Still Bleeding

Bread and Wine Reading: "Still Bleeding", Wendell Berry

Scripture Reading: Mark 15: 25-32
It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, ‘The King of the Jews.’ And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!’ In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, ‘He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.’ Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.

Essayist Wendell Berry writes a heartfelt depiction of the question that we all have somewhere within us: Why didn’t Jesus come down from the cross? Why didn’t Jesus save himself? Why didn’t God come in victory and prove that we are right? But Christ’s descent was not from the cross but into the grave. Christ did not claim worldly victory because, as Berry puts it, “from that moment he did, he would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be his slaves. Even those who hated him and hated one another and hated their own souls would have to believe in him then.”

It would be more comfortable for us in this world if Jesus had come as the all-powerful one that had been expected. But that is not who Jesus was. Jesus Christ was not a worldly ruler; Jesus Christ was God. If we crave the wisdom of the world, we will be bound by power and with power comes victory—victory over each other, victory over the earth and the environment, victory even over ourselves. But if we crave the wisdom of God, we will be bound by love and with love comes peace. Berry claims that our suffering is endless; indeed, that Christ still bleeds from the cross because we are more tightly bound together than any of us realize. He says that “we all are involved in all and any good, and in all and any evil. For any sin, we all suffer…It is why God grieves and Christ’s wounds still are bleeding.”

We cannot understand this love of Christ until we cease pursuing power over this world. Love and power cannot exist together. This is the mystery of the cross. In love, God took the ultimate power play of humanity and conquered it not in victory, but in love. God continues to show us this each and every day and, yet, we still want power. We still want to make our brother and sister like we are, like we think they should be; we still want to control our destinies and the destinies of others that may affect us now or later; and we still build our walls higher and higher in an effort to protect what we have and who we are. This is why we struggle to understand the immense love in Christ’s death for in Christ’s death, we see the world as God sees it. As Joan Chittister says in There Is a Season, “only those who come to see the world as God sees the world, only those who see through the eyes of God, ever really see the glory of the world, ever really approach the peaceable kingdom, ever find peace in themselves."

Discussion Questions:
1.) What difference would it make if Christ had come in power rather than in love? What difference would it make if Christ had truly conquered the world?
2.) What would it mean if the world truly saw itself as bound together in love and as a world that feels the pain and suffering of the other?
3.) What do you think the world look like through God’s eyes?

So go forth in peace and walk in the wisdom of God!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli