March 15, 2026
• Rev. Mindie Moore
Lent Week 4: “Come Down from the Cross”
Mark 15:29-32
Prayer moment for Bethany and Nathan Fields
Some of you are familiar with my love for working out at Orange Theory. Some of you are deeply puzzled by this love, and that’s fair. Like any niche organization, there are a lot of “orange theory-isms" that serve as inside jokes for those of us who show up frequently enough, and one of those revolves around birthdays.
Every time someone comes to a class on their birthday, the coach invites them, over the mic for all to hear, to do birthday burpees. A burpee, if you’re not familiar with it, is a chaos torture move that involves a plank, a push up, and every time I do a burpee, my primary goal is not to fall on my face.
And I have seen a lot of birthdays over my time at Orange Theory. But what I have NEVER seen is someone say yes to the coach’s invitation to do a set of birthday burpees! And that includes me, I was a very clear and firm “no thank you” last year, and I will be a very clear and firm “no thank you” THIS year. Because WHY would anyone CHOOSE to suffer on their birthday?!
Why would anyone CHOOSE to suffer EVER? Most of us actively avoid suffering, whether in inconsequential ways like in a fitness class or in much more significant moments of our life.
That’s what we get to wrestle with today as we continue in our Lenten series, where we are looking at different phrases that people said about or to Jesus during HIS time of suffering. And today, we hear from some of the religious leaders who were present at his crucifixion, and the commentary that they had about this whole event. We hear them mock Jesus as he suffers and the suggestion they throw out, that IF Jesus is really who he says he is, then he should simply, (SLIDE)
“Come down from the cross.”
It’s a pretty jarring phrase to hear, and a terrible way to react to someone in the position that Jesus is in. This whole scene is hard to witness. Because this little section of scripture puts suffering right in front of our faces, and we have to linger here. We don’t get the release of Jesus’ death. We don’t get the hope of resurrection. We just get this moment of pain and all the uncertainty that comes with it.
This moment with Jesus and the religious leaders pushes us to sit with our discomfort and examine what we truly believe about the role suffering plays in our lives and our faith, what Jesus’ experience with suffering says about his power and deity, and what our own experiences with suffering can do to our connection to God.
I actually think that’s a piece of what we’re seeing here with the mocking that comes from these onlookers. That underneath their judgmental, sort of sarcastic exteriors, there is actually a DEEP discomfort. Because they’re seeing suffering up close and they don’t know what to do with it, and what to do with the one who is suffering. They don’t know what to do with THEIR role IN what’s going on.
That discomfort and tension feels true to me. Because I think about what suffering looks like in our world, and we are just overloaded with it. Because of the way news travels now, so quickly and constant, we take in so much suffering that I don’t even know if we process half of what we see. But whether or not we PROCESS it, we’re shaped by it. We’re currently watching a war develop in real-time, hearing terrible stories from across the world, seeing warnings about what could be next. That would be enough for us to try and sort through, but that’s not even all of it. Every micro-heartbreak, every helpless feeling...it impacts us, on an intellectual, emotional, spiritual level. And I worry that it either is hardening us to other’s sufferings or it’s making us just want to escape. I’m not sure either is a very healthy response.
As we try to understand what we believe about suffering and why that matters, it might help for us to start with our expectations. Specifically our expectations of how we think God should work.
Because in this story...the amount of unmet expectations from the religious leaders are MANY. Because, in their minds, if Jesus is all that he claims to be, he should be powerful enough to get himself out of this mess! He should be powerful enough to come down from the cross. He should be powerful enough to stop his own suffering and change the outcome.
Jesus, stuck there on a cross, is nothing like holy power is supposed to look. Power is supposed to be triumphant and victorious, not bleeding and broken. God is supposed to be mighty and mystical, not humble and helpless. All throughout Jesus’ ministry, he has offended this group of religious elites because what he does absolutely does not fit with how they understand God to function, and THIS moment on the cross...this might be the most offensive one of all.
So they sneer. And they mock. And they roll their eyes and say, “If this is God...he can get himself out of this.”
I wonder what we believe about God’s power and how that power relates to suffering. We often find ourselves in a place of wondering how a God who is powerful could let some of the terrible things that happen in the world take place. We often feel angry or betrayed when our lives spin out of control and we have to face things that we can’t imagine we’re strong enough to get through. We give in to helplessness and hopelesness because the suffering of the wider world is just too big and God’s power feels pretty far removed from our reality.
Maybe we, like the religious leaders in this story, could benefit from a different understanding of how God’s power and suffering intersect. Maybe, in our world, (SLIDE) We may not see God’s power PREVENT suffering, but we often get to see God’s power WORK THROUGH suffering.
This isn’t necessarily the version of Jesus that I prefer. Because I think the truth is that we WANT a Jesus that is able to come down from the cross, we WANT our God to remove crosses, instead of utilize them. This is human nature. We want our faith to provide strength and power that gives us as little suffering as possible. Sometimes we even believe the lie that it’s a LACK of faith, or an ABSENCE of God’s presence that leads to our suffering in the first place.
But just because suffering can sometimes be senseless...doesn’t mean that it has to be useless. Sometimes the ways God works in us during our seasons of suffering can be some of the most powerful ways we experience who God is. Sometimes the power of Jesus shows up through the lessons we learn, or the action we take, or the ways that we grow to see things in a different way.
