A Call to Jesus’ Passion

“(nothing) can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
 - Romans 8:38b

I know this isn’t Phoenix, but lately I have been running for the air conditioning whenever I can.  It makes me wonder how I survived all those years in Kansas City – with heat and humidity.   

Sometimes we don’t handle the heat very well, and I’m not merely talking about the temperature outside.  I’m referring to the heat of troubles, hardships, conflicts, illnesses, tribulations and difficulties of all kinds.  When the heat is on we can run for the air-conditioning.  

In fact, my perception is that the outlook of much of American Christianity is to escape the heat of adversity and get into the cool, comfortable conditions of security.  We tend to be air-conditioned Christians!  We prefer the God of the quick fix who will make us happy, prosperous, comfortable and protected.  We are forever wishing to escape our bad feelings, insecurities, difficulties, doubts and dilemmas and move into strength, security, and control.  We ask God to take our problems away and bless our quests for self-indulgence and absolute certainty.   When the heat is on we seek the cooling relief of a God that will provide an easy way of escape.  I believe this kind of thinking is a false and bogus gospel - a shallow faith – not biblically grounded or faithful to the witness of Jesus.

This remarkable and amazing passage from Romans 8 sends us in a whole different direction. It is critically important that we understand the context or we risk dulling the cutting edge of this familiar passage. Paul was writing to an underground church, a community of faith under various forms of hardship and political persecution.

The hardships Paul had in mind were somewhat different from what we might call hardships.  Many of the hardships on his list were the results of persecution - at the hands of the Roman Empire and its collaborators.  To the Romans, Christians were a strange and subversive sect, meeting in catacombs, sewers and dark alleys, for their own safety.  The Romans looked upon  them as odd, shameful and secretive. Rumors of sexual depravity, child sacrifice and even cannibalism left a stigma on the early Christians.   The early church had to deal with many such misperceptions and the resulting prejudice and persecution.  The thing that disturbed the Romans the most about the Christians was their devotion to their God over and above allegiance to Caesar. The early Christians were not only making a statement about their personal faith but a political statement about their ultimate allegiance – and they made it at great risk. 

Think of some of the things that Jesus told his disciples.  “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves.” (Matthew 10:16)  It sounds like heat to me!

“Take up your cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) It’s an invitation into death and it sounds pretty scorching to me!

“Those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:34) That’s anything but air-conditioned.

I have been spending some time this summer reading in the Book of Acts.  Do you know what event in the life of the early church was the catalyst that caused the church to move its witness out of Jerusalem and into the wider world? It was not a slick new church marketing program; not a new approach to worship or evangelism; not telling the people what they wanted to hear by using faith to reinforce their fears and  prejudices. It was persecution!   Persecution only increased their fervor to follow Jesus. They understood that they were following the Lord on a path that led to a cross.  They didn’t trust in a God who hid behind protected and reinforced walls of safety and security.  They trusted that Jesus was intentionally vulnerable to a dangerous and perilous world and lived a life of love in the face of it all.  They understood that Jesus was leading them down a suffering and sacrificial road, possibly into death, and they trusted it was a paradoxical road to new life and transformation.  They trusted that their suffering, for love’s sake, was redemptive and united them with the suffering of Jesus. 

For the early Christians the cross was both personal and political.  For them the way of the cross was the way to personal transformation, involving dying to an old way of being, thinking, and living - and being reborn into a new way of being, thinking and living.  In his teachings, Jesus invited his hearers into a radical centering in God that involved dying to an old way of life and being born to a new way of life.  It’s a way, a road, a path that departs from conventional ways of thinking and living that are self-absorbed and defensive and into a new way that is self-giving, involving sacrificial love. 

But also for those early Christians, who found themselves at the mercy of the dominant political authority, the way of the cross was also political.  Jesus didn’t merely die any death.  He wasn’t pushed off a cliff or stoned to death, but he was crucified. Crucifixion was Roman punishment and Roman persecution.   For those early Christians to “take up the cross” meant to adopt Jesus’ way of living that inevitably led to confrontation with the Roman domination system with all of its injustice and violence.  Jesus passion was the kingdom of God, that is, what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers of this world were not.  To “take up the cross” was to take up the dream and vision of the prophets – a world of distributive justice in which everybody has enough; in which war is no more; in which the poorest are lifted up; where the hungry are filled; the last and least are put first and foremost; those in bondage are set free; and nobody need live in fear of prejudicial repression.

This was God’s dream and the passion of Jesus, and they were so grounded in Jesus and his passion that they were willing to follow him on the same path that took him to a cross.  So what we are reading today is Paul writing to those brave souls who lived in constant uncertainty and jeopardy, telling them that “nothing can separate (them) from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”  For those early Christian his words were marching orders and a call to courage and action in the face of a powerful political domination system that would just as soon have seen them dead.     

Now what an incredible testimony this is for us, who much of the time are fearful of our own shadows; afraid of being inconvenienced or embarrassed.  We easily avoid changes and challenges that involve a way of sacrifice.  We can be passionate, but our passion can be misdirected.  We can exhibit more passion about petty persona things than about justice for the oppressed in our own community.  We see life through the eyes of what’s convenient for us, and often are blind to the vision of a common good.

Most of us are familiar with some form of the question, “Do you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?”  It is an important question, for the lordship of Jesus is a path of personal transformation – the way of the cross – dying to an old way and being reborn to a new way.  But taking seriously the way of the cross also means there is another equally important question much like the first one, but with the change of one little word, “Do you accept Jesus as your political Lord and Savior?”  I think it is still a perilous question and risky commitment.  Like for those first early Christians it may mean that, we too, in following the passion of Jesus for a more just world, living out the prayer, “Thy kingdom come,” may find ourselves at odds with the political authority and even persecuted for the sake of God’s kingdom.

To take Jesus seriously is to follow him.  To follow Jesus is to participate in his passion.  If you do follow him into his passion for “God's kingdom come,” remember, Have courage, be brave, for “(nothing) can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”