It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Moltmann Monday, and today will be a little different. I wrote a follow-up piece to Erik Leafblad’s article “God Loses” in this month’s Immerse Journal. You can read it here. In it I talk about my first experience with Moltmann’s The Crucified God and how it literally saved my faith. Be warned, though- it’s not a fluff piece.
I actually wrote this piece a number of weeks ago, but if it were possible to believe it more now than I did when I wrote it, I do. This past week, a childhood friend took his life. And after something like that, there is no place for a theology of glory. It mocks my friend, and it mocks those of us who are grieving. Before we can arrive at our own Easters, we need the Jesus who knows suffering, who knows grief and loss and sadness. We need the Jesus who knows what it is like to want his cup taken away. We need the Jesus who stays anyway, the one who says “Father forgive them because they have no idea what they are doing.” Because we don’t.
But because of that Jesus, I can find a hope that says his kind of love for me and for this world and for all of us who are lost and don’t know what we are doing may actually be enough.
I hate the cross, but I absolutely trust the Jesus who bore the cross and made a way for resurrection. That’s really the only gospel I know, and the only one I care to know.
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