I don’t want any of us to suffer...but I also can’t deny how I’ve seen God work again and again THROUGH those moments. You may have heard me talk about the fact that our son has Type 1 diabetes, and this past Friday was the 6th anniversary of him being diagnosed. It’s always a weird day for me...we make it fun, usually by eating ice cream in some form, but it’s a day that was pretty sad and traumatic for our family. On Friday, before the ice cream eating, I went to a performance at Rhys’ school. And I felt overwhelmed with all the ways I have seen God show up in the past six years. I watched all of these adults instinctively caring for him, in really subtle ways that they probably weren’t even putting much thought into. But I could see it. And I thought of the people we’ve connected to since diabetes entered our lives, I thought of the way this has expanded my own understanding of healthcare justice, I thought of the times I’ve had to ask for help or admit I don’t know something and that that in itself has been an act of God’s grace.
I wish that circumstance was different, AND. I see God’s work IN it.
When we see God’s work in the midst of suffering, it reminds us that (SLIDE) Jesus meets us in our suffering.
This is one of the most powerful things that happens on the cross. Theologian Jurgen Moltmann says: “On the cross, God is forsaken by God so that he can become the God of the forsaken.” Now, that’s a pretty complicated theological statement, like you could probably take a whole seminary class just unpacking that, but the heart of what it speaks to is that Jesus is no stranger to the experience of suffering. When we suffer—Jesus can relate. There’s an empathy, an understanding that he brings to humanity because, as hard as it is to wrap our minds around, we have a God who chose to draw close and fully identify with the human experience. The good, the bad, the joy, the pain, the suffering...God’s been there. And so God does not turn away when suffering shows up. God draws us near, God is present, God is faithful.
The way that Jesus shows up on the cross, in this very vulnerable way that is perceived as weakness, it pushes against what we’re told it looks like to be tough and suffer through the hard things. How many of us were told “don’t cry!” when we were younger? My kids make so much fun of me, but I’m out here like, “cry anytime you want! Feel the things! Tell the truth! Let the hard things be as hard as they need to be.” We don’t earn points for ignoring suffering or gritting our teeth to tough it out. As Jesus is vulnerable, WE can be vulnerable. We don’t have to be ashamed of how difficult it is to get through a season where suffering is our norm. We don’t have to hide the pieces of ourselves that are really tender and don’t seem powerful at all.
That’s not what God asks of us. In fact, 2 Corinthians 12:9 is a fairly familiar Scripture that reminds us that God’s “power is made perfect in weakness.” It’s a reminder to Paul who wrote this and to the church he writes it to that even when we suffer, God is with us and God is working. It’s a counterintuitive picture of a God whose power looks different than what we think human power should look like. It’s Jesus on the cross, accepting what’s painful and broken, but still knowing that God is near.
This conversation around suffering, I hope we know, is bigger than a philosophical thing, and it’s even bigger than just our interpersonal ways of making it through difficult times. What we believe about suffering, and how God can show up, impacts how WE show up in the world. It impacts how we are able to stand in solidarity with those who suffer, and the ways we engage in healing the suffering we encounter.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Dietrich Bonhoeffer (SLIDE), and his theology of suffering. In his book The Cost of Discipleship he says:
“Suffering and rejection sum up the whole cross of Jesus...Suffering and rejection are laid upon Jesus as divine necessity...the very notion of a suffering Messiah was a scandal to The Church, even in its earliest days. That is not the kind of Lord it wants...
Jesus must therefore make it clear beyond all doubt that the “must” of suffering applies to his disciples no less than to himself. Just as Christ is Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection, so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as he shares his Lord’s suffering and rejection and crucifixion.”
So that...is some tough to digest theology of suffering. It’s ok if you’re not totally bought in or these thoughts make you really uncomfortable...they make me uncomfortable. And as challenging as this view of suffering is to me, I see the power in it. Because I can very directly see how Bonheoffer’s theology impacted his ability to show up in his very specific moment in time.
He was a German pastor during the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, and he frequently found himself horrified by not only what that group of people was doing, but he was appalled at what the Church in his country was becoming—nationalist and aligned to an ideology and a leader who were totally opposite of anything that resembled Jesus. Bonhoeffer’s faith led him to participate in the resistance movement, working alongside others to try and overthrow Hitler.
In 1939, he was invited to come to Union Theological Seminary in New York for an extended period of time. It was a ticket out of the chaos and danger of what was happening in Germany. He accepted the invitation, but then regretted it after only a very short time away. He felt he should not have left the suffering happening in Germany, that he should have stayed and continued his work, and to, in his words, “share the trials of his people.” And so he returned. Even though he was no friend to a hostile government. Even though his return led to his arrest and eventual death in a concentration camp.
There were numerous ways he could have avoided suffering. And that’s not what he did. Because he believed that if he was really going to follow Jesus, that when suffering presented itself, he had to go there. The God he knew was a God who had suffered, who somehow held power and weakness all at the same time. And his faith didn’t give him an exemption, it gave him a responsibility. A responsibility to show up and suffer in solidarity because that’s what Jesus did.
(SLIDE) What do we believe about suffering? And how does what we believe shape how we live?
If we follow a Jesus who does not relieve himself of the cross, but instead follow a Jesus who embraces it and endures...that HAS to impact how we show up in this world. That HAS to impact what hope looks like to us. It HAS to impact who we are willing to stand in solidarity with. It HAS to impact what power means to us.
Following Jesus like this...it doesn’t make suffering easier. It doesn’t make it less heartbreaking. But it does allow us to see that the Jesus who suffers on the cross can hold the suffering of our world. And that because of that Jesus, we can show up in brave and holy ways, when suffering makes itself known.
Let’s pray.