God Gives Hope in the Midst of Suffering
Holy Trinity Sunday – May 26, 2013
Village Church, Milwaukee
Stories of suffering abound in our world. We don't have to look far. Turn on the TV, read a newspaper, surf the internet. Talk with your family and friends, listen to the conversations at the local coffee shop, hang out in your neighborhood, and you will hear and see stories that will break your heart and bring tears to your eyes and prayers to your lips. Pictures of devastation from the tornado in Oklahoma this past week. Stories of the loved one who is sinking back into addiction or wrestling with mental illness or was diagnosed with a terminal disease. Tales of financial struggle arising from lack of work or jobs that don't pay a living wage or medical bills that have piled up. Relationships that are falling apart. Innocent people cheering on marathoners or going to school struck down by sudden violence, lives ended or forever changed. So much of the suffering in our world is so unpredictable and so unfair, whether it happens to us personally, or in our family or community, in our country or somewhere far around the world. None of us escapes suffering, but given the choice, we would choose to avoid suffering if we could, wouldn't we? Even if it's true what Paul says here, that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, none of us wants to suffer. I'm pretty sure I'd forgo the endurance and character building that suffering brings, even if hope lay at the other side.
And yet Paul dares to say to this church in Rome that we not only boast in our hope of sharing in God's glory, but that we boast in our sufferings too! We boast in our sufferings? Really, Paul?
Now if we didn't know what we do about Paul, we could dismiss this as just so much religious talk. We could think that he's just telling us to put a brave face on all that is hard in our lives, to wear a sign that says “too blessed to be stressed”, which when you're in the middle of it doesn't feel true – but it does a great job of keeping our vulnerabilities hidden. But this is Paul. Paul, who from day one in his walk with Jesus, had his life turned upside-down. Do you know his story? You can read it in the book of Acts. It began on the road to Damascus in the days of the early church. Paul, known then as Saul, was on his way to persecute and imprison and kill followers of the Way, and instead was struck down and struck blind by a vision of Jesus. From that moment on, his life was never the same, and it was never easy for this former rising star of his community and his faith. The original disciples didn't trust him or want to accept him, not at first, and once he started preaching in synagogues throughout that region, the Jewish leaders drove him out of nearly every town he entered because they didn't like the message he brought. There are plots and conspiracies to get him arrested and imprisoned and even to kill him! This is how Paul describes his experiences as an apostle for Jesus in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians:
Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? (2 Cor. 11:24-29)
So when Paul talks about suffering, he's speaking from personal experience. He's been through it; he has suffered all of these different things, and yet he is able to say, here near the end of his ministry & the end of his life, that he boasts in (“rejoices in” is another way to translate that) these sufferings, because suffering leads to endurance, which leads to character, which leads to hope, and “hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
Now our world and Paul's world too often though that hope was foolish. Hope was naïve. But what Paul knows is that our hope doesn't just rest in a promise of “someday”. Hope is here and now in the present, in the every day – because God chooses to enter into this world, here and now. God chooses to enter into our lives, to walk with us, to be with us in the midst of our suffering. We see this most fully in the life of Jesus, who set aside his own glory to become one of us, who was willing to give himself up for us, to suffer betrayal by one of his closest followers, to be arrested and put on trial, to be sentenced to death on a cross. This is how God chooses to make the divine self known, how God chooses to reveal the depth of God's love for us...in the midst of Christ's suffering and sorrow that reminds us that we are never alone, no matter what we are facing, no matter what we are going through. This is a love that manages to redeem our suffering, not that God wants for any of us to suffer, just that God is able to bring some good out of it on the other side, even when it seems hopeless. We are loved with a love that overcomes even the power of death! This love is poured into our hearts, into our lives, by the Holy Spirit – not just through some mystical, abstract, spiritual experience. We know it in the overflow of God's love expressed in the lives of people. First responders digging through destruction to find survivors. Teachers shielding students with their own bodies. Adult children caring for their aging parents. People donating food to food pantries or money to buy mosquito nets for families in Africa. Folks who walk or run or bike to raise money to fight cancer or ALS or domestic violence. Those who speak up for the victims and the voiceless, who seek justice and work for peace, who clothe the naked and comfort the mourning. This is God's love, poured out through God's people into a hurting, suffering world, bringing the light of hope...and this hope will not disappoint. Thanks be to God!
Amen.
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