Lent 2B - Peter is Satan, God's on a Cross

Sermon Lent 2B, RCL,
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 Psalm 22:23-31 (27) Romans 4:13-25 Mark 8:31-38
Chicago, First Lutheran Church of the Trinity, Tom Gualke
March 8, 2009

According to Jesus,

According to the Gospel writers,

According to the early church mothers and fathers,

And according to the Lutheran tradition to which this congregation belongs,

The cross—a Roman instrument of torture and execution—
Is precisely the place where God meets all of humanity.
The cross is precisely the place where God meets us.

That is, according to scripture, according to tradition, and perhaps according to your own experience,

God meets people most profoundly

In our weakness,
In our vulnerability,
When we are alone, ashamed, seemingly god-forsaken, or impossibly lost,

When we don’t have enough,
Or when we’ve had it up to here.

When we’ve hit rock bottom,
And the only direction left to look is up:
That’s where God meets us.

God meets us most profoundly
At the cross,
In the stench of death-infested tombs, in refrigerated morgues, in grand processions, and in sterile-white hospital rooms—that’s where God meets us.

In the dark, difficult, and dying parts of human existence…

In the car wrecks and the heroine trips and the 3am train station nervous-break-downs.

When we have lost hope
or a spouse
or our mind.

When we are screaming or crying or paralyzed from depression on someone else’s kitchen floor

When something sacred gets stolen
Or abused,
Or crushed, or kicked to the curb

When life seems more like death,

That’s where God meets us.


Suffering with us,
vulnerable with us,
soiled,
and screaming,
and bleeding with us.

God meets us at the cross.

pulling us toward hope, toward new Life, and toward resurrection.
God meets us at the cross.

And while it might be more appealing and more “pretty” and more “warm and fuzzy” to forget about the cross,

To pass Go on Good Friday and go directly to Easter,

If we do that, we miss the point.

(And we don’t get why Jesus is so pissed at Peter in our Gospel reading today).

(pause)

If we cut out the cross,
We cut out the God
who hears the cry of the persecuted
and the poor,

The God who protests loudly and passionately
with the oppressed
and the tortured,
and the down-trodden,
If we cut out the cross, we cut out God.

If we cut out the cross, we cut out the God
who lives in solidarity with the orphans
and the outcasts;
and the God who walks
with the migrants and the immigrants,
With the sick and the suffering and all those folks who are losing their jobs
If we cut out the cross, we cut out God.

If we cut out the cross, we cut out the God who suffers and struggles with God’s people who yearn for the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting
If we cut out the cross, we cut out the God who suffers and struggles with us.

In the God of the Cross—the God Jesus proclaimed and the God Jesus loved deeply,

We are encountered by a God
who calls, in love, for justice without exchanges of hate or violence,

In the God off the Cross, we are encountered by a God
who calls us to proclaim radical Good News
in a radically troubled world,

In the God off the Cross, we are encountered by a God
who bleeds deeply so that all people might be set free,

If we cut out the cross,
We, like Peter
deny the God
Who calls us to take up our cross,
and to follow.

May this season point us toward the cross.
May God give us the courage to follow.
Amen.



May the peace that passes…………Lord. Amen.