Tag: Yancey

Radical Shift

On this Easter, let me share another reflection from Philip Yancey…

In my study of the Bible, I was struck by a radical shift in its authors’ attitudes about suffering, a shift that traces directly back to the cross. When New Testament writers speak of hard times, they express none of the indignation that characterized Job, the prophets, and many of the psalmists. They offer no real explanation for suffering, but keep pointing to two events—the death and resurrection of Jesus—as if they form some kind of pictographic answer.

The apostles’ faith, as they freely confessed, rested entirely on what happened on Easter Sunday. Those disciples soon learned what they had failed to learn in three years with their leader: when God seems absent, he may be closest of all. When God seems dead, he may be coming back to life.

The three-day pattern—tragedy, darkness, triumph—became for New Testament writers a template that can be applied to all our times of testing. We can look back on Jesus, the proof of God’s love, even though we may never get an answer to our “Why?” questions.

Good Friday demonstrates that God has not abandoned us to our pain. The evils and sufferings that afflict our lives are so real and so significant that God willed to share and endure them. God, too, is “acquainted with grief.” On that day, Jesus himself experienced the silence of God—it was Psalm 22, not Psalm 23, that he quoted from the cross.

Easter Sunday shows that, in the end, suffering will not triumph

And Easter Sunday shows that, in the end, suffering will not triumph. Therefore, “Consider it pure joy … whenever you face trials of many kinds,” writes James; and “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials,” writes Peter; and “We also rejoice in our sufferings,” writes Paul. The apostles go on to explain what good can result from such “redeemed suffering”: maturity, wisdom, genuine faith, perseverance, character, and many rewards to come.

It’s a matter of time, Paul says. Just wait: God’s miracle of transforming a dark, silent Friday into Easter Sunday will someday be enlarged to cosmic scale.

Yancey, Philip (2009). Grace Notes: Daily Readings with a Fellow Pilgrim.

“A Bright Light” (Good Friday)

A Good Friday reflection from Philip Yancey…

Author Henri Nouwen tells the story of a family he knew in Paraguay. The father, a doctor, spoke out against the military regime there and its human rights abuses. Local police took their revenge on him by arresting his teenage son and torturing him to death. Enraged townsfolk wanted to turn the boy’s funeral into a huge protest march, but the doctor chose another means of protest.

At the funeral, the father displayed his son’s body as he had found it in the jail—naked, scarred from the electric shocks and cigarette burns and beatings. All the villagers filed past the corpse, which lay not in a coffin but on the blood-soaked mattress from the prison. It was the strongest protest imaginable, for it put injustice on grotesque display.

Isn’t that what God did at Calvary? “It’s God who ought to suffer, not you and me,” say those who bear a grudge against God for the unfairness of life. The curse word expresses it well: God be damned. And on that day, God was damned. The cross that held Jesus’ body, naked and marked with scars, exposed all the violence and injustice of this world. At once, the cross revealed what kind of world we have and what kind of God we have: a world of gross unfairness, a God of sacrificial love.

No one is exempt from tragedy or disappointment—even God was not exempt. Jesus offered no immunity, no way out of the unfairness, but rather a way through it to the other side. Just as Good Friday demolished the instinctive belief that this life is supposed to be fair, Easter Sunday followed with its startling clue to the riddle of the universe. Out of the darkness, a bright light shone.

A friend of mine, struggling to believe in a loving God amid much pain and sorrow, blurted out this statement: “God’s only excuse is Easter!” The language is nontheological and harsh, but within that phrase lies a haunting truth. The cross of Christ may have overcome evil, but it did not overcome unfairness. For that, Easter is required, a bright clue that someday God will restore all physical reality to its proper place.

Yancey, Philip (2009). Grace Notes: Daily Readings with a Fellow Pilgrim.