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Being Mocked: The
Essence of Christ's Work, Not Muhammed'
February
8, 2006
By
John Piper
What
we saw this past week in the Islamic demonstrations
over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad was
another vivid depiction of the difference
between Muhammad and Christ, and what it
means to follow each. Not all Muslims approve
the violence. But a deep lesson remains:
The work of Muhammad is based on being honored
and the work of Christ is based on being
insulted. This produces two very different
reactions to mockery.
If
Christ had not been insulted, there would
be no salvation. This was his saving work:
to be insulted and die to rescue sinners
from the wrath of God. Already in the Psalms
the path of mockery was promised: “All who
see me mock me; they make mouths at me;
they wag their heads” (Psalm 22:7). “He
was despised and rejected by men . . . as
one from whom men hide their faces . . .
and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).
When
it actually happened it was worse than expected.
“They stripped him and put a scarlet robe
on him, and twisting together a crown of
thorns, they put it on his head. . . . And
kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying,
‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And they spit
on him” (Matthew 27:28-30). His response
to all this was patient endurance. This
was the work he came to do. “Like a lamb
that is led to the slaughter, and like a
sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).
This
was not true of Muhammad. And Muslims do
not believe it is true of Jesus. Most Muslims
have been taught that Jesus was not crucified.
One Sunni Muslim writes, “Muslims believe
that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy
of crucifixion.”1
Another adds, “We honor [Jesus] more than
you [Christians] do. . . . We refuse to
believe that God would permit him to suffer
death on the cross.”2
An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid
the “ignominy” of the cross.
That’s
the most basic difference between Christ
and Muhammad and between a Muslim and a
follower of Christ. For Christ, enduring
the mockery of the cross was the essence
of his mission. And for a true follower
of Christ enduring suffering patiently for
the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience.
“Blessed are you when others revile you
and persecute you and utter all kinds of
evil against you falsely on my account”
(Matthew 5:11). During his life on earth
Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41),
a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a blasphemer
(Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25);
and he promised his followers the same:
“If they have called the master of the house
Beelzebul, how much more will they malign
those of his household” (Matthew 10:25).
The
caricature and mockery of Christ has continued
to this day. Martin Scorsese portrayed Jesus
in The Last Temptation of Christ
as wracked with doubt and beset with sexual
lust. Andres Serrano was funded by the National
Endowment for the Arts to portray Jesus
on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The
Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as a mere
mortal who married and fathered children.
How
should his followers respond? On the one
hand, we are grieved and angered. On the
other hand, we identify with Christ, and
embrace his suffering, and rejoice in our
afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul
that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let
us love our enemies and win them with the
gospel. If Christ did his work by being
insulted, we must do ours likewise.
When
Muhammad was portrayed in twelve cartoons
in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten,
the uproar across the Muslim world was intense
and sometimes violent. Flags were burned,
embassies were torched, and at least one
Christian church was stoned. The cartoonists
went into hiding in fear for their lives,
like Salman Rushdie before them. What does
this mean?
It
means that a religion with no insulted Savior
will not endure insults to win the scoffers.
It means that this religion is destined
to bear the impossible load of upholding
the honor of one who did not die and rise
again to make that possible. It means that
Jesus Christ is still the only hope of peace
with God and peace with man. And it means
that his followers must be willing to “share
his sufferings, becoming like him in his
death” (Philippians 3:10).
Footnotes:
1
Badru D. Kateregga and David W. Shenk,
Islam and Christianity: A Muslim and a
Christian in Dialogue (Nairobi: Usima
Press, 1980), p. 141.
2
Quoted from The Muslim World
in J. Dudley Woodberry, editor, Muslims
and Christians on the Emmaus Road
(Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1989), p. 164.
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