This afternoon again, we hear the whole story of Jesus’s Passion. If you were there on Sunday, you have already heard Matthew’s version, and today we hear John’s version. If you remember, we talked about how the Passion narrative is such a large portion of the Gospel, it’s true in Matthew, Mark and Luke’s, it’s even truer in John’s, where almost 60% of the book is about Jesus’s last days on earth and the great suffering he endured then. The evangelists want to make sure that we understand that what happens for Jesus on the cross is not just a terrible accident after a successful ministry, rather they want us to know that all of what Jesus suffered was part of his ministry. Now it can certainly come as a surprise in our culture where we so often value productivity, and suffering is just what prevents us from “doing things”. Suffering is always seen negatively, as a waste of time, as a problem, as a tragedy. Now, I don’t think the evangelists say that all this suffering was a good thing for Jesus, but ask any artist, musician, writer, painter, and they will tell you how suffering can become fruitful when they look at their pain and turn it into something comforting and beautiful. In this case, suffering is the work, and even sacred work. And I think this is also the most sacred work Jesus does during his Passion. At least, that’s the impression John wants to give us. More than in any other version of the passion, in John’s version, Jesus is calm, collected, and determined and, I would dare to say, Jesus gets the job done.
So what is it that Jesus does on Good Friday? Well, he tells us himself each time, he tells us again this afternoon: He takes the cup the Father gives him, and he drinks it. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me? we hear Jesus says today when Peter try to prevent him from being arrested, making it clear that this all what it’s going to be about.Now, for us it might not be obvious what Jesus is referring to, but for the first century Jews that would have been very obvious. The cup of God’s wrath is a very well know image in the Hebrew Scriptures. Among other references, we can find it in Jeremiah 25:15–17 where the prophet says: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: ‘Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. When they drink it, they will stagger and go mad because of the sword I will send among them’”
In our passage, what John wants us to understand is that Jesus is going to take the blame for us, to take God’s anger and he is going to put away the sword Jeremiah talks about. Jesus says to Peter: Put your sword back into his sheath and he is going to drink the cup himself: Am I not going to drink the cup that the Father has given me? And so that’s what why we say that Jesus died for us.
There a two things though that are very difficult for us to understand: How can a loving Go be angry? And then how could it make God “feel better” if Jesus died, paying the price by absorbing all of God’s anger. How could such an injustice make up for our sins?
So let’s think about it for a minute.
We first need to consider this assumption that if God is loving, God shouldn’t be angry. It is clear in the Hebrew Scriptures that God is angry at the evil that’s going on in the world, and I think we all know how it feels like, would it be only when we watch the news and see the harm we do to each other. We get angry, we grieve at the suffering of the world. As imperfect as we are, we are scandalized by this evil. So how should God feel, who is all loving? I think God is even more scandalized than we are. Now we can be angry without being hateful, without plotting revenge or murder, or at least with refraining from doing so. And that’s what God does all the time in the Hebrew Scriptures. God grieves so much over humanity’s sins and yet, God always renounce punishements, or to part of the punishment.
Indeed we are all God’s children, so what is God going to do? What do you do when your toddler’s tantrums drives you crazy? When your teenager tells you horrible things? When your adult child spend all your savings? Well, sure you try to teach, to explain, to guide and you may yell at times, but in the end are you going to cut them off, hurt them or take your revenge? No, most of the time, because they don’t know what they are doing you just swallow your own grief, you drink your own tears.
I think it’s exactly the same with God. We wonder why God allows so much evil but if there is one thing clear in the Bible is that God certainly forbids it. God like a good parent sent to Israel Moses and many prophets to teach the people how to live righteously. Jesus himself preached God’s great law of love, and how we are to love each other. But as much as God forbids us to do evil, we do it anyway! So what choice is left to God? Destroying us? Will God pour the cup of wrath on the people? No, out of goodness, God rather chooses to forgive us all, and to do that God has to swallow his own wrath, to drink the cup of his grief over us. Jesus certainly does not die to make God feel better about our sins, quite the opposite Jesus shows us how awful God feels, Jesus makes manifest in his passion God’s suffering for us. Because God chooses to forgive us, it costs God everything.
And yet in our own way, we can understand that too. When we want to forgive someone, we have to drink the cup of our own sorrow instead of pouring out our wrath. If we don’t want to become hateful, vengeful or resentful, we have to process our own grief. Forgiveness is not cheap, it costs us something and sometimes everything. The more we love someone, the harder it can be to forgive them because the more deeply they hurt can us. Now God takes all of the hurt of the world, all the sorrow, all the sin and God takes it all in. In Jesus, God takes the cup of his own grief, and drinking it instead of pouring it, that’s how we are saved too, if we accept the forgiveness in his blood. On that day on the cross, the cup of sorrows becomes the cup of blessings, the cup of wrath becomes the cup of salvation.