Love Is Stronger Than Death

It is impossible to narrow the kinds of suffering down into two manageable categories. Suffering of any kind is suffering. There are moments in life when we suffer for a purpose such as getting into college, finding a job, running a marathon, giving birth, or following the vision God has laid out for you. All of those things mentioned involve suffering because you are seeking to bring something new into the world. It’s painful suffering but it has a purpose. One cannot run a marathon without suffering through the training it takes to run twenty-six miles. One cannot give birth without having the pains of childbearing, no matter how many epidurals you may have. A church cannot follow its vision to serve God without encountering a few set-backs such as feelings of loss due to the change happening around you. These kinds of examples have a purpose. You are bringing something new into the old and doing so brings about a certain amount of pain and suffering.

There are moments in life when we suffer without a purpose, without a reason, without a logical explanation. Those moments include children who suffer abuse by the hands of authority figures such as parents, relatives, teachers, and strangers. Those moments include children who are kidnapped from their homes, sold into slavery or prostitution. Those moments include the loss of life to violent crimes and poor decisions. Those moments include those suffering from cancer, dementia, Alzheimer’s, AIDS, and other diseases.  They are examples of suffering in which there is no purpose and no reason. They are examples of our unfair world in which innocent people suffer because we are caught up in vicious cycles that bond us to the suffering of innocents. Our history has been built on the suffering of others.

Letters like First Peter have been used in our recent tradition to glorify suffering. Suffering, specifically suffering for Jesus, becomes a tool in which we are to engage in order to be commendable before God. We glorify suffering and we glorify death. In many ways we convey the message that death and suffering do not matter, and in turn we create an army of zealots who will follow anyone with a message of violence and destruction in the name of God. We create more Major Frank Burns than we do Captain BJ Honeycutts and Hawkeye Pierces or Radar O’Reillys. We build churches that are un-empathetic to plight of the poor and elderly, or those who suffer around them.

Without realizing it, they begin to turn on those within their own church. They begin to exile any who suffers and does not come to the conclusion that God has a plan for them so they should suffer in silence. The church becomes a place full of quiet suffers bullying others to hide their own pain. This theology leads to inquisitions, crusades, holy wars, violent and destructive acts, as well as life denying acts such as caring for the poor and elderly. Such a church’s slogan would read, “Dear children, you’re starving to death because Jesus wants you know how much you need him.”

Death and suffering, it can be argued from our current Christian perspective, is a tool in which we use to get from one side to the other, from one life to another. We have turned death into something that is glorious, passé, and unimportant. The grief process of death is swallowed whole by well-meaning friends with sayings such as, “He is in a better place,” “She is watching over you,” “Heaven has an angel,” or the worse one of all, “God needed your child to be with him.” The implication being one is not allowed to grieve because their loved one is in a better place, as if the family would prefer them to be there instead of here.

We have glorified suffering and death. We sing about death and suffering on a cross. We sing about being washed in blood. We cling to an old rugged and blooded cross, transforming its suffering and death into a joyful celebration. Clarence Jordan opted to use the word lynching instead of crucifixion in his Cotton Patch Gospel, saying, “Our crosses are so shined, so polished, so respectable that to be impaled on one of them would seem to be a blessed experience” (Jordan, CPG p.4). In other words we create a tenth beatitude: Blessed are the ones who are crucified for they will hang with Jesus.

We forget that First Peter was written to community without power. They are strangers in a foreign land. They were exiles trapped under the powerful heel of Rome. They were suffering extreme violent and perverted acts. They were being forced to suffer in order to divert the public’s attention away from their own suffering of hunger and oppression. These Christians were most likely poor, indentured servants, or slaves. They were not people of power. They did not have the power to change their circumstances in a manner conducive of members of the Movement.

Peter urges them to submit as a form of rebellion. He urges them not just take it like Jesus took it but to look to Jesus as their example. He urges them to not take up arms and resort to a violent rebellion that would certainly be squashed. No matter how much success Spartacus’ rebellion was, he was crushed by the boot of Rome and the 6,000 who had followed him were nailed to crosses lining the Appian Way. Peter offers another way. He tells them to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.

The response Peter makes an argument for is one we find within the Sermon on the Mount. He subtly refers to the passages on repaying evil with evil and the command to turn the other cheek. He does not, in any form, order the suffering Christians to just take it. He offers them a way to transform their enemies into their neighbors. What Peter is suggesting is reclaiming the power they have as human beings. It’s not power like those in authority. They cannot make any new laws. They cannot legally set one another free. They do not hold power given by authority of position or wealth. However, they do hold the power of participants in the Movement. It is the power that leans on the everlasting arms of a risen Christ.

