The Neighborhood Podcast
This is a podcast of Guilford Park Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina featuring guests from both inside the church and the surrounding community. Hosted by Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing, Head of Staff.
The Neighborhood Podcast
"Acceptance & Resistance" (April 18, 2025 Sermon)
Preacher: Rev. Stephen M. Fearing
The crucifixion narrative in Luke's Gospel places before us one of Christianity's most profound paradoxes: what are we to make of a God who dies? This meditation on Good Friday explores the creative tension between acceptance and resistance that forms the heart of authentic faith.
Jesus hangs on the cross between two criminals who embody opposing responses to death and divinity. One mocks and demands proof through self-preservation—"Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!"—while the other acknowledges his guilt and Jesus's innocence, asking simply to be remembered. Through their contrasting approaches, we see how resistance and acceptance can either deny or affirm life.
The cross reveals a God who refuses to save himself, choosing instead to hang in solidarity with those ravaged by injustice and evil. This divine solidarity challenges us to examine our own patterns: Do we resist the cost of discipleship while accepting the unacceptable around us? Or do we resist dehumanizing forces while accepting our call to stand with the suffering?
When we accept a God who dies, we acknowledge that the divine is not distant from our pain but intimately acquainted with it. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer recognized, "only a suffering God can help." This acceptance compels us to action—to embody Christ's love by standing in the gap for the marginalized, advocating for justice, and being a voice for the voiceless.
Join us in the sacred, still space between death and resurrection, where we learn to hold these tensions in faith, awaiting the rest of the story that transforms our understanding of both divine power and human suffering.
Follow us on Instagram @guilfordparkpresbyterianchurch
Follow us on Facebook @guilfordparkpc
Follow us on TikTok @guilfordparkpreschurch
Website: www.guilfordpark.org
Let's listen for what God is saying to God's church, using the words of Luke 23, 32 through 49.
Speaker 1:Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with Jesus when they came to the place that is called the skull. When they came to the place that is called the skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. And they cast lots to divide his clothing and the people stood by watching. But the leader scoffed at him, saying he saved others, let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one. The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. There was also an inscription over him this is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us. But the other rebuked him, saying Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation and we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus replied truly, I tell you today you will be with me in paradise. It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, says Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit. Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said Certainly this man was innocent. And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home beating their breasts place. They returned home, beating their breasts, but all his acquaintances, including the women who have followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance watching these things. Friends, holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God. Let us pray, o Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, o Lord, our rock and our redeemer, amen.
Speaker 1:The life of faith often requires us to hold in creative tension things that might at first glance seem incompatible. Holy Week is a time when we, as followers of Christ, magnify these contradictions and dwell within them. Specifically speaking, good Friday places two things on a collision course with each other, two things that we prefer never to mingle God and death. What is to be done with a God who dies, a God who willingly hangs in solidarity with those ravaged by the forces of injustice and evil, a God who refuses to save himself, a God who loses? What is to be done with a God who dies?
Speaker 1:When it comes to death, we often dance between the polarities of acceptance and resistance. On the one hand, we accept that we will die. You all here at Fellowship, I Trust began lit, the same way that we did at Guilford Park, with the imposition of ashes, reminding ourselves that we are dust, and to dust what we shall return. But on the other hand, we resist the reality of our mortality, expending much time, energy and effort in a futile attempt to delay any signs of aging. Just the other day, my five-year-old asked how many sleeps it would be until she had gray hair like me, and I said I don't know.
Speaker 1:In this story from Luke's Gospel, jesus approaches death in its most cruel form, hanged on a cross between two criminals who each face their deaths with two contradictory stances One resists while the other accepts. Thus, jesus literally inhabits the space between resistance and acceptance on this evening. One criminal resists the notion that the man crucified between them could possibly be God. His resistance echoes through the millennia to this day in those who wish to promote a perversion of our faith, that coerces rather than invites, that dominates rather than serves and derides and mocks instead of loves. The other criminal accepts the idea that God and death can coexist. Unlike his neighbor on the far side of Jesus, he surrenders both to death before him and the divine beside him, choosing to place his trust in the one whom he hopes will remember him when he enters his kingdom.
Speaker 1:Now, in this scenario, though, resistance is faithless and acceptance is faithful, but these two things can be reversed in a different context. Jesus has his own resistance. He resists empire, violence and the power and privilege of political domination. This faithful form of resistance gives way to his acceptance of death, his acceptance of the cross. The very same cross he bid his followers then, and bids us, his followers now, to take up. So, then, resistance and acceptance can be either life denying or life giving.
Speaker 1:We can resist the effort required to heal the world's brokenness. We can resist the effort required to heal the world's brokenness. We can resist the sacrifice needed to surrender our privilege. We can resist, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer would put, the cost of discipleship. This form of resistance creates dangerous patterns of accepting the unacceptable around us. But we can engage in a different form of resistance this Good Friday. We can resist the forces that decry empathy as weakness, the temptation to respond to violence with violence, and we can resist the invitation to join those who mock the image of Christ and those who are rejected and scorned and derided around and among us. That resistance good resistance we might call it leads us to accept a different reality than the one prescribed by the powers of empire.
Speaker 1:What if you and I accept a God who dies? What if you and I accept a God who dies? What if we accept a God who cares enough about the powerless, the vulnerable and the downtrodden to hang in solidarity with them until the end? In accepting a God who dies, we acknowledge that the divine is not distant or detached from our pain. Instead, we are reminded that God knows our struggles intimately.
Speaker 1:Jesus hanging on that cross becomes the embodiment of love that confronts suffering head on. He shows us that, even in the face of death itself, there is a deeper truth at play, a truth that transforms despair into hope, loss into love and darkness into light. We must also recognize that our acceptance of this God who dies compels us to act. We are called to embody this love and solidarity in our own lives. How can we, like Jesus, stand in the gap for those who are marginalized and oppressed and hurting? How can we resist the forces of indifference and apathy that seek to separate us from one another?
Speaker 1:This resistance is rooted in love. Y'all calling us to advocate for justice, lift up the downtrodden and be a voice for the voiceless. So, friends, between Good Friday and Easter Sunday lies a God who dies Now, as Paul Harvey would say. If you remember Paul Harvey on the radio, you and I know the rest of the story, but we're not there yet. So, in the sacred, still and silent time in between, let us embrace the tension of both acceptance and resistance in the life of faith, as we await what is to come. In the name of God, the creator, redeemer and sustainer, may all of us, god's beloved children, say Amen.