Church staff
 
Rev David Diller preached on the question “Does Suffering Serve a Purpose?” from Mt 16:21-28. The NT is the result of two things – the life Jesus lived & the grief process response to his death by his earliest followers. Jesus life was one of radical commitment to God’s will. Jesus lived to show God’s love for the poor & oppressed. He called his vision for a remake of society “the Kingdom of God.” It offered a non-violent, all-inclusive, just & peaceful alternative to the status quo. His laid down his life to actualize that vision. His sudden death left his disciples disorganized, shocked, angry, scared, & confused. The reorganization of their lives in response to Jesus’ own life & vision gave them new visions of him & themselves. Now they were the ones telling his stories, enlarging the fellowship, healing diseases, changing lives by the power of their words & deeds, & encountering the same opposition & persecution from the authorities. This forced them to even bolder witnessing & they appropriated titles & labels from their culture & tradition (Lord, Rabbi, Savior, even God) & filled them with new content in the light of their experience with Jesus in the past & their on-going experience of his Spirit in the present. A new faith was born, a new world dawned, & the disciples found even suffering was not too high a price to pay to live authentically in truth & love.