SERMONS

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Sean Gilbert

Christ Church  6/4/07           

Good Friday, 2007
The Weakness of God

“The perverse core of Christianity,” writes John Caputo, “lies in being a weak force.  The weak force of God is embodied in the broken body on the cross….(For) the power of God is not pagan violence, brute power, or vulgar magic; it is the power of powerlessness, the power of the call, the power of protest that rises up from innocent suffering and calls out against it, the power that says no to unjust suffering, and finally, to suffer with innocent suffering, which is perhaps the central Christian symbol.”

Sheer madness – folly I would have thought – that one so alive to human dignity, love and hope should choose this path; should hand over his life to the strong forces of indignity, cruelty and oppression.  For surely in this event they have won, they have blinded yet another visionary, silenced another prophetic voice into deathly submission. 
Surely this event should prove once and for all that really there is no God – certainly not in the all powerful and knowing sense – and that there is only but fate which tends to fall on the side of those who can afford to protect their own interests, most often at the expense of those who cannot.

Well, maybe it is a shocking thing to acknowledge the weakness of God, yet more than ever I am convinced it is a faith stance we consciously need to take.  For when we move beyond the defense of an ‘almighty’ God and in spirit become more inclined toward human points of utter emptiness and vulnerability, genuine love and compassion has a real chance to arise.  Mere religion gives way to the genius of faith.  In the words of the poet:

I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open to me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance:  to live.

So as perhaps we say every year, this is not just a stark and poignant symbol in a purely religious or cosseted sense, rather it is a constant and highly public call to a way of compassionate being in the midst of every day life; the way of authenticity, courage, conviction, desire, vision and hope; the very challenging ways of reconciliation and peace between all peoples. 

Not a way to enter into lightly, in other words, not a faith to be paid lip service to in a casual or facile manner, but rather with intent and a radical openness (looseness) of heart.  Indeed with a corresponding degree of weakness and relinquishment that is not only the essence of our healing (and our true identity), but is the foundation upon which a fruitful life of creativity and love rests.

It is then, a strange and mysterious faith.  A God, contrary to much popular belief, who does not demand bloody and cruel sacrifices, a Messiah who is powerless to change the whirlwind of events he is caught up in (and who has helped to create), and ultimately a Gospel that names such weakness as nothing less than the transforming strength (and power) of redemptive love.

Our question then, as it occurs to me, is not so much can I believe this, but rather dare I play my own part?  Dare we risk our own so called significance – our piety, our image, our pride, our wounds, whatever it might be - in order to truly live, and in the living, generously offer all that we are in the name and future of a common, if not yearning humanity. 

 Let us find in the beckoning silence the voice and leading of God…