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Photo credit: Peggy Trendell-Jensen

Every year at this time of year, I help with a Christian faith event for young people. We get together at a church to prepare for holy week. There’s always lots of snacks, a movie, and a sleepover—light on the sleep. We play a wide game of some sort. You’ll be interested to know that one of our youth leaders, a 70 year old grandmother, holds the record for the most points scored in a game of Capture the Flag.

Amidst all of the fun, we have some pretty serious conversations, too, as we try to put into words what days like Good Friday mean for teenagers. This year, we spent some time with a question. Maybe it’s one you’ve asked yourself before? The question is: Why did Jesus have to suffer? 

Throughout history, people have plumbed the depths of this question. From Origen of Alexandria to St Augustine, Martin Luther to John Calvin, modern day theologians such as African-American scholar James Cone, Canadian religious studies professor Alicia Batten, and Indonesian theologian Ira Mangililo. There are about as many theories of why Jesus had to suffer as there are stones that we’ll place at the foot of the cross during today’s service. Which is to say, there are answers (plural) rather than an answer to this immortal question.

At the youth event last week, we considered four possibilities; I’d like to tell you today about two. The first is the idea that Jesus suffered to stand in solidarity with those who suffer. Sometimes called “Kenosis,” the self-emptying of God, Jesus is God in human flesh poured out into every aspect of human experience. With a Jesus who stands in solidarity with those who suffer, God can truly say, “I know what it’s like to be bullied. I know what it is to be betrayed, to grieve, and even to die.” 

The distinguished writer and Christian theologian Sallie McFague once wrote that Kenosis, or self-emptying, “offers a totally different worldview from either the medieval or Enlightenment pictures of who God is.” Where medieval and Enlightenment narratives might frame Jesus’ suffering and death as a “negative tale” of Jesus paying a ransom to appease the wrath of God, Kenosis begins with the view that God loves the world, that “this story is, first and foremost, positive. . . . about the deep intimacy of all things with God.”

The youth at last Friday’s event considered and even painted some really beautiful images of this self-emptying God. There was Jesus with a waterfall pouring from his side, Jesus on a cross made of bronze, the metal dissolving as it pooled below.

The second idea we might consider when asking ourselves why Jesus had to suffer, is the idea of deliverance. Sometimes called Jesus the Emancipator or Christus Victor, this is the idea that Jesus suffered to stand in opposition and to overcome the powers of this world that seek to destroy, corrupt, and endanger life. Jesus suffered in order to set free all who are bound by fear and despair. 

Sometimes we experience fear and despair because of our own sin. One of our oldest prayers talks about sin as “my fault, my most grievous fault”—these qualities of our human nature that we are desperate to break free from. Sometimes we experience fear and despair because of the sin of others, because of faulty, broken systems where members of our families and communities live at the margins even though they contribute enormously to our lives and to the wellbeing of society. 

Whatever the source of suffering, in the Christus Victor model of Jesus’ death, Jesus takes a stand against empires and regimes, policies and polity, leaders and legacies which, it seems, will do anything to see Love taken down. One of the images of Jesus the Emancipator the youth were drawn to was the image of Jesus knocking down the door to hell and clearing it out! I asked a few of the youth why they liked that one best, thinking it was because it was the one that was most like an action movie.

“Do you like this one because it’s so cinematic?” I asked.

“No,” they said, “I like it because it’s enigmatic—it’s the most mysterious!” 

Jesus breaking into hell represented to them something other-worldly, something that ignited their imagination.

Jesus the one who stands in solidarity. Jesus the Emancipator. It may be that in these two portraits of Jesus on the Cross you see a different story of crucifixion. Maybe you grew up with the Enlightenment Jesus, the one who suffers to pay the ultimate price for our sins, the Jesus who died to make happy an angry God? Maybe thinking of Jesus through some different lenses will send you out today a little lighter, as you consider a model of Jesus’ suffering that you’ve perhaps been longing to consider, a view of Jesus’ crucifixion that makes sense of some things you’ve been wondering about for some time?

How, then, in the midst of this suffering, do we have any hope, even with Jesus at our side? Bishop Mariann Budde, maybe you’ve heard of her? A sermon of hers went viral when she addressed Donald Trump directly during a service at Washington National Cathedral following the President’s inauguration in January. Bishop Budde had published a book in 2023 titled How We Learn to be Brave. The book had done pretty well. You can imagine, though, how book sales have just gone through the roof! I recently purchased a copy and on the cover it says New York Times Bestseller. It is just, like, unheard of for an Anglican to be this famous; so, we’re all pretty excited. (Deacon Peggy was telling me that it was even on the feature shelf at a coffee shop on Seymour Parkway!) 

In the book, Bishop Budde talks about the many ways we learn to be brave. Among them: deciding to go, when it’s time to part ways with something or someone. She talks about deciding to stay, choosing stability. She talks about the times in life when being brave means deciding to start—taking a leap of faith. And, my personal favourite, the one that feels especially relevant to Good Friday: the times when we are called to accept what we did not choose. 

“Accepting what we did not choose and cannot change,” Bishop Budde writes, “is one of the most courageous decisions we make, and the most difficult.” 

It has always struck me that Jesus did not let the cup of suffering pass from him. He did not choose to be born into a time and place where standing with the poor and marginalized were crimes punishable by death. Jesus could have changed his fate if he wanted to—he’s fully human and fully divine, after all! Instead, he drinks the cup of suffering. More than that, he empties the glass!

He suffers one of the most dishonourable forms of execution within the Roman Empire. He is stripped naked and humiliated, publically. Jesus becomes the cup of suffering itself and in a strange twist, we are invited to drink from that same cup every time we remember his death, every time we kneel at the Cross, every time we lift up the bread and wine at communion and say the totally radical words: “These are the gifts of God for the people of God.”

“Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” 

Jesus says this to the disciple who is trying to prevent him from going to the Cross. And, when he’s kneeling in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus pleads, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.”

“Yet not what I want, but what you want.”

Accepting what we did not choose and cannot change is one of the most courageous decisions we can make, and the most difficult. As you approach the Cross this Good Friday, and lay before Christ the stones representing the burdens you carry with you, I invite you to consider where in your life it is that you are called to be brave, where it is that God might be calling you to accept what you did not choose and cannot change. Take heart, be of good courage. Hope in the Lord. Amen.