The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Easter 7A
From 1 Peter this morning: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.”
Suffering is one of the core questions of religion and spirituality. What do we do with suffering and pain? We open the news on our phones and find ourselves fretting over what is happening and what might happen. We see the suffering far off in the world and we see the suffering in our local community. We see the suffering of others, and we experience our own suffering and empathy brings us to experience the suffering of those nearest to us.
Religion, spirituality, and philosophy all have to wrestle with the concept of suffering because it’s all around us. Life is not easy, and we human beings want to make sense of our lives. We want to make sense of suffering. So, what do we do with suffering and pain?
Our Buddhist friends read the question of suffering through the lens of the four Noble Truths: Life is suffering, suffering is caused by attachment, there is a way to end attachment and thus be free of suffering, and the way to end that attachment is the eightfold path of the Buddha. For our Muslim siblings, suffering is an invitation to look more closely for the work of God in the midst of it all, to seek God’s purposes. Our Jewish siblings have wrestled with the concept of suffering through long ages of persecution.
So, then, what is our Christian answer to suffering? How do we Christians make sense of suffering?
In some generations, the emphasis on suffering was about seeing God’s purposes in the midst of suffering. Christians would say that we’re supposed to see what God is teaching us, or that God is calling us to greater faithful trust. In other generations, unfortunately, suffering was seen as punishment for sins. And today that still lingers – so the people who are successful must be blessed while those who suffer must be guilty of something.
The problem with any understanding of suffering for us Christians is that at the heart of our understanding of suffering is the cross, where Jesus who is truly human and fully divine suffered and died, as we proclaim week after week. The cross, this nexus of profound suffering links God to us and links us to God and one another – the cross is the crossroads wherein a suffering humanity and a loving God meet. For us as Christians, any and all suffering is linked back to the cross.
Which means that we say something radical: the Messiah’s suffering embraces all suffering. Christ’s suffering embraces our suffering when it comes through no fault of our own. Christ’s suffering embraces our suffering that comes as a consequence. Christ’s suffering embraces our suffering when it happens almost like a bad roll of some unlucky dice.
Christ’s experience of suffering in his life and death brings God closer and closer to our daily experience. We Christians are then making a bold truth claim: suffering happens for a multitude of reasons, but no matter what, God draws near to us in our suffering. God is not pushing us away in judgment – Jesus draws closer to us with his open wounded hands in his resurrected body. God is not waiting far off for us to figure out what suffering means – Jesus’ heart is opened in empathy for us in our struggles. The experience of suffering actually unites us to other human beings and to God in Jesus Christ – we all suffer in different ways to different degrees, but our suffering brings our wounded hearts to touch one another if we let them.
Yet there are forms of Christianity that are so distorted in their relationship to suffering that they cannot accept the cross at the heart of our religion. Some forms of Christianity see suffering as failure, or suffering as something to ignore with a focus on heaven, or suffering as something to impose on others, or suffering to be wielded as a medal of righteousness.
First, suffering is not failure. False forms of Christianity try to make suffering an illusion, or that suffering only happens to bad people. They want to make suffering logical, that people who are bad get punished and those who are good get rewarded. Just point to the cross, the martyrs, the prophets – suffering happens to very, very good people, too. And there are plenty of terrible people who have had immense power and wealth in the world – doesn’t take too long looking in the history books or today’s news to see that.
Second, suffering is not something we just ignore to focus on heaven. Suffering is real – suffering is not a lack of faith, suffering is not a lack of gratitude, suffering is not an illusion. I’ve met people who think that they have to believe they are “too blessed to be stressed” in order to be faithful Christians, that if they simply had greater faith it wouldn’t be suffering. But, again, we point to the cross. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. Jesus cried out on the cross. Jesus was mocked by others. Jesus can weep and cry out – and so can we.
Third, suffering is not something we impose on others. That’s another thing I see in the world around us. So many Christians claiming the name of Christ but actively wanting others to suffer. We Christians are called to accept the cross when it comes – Jesus told us to take up our cross and follow him – but we are absolutely forbidden from crucifying others. We should be working to alleviate suffering, which is what Christ calls us to do repeatedly. He forbids us from causing suffering.
And fourth, suffering is not some medal of righteousness, a badge of perfection. This might seem odd, as so many Christians throughout the ages have been keen to accept persecution and martyrdom, but the problem is that if we view our suffering as a badge of honor then we have secretly begun to turn our focus in on ourselves, that we must be righteous and better than others. It is a blessing to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake because then we’ve actually done something – there’s evidence to convict us of goodness! But it’s still not about us. We do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do and it brings us to follow Jesus. If we do good, and that leads to suffering, then we’re just following Jesus. If we do good, and it leads to praise, then still, we’re just following Jesus.
Returning, then, to our reading from 1 Peter: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.”
Rejoice? Be glad and shout for joy? Being blessed for being reviled? How does that sit with what I just said?
I put it to you this way: we rejoice because we know that whatever pain we experience in life, whatever pain and heartbreak we see in the world around us, we know that Jesus Christ himself is present. No less than God is present in the midst of suffering. When we weep because our bodies feel like they are falling apart or our brains have become our own enemy, Christ is present in the fullness of his love. When we see the heartache of those we love, or when we see the cruelty of the powerful visited upon the marginalized and downtrodden, our hearts break open just as Christ’s heart breaks open for them. When people say we’re unrealistic dreamers who actually believe in the power of God’s love, it is blessing because we’re being reminded that the way of God is vastly different from the way of the world, and at least someone noticed! Suffering, then, for us Christians calls us back to the cross, to the crossroads of God. God meets us there, God opens our hearts to the suffering of the world and even sometimes to our own suffering if we don’t notice it anymore. God meets us right there in the person of Jesus Christ and abides with us, to walk alongside us, to carry us, to help us carry one another. It is a profound blessing to know that at the heart of our Christian journey is a God who loves us so much that the suffering of the cross was simply one more way to love us. Amen.