a self-inflicted distortion of the virtue of humility. Humility delights in the law of God in all of its forms. Pride distorts delight into critique. Pride asserts:  I can do better. These laws do not apply to me. I have the right to burn down the forests, build cities below sea level, exterminate thousands of species, build weapons capable of destroying all life on this planet. The attitude of pride is: it’s all about me. The aspect of pride is the individual will to power. The action of pride is to cheat natural law. Sadly, the consequence of violating natural law reveals the fatal deceit in pride. At that point, pride morphs into despair.

Jesus lived his life and brought forth his mission in alignment with natural law. The three aspects of natural law that most people ignore are; self-responsibility, cause and effect, and justice.

Much of our suffering is a result of our tendency to violate these three aspects of natural law. Most of us inherit a false belief that the moral and natural laws are an impediment to our individual happiness. Most of us at some level attempt to cheat life by ignoring the laws or subverting the laws. And most of us assume that either God does not care about or should overlook our transgressions.

Jesus shows us that we can live a happy and abundant life within the framework of the laws. Jesus also acts as a perfect mirror to our souls to reveal to us how violating the laws only defeats our desire for happiness.

In Jesus, God embraces and experiences the fullness of the human experience. That means that the infinite, eternal and transcendent God knows from personal experience what it means to live in the world of time, space and duality. He knows human pain and suffering first hand by personal experience.

Jesus never sinned. He never sinned because he never separated from Divine love. His suffering was not from the anxiety of choosing between good and evil, or a lesser evil over a greater evil. He always chose the good because he is the incarnation of universal unconditional love.

Nevertheless, Jesus did experience pain and suffering. Certainly as a human being Jesus knew hunger, thirst and loneliness. As a human being Jesus experienced the duality that God designed into the universe. That duality involves hot and cold, sweet and sour, pleasure and pain.

Suffering is recycled pain.

People recycle pain by adopting a belief in Dualism. That belief states that life is either all good or all bad. If life is all good then God is good. If life is all bad then either God is bad or doesn’t exist.

Peter and the other disciples rejected Jesus’s teaching about his rejection, pain and suffering. They could not imagine a salvation that included such things. For them, and for almost everyone else who saw Jesus and heard his teaching, salvation meant the triumph of the human will to conquer duality,

Jesus preserved the very pattern of the universe and the essential nature of our being by working within the laws of the universe. It took the apostles many years after the resurrection to appreciate this.

Jesus reminded his disciples then as he reminds us now. The more you struggle and fight against the pattern God designed into the universe, the more you will magnify pain and recycle it into suffering. The more you assert your will to be your own savior the more you lose yourself. The more you can accept the salvation Jesus brings the more you will discover yourself in Him.

Jesus suffered so he could transform suffering for us. In this world of matter, energy, time and space there is both pleasure and pain. There does not need to be suffering. Jesus transformed suffering by the infinite and eternal power of divine love.

In union with the Father, through the Son, by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, God offers us a new way to be human. It is the way of original grace. It is the way of duality transformed by the real presence of the divine in our world in and our lives. It is union with infinite and eternal love present to us and for us in Jesus.