The Gospel on trial

I watched the absolutely brilliant God on Trial, shown yesterday on BBC Two at 2100. It's an hour and a half long and, I should say, required viewing: obviously, it's after the watershed and set in Auschwitz, so be prepared for robust language and moving scenes. The play, of course, stands in a tradition of "God in the dock" literature and events, starting with Abraham's pleas for Sodom, passing through Job and the Psalms, and into more modern Jewish experience, with the events of 70AD and particularly Masada referenced, as well as pogroms in Spain and Russia and finally, as God's accuser puts it, "Look around you."

The charge in this play is that God is in breach of his covenant with the Jews; the case for the defence has to keep moving, as more and more objections are lodged. I'll not spoil it by saying how it ends; instead, I want to remark upon possibly (from a Christian perspective, and Frank Cottrell Boyce, the playwright, is a Roman Catholic) the most moving, the most striking line in the whole ninety minutes of the play. It hit me like a brick—I forget at what point it comes, but it's in the middle somewhere—when God's accuser shouts, "What use is a God who suffers?"

What use, indeed. In that camp hut stood a huddled mass of frightened, persecuted people, humiliated and shaking in fear of their lives. What use is a God who suffers?

One man had concluded that the vastness of the universe proved that the God who loves is a myth. What use is a God who suffers?

Another had lost his mother, and yet another, his beloved sons. What use is a God who suffers?

The story of the trial in Auschwitz, whether it happened or no, originated with Elie Wiesel, but there's another play, written by a German Lutheran pastor, which also stands in the tradition of "God in the dock" literature. Let me quote an old Ed Clowney sermon, all the way back from from Urbana '73.

After World War II a play in West Berlin made a deep impression on the city. It was The Sign of Jonah by Günter Rutenborn. In a courtroom scene all the actors are found guilty in the evils of the war they have survived, and all transfer the blame to God. God is accused, found guilty and sentenced to become a human being, a wanderer on earth, deprived of his rights, homeless, hungry, thirsty. He shall know what it means to die. He himself shall die! And lose a son, and suffer the agonies of fatherhood. And when at last He dies, He shall be disgraced and ridiculed. (Source)

That central question hangs, I think, over the whole of God on Trial: What use is a God who suffers? Says Clowney,

God's amazing grace has done more than the most bitter blasphemy could propose. God's wrath has been poured out on earth already, and God himself has borne all its fury.

The God who judges is become the God who suffers, and all so that he can show himself the God who loves.