Instead of giving into the vicious cycles of their context that leads to war, famine, greed, lust, and alienation, they are too lean on the everlasting arms of Christ by turning the other cheek. Peter does not any form glorify the suffering of his readers. He does not glorify their deaths. He speaks to another way.

How then do we apply this to our context? In the words of Indigo Montoya, “let me explain. No there is too much. Let me sum up.”

At 4:30 pm on February 1, 1960 four African American boys, dressed in suits and ties, sat down at the lunch counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro, NC, waiting to be served. Their order was never taken. They were denied first by a white waitress who reminded them, "We don't serve Negroes here" and then chastised by an African American girl, who helped with the steam table, "You're acting stupid, ignorant! That's why we can't get anywhere today. You know you're supposed to eat at the other end." The boys stayed seated (Wolf, Miles. Lunch at the 5 & 10 p.12).

These four college students began a movement that would sweep the South. They only hoped to do something local. They simply wanted to obtain service in a store which welcomed African Americans at all but one counter. They sat there.

The manager was instructed by the company to just let them sit there and not to say anything else to them. The belief was they'd get bored and leave. Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond did not leave. The four men inspired a movement of sit-ins throughout the South in response to segregation laws that continued to alienate and exclude others because of their skin color.

The Greensboro sit-in exemplifies what Peter writes, “When abused, he did not return abuse; when suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.” Those four young men were being refused the basic need of food because they were sitting at the wrong counter. They were being denied the right of life. Instead of passively suggesting, what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace, the kind of grace of which “people congratulate themselves that they are forgiven, without repenting; that God is on their side, without following the way of God as revealed in Jesus; that they are Christians, without it making much difference in their way of life (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Cost of Discipleship, p.40, 45ff).” The four men confront in the injustice through the nonviolent means of their presence. Their presence and the denying of food forces the other customers to come to terms with their own participation in segregation. They do not let Woolworth’s deny their humanity. They transform the suffering of their people.

Dr. King said it best: “What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” The greatest example of this power is seen in the cross.

The cross is the nonviolent means Jesus uses to confront the injustice of nationalism, power, corruption, alienation, segregation, and does not allow space for one to remain as they were. Jesus nonviolently reclaims his power by going to the cross. It is a transformative initiative. Jesus does not accept the cross instead he transforms the cross. He engages in his own transformative practices within the Sermon on the Mount by turning the other cheek when he is nailed to the cross. He hangs there for all the spectators to gaze upon leading to the humbling of many in the crowd and the confession of a Roman captain.

The cross is God’s nonviolent response to our inhumane violence. As Jesus hangs there, we are confronted with the consequences of our actions and inactions. We see an innocent man dying before our eyes because we chose to participate in the violent vicious cycles of alienation and separation. We see an innocent man dying before our eyes because of our inactive responses to those vicious cycles. Jesus never glorifies his suffering and death.

The bible tells us that love is more powerful than death, stronger than the grave. The scriptures tell us love cannot be drowned by oceans or floods; it cannot be bought, no matter what is offered. It’s hard to believe such a thing as much as we’re surrounded by death and suffering. It’s hard to believe love is stronger than death. Death and suffering, in time, come for us all. Death does not discriminate. No matter your race. No matter your wealth. No matter you celebrity status. Death will find us and claim us. It’s just a matter of time. It feels like death has won.

Noah survived the flood, still he died. Looked like death had won. Isaiah prophesied of the lion and lamb lying down together, still he died. Looked like death had won. Peter walked on water, still he died. Paul survived shipwrecks, snake bites, imprisonment, still he died. John wrote of a new heaven and a new earth, still he died. We have seen scientist, actors, presidents, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, children, and friends, come and bring great light to the world, still they died. And it feels like death has won. Still the bible kept saying love is stronger than death. Like two gladiators in a fight, every time they entered into the ring, it looked death had won.

As hard it is to believe, I hold onto my faith and I got up this morning to tell you that 2,000 years ago loved rolled into the ring and said, “Wait a minute, death. You’ve been bullying people for a long time but I want to set the record straight, love is greater than death.” Love rolled up his sleeves and they fought all over Jerusalem and wrestled all through the cross. The fight went down into the grave and death said, “See, I’ve done to you what I’ve done to all the others.” Death started having a party that Friday night. It was one of those weekend parties. It lasted all through Friday night and into Saturday. It looked like death had won. But early Sunday morning, love rolled up his sleeves and said, “Wait a minute death. Wait a minute.” Snatched death and took the victory out of the grave” (adapted from TD Jakes’ reflection at Whitney Houston’s funeral).

I look at that cross, covered in the stains of injustice and the blood of the innocent and I reminded that love is stronger than death. The cross is power correcting everything that stands against love. Death and suffering of the innocent stands against love. Let us show our empathy to their suffering. Let us work together to end their suffering. Let us show this world that death and suffering do not win.