The LCA provides this sermon edited for lay-reading, with thanks to the original author.
5thSunday in Lent, Year B
Hebrews 5:5-10
Dear heavenly Father, send your Holy Spirit on us so that when we suffer, we may not despair, but turn to our great high priest, your Son Jesus Christ, who endured suffering for us. Amen.
Given a choice, most people will try to avoid pain.
Now in many ways it’s good to avoid pain. Pain is our body’s way of telling us something’s wrong and it’s in danger or needs help. God has blessed us with many natural and scientific means to reduce the physical pain we feel so that our bodies can heal.
However, it’s not just pain we try to avoid. We also try to avoid suffering.
But what’s the difference? Don’t we often just lump ‘pain’ and ‘suffering’ together?
Well, in many ways the words ‘pain’ and ‘suffering’ are interchangeable. Both can describe ‘physical discomfort’, and both can describe ‘emotional distress’, but for today we will differentiate between them to make a point.
So, for today, let’s say that ‘pain’ is the acute physical discomfort we feel, and ‘suffering’ is the emotional distress we experience in response to the pain we feel or fear. In this way, ‘suffering’ is the meaning we give pain. The pain itself may be manageable, but the meaning we give that pain might be unbearable.
For example, someone might slap us on the face. (Please don’t try this at home!) By itself, a slap isn’t a serious injury. You might be left with a red cheek for a while, but you’ll have no lasting mark. But what may make it a big deal is who gave it to you and what the circumstances were surrounding it.
It could be someone you loved and respected did this to you. Therefore, it’s no longer just a slap on the cheek, but you may interpret it to mean the one you love and respect no longer loves and respects you. The meaning behind the pain may cause you to suffer far greater and far longer than the physical sting on your cheek. It could be that slap may affect you for the rest of your life.
Or, let's take another example. Let’s say you’ve noticed something’s not quite right with your health, but you don’t want to go to the doctor. It’s not because you’re being tough, but perhaps because you’re scared.
It’s not because you’re scared of any physical pain involved with any tests, but because you’re scared what these tests may mean for you. You could be scared of the emotional distress of feeling vulnerable, helpless, or dependant.
So, while most people will seek to avoid pain, we try even harder to avoid the emotional suffering we attach to pain. The meanings we attach to what happens to us cause us great emotional distress and we don’t like it.
This is why it’s so tempting to seek to avoid our emotional suffering through keeping busy (hoping we’ll distract ourselves from whatever distresses us), by turning to drink or drugs (hoping we’ll medically drown our distress), by making a joke out of what’s happening to us (hoping a good laugh will make our distress go away), or through our avoidance (hoping if we keep away from whatever reminds us of our distress, we’ll magically feel better).
Similarly, in regards to our faith in our Triune God, we’re often tempted to interpret our experiences and give them spiritual meanings. For example, if something bad happens to us, we may figure this means God’s punishing us for what we’ve done wrong.
If this is the meaning we’ve accepted or interpreted for our suffering, we may accept this as a just punishment and bear our suffering with grim determination and maybe even think we can somehow make up for what we’ve done by receiving this punishment.
Or our suffering may cause us to despair of God’s love for us and make us feel as if God’s far away from us. What can we do to make him love us again? Other times we may think it’s an unfair punishment as it doesn’t fit the crime.
Even though you have heard all the punishment for your sins was taken out on Jesus (and so there’s nothing more you need to do to pay for your crimes in order to get sweet with God), you may have trouble accepting it because you’ve already interpreted your suffering to mean something else. You’ve imposed your own meaning. Yet Jesus says on the cross: ‘It is finished!’
So, while you may learn from what you’ve done, and while there may be earthly consequences as a result of your actions (which have nothing to do with punishment), your righteousness before God isn’t dependant on you suffering. Jesus suffered for you. There’s nothing more to pay.
Our avoidance of pain and suffering then, is really an issue of faith. Since we don’t like feeling out of control, we want to tell God what to do, or even better, we want to be like God and be in control - to fix everything and make all the pain and our accompanying feelings of fear, distress, and insecurity go away. We struggle to trust a God who allows pain and suffering to exist, thinking he isn’t loving.
Yet, showing just how human he is, Jesus also sought to avoid pain and suffering. On the night he was betrayed, as he prayed beside sleeping disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, he asked for the cup of suffering to be taken away from him. It wasn’t just the pain he didn’t want to go through. He knew the suffering that would go with it.
While it would physically hurt him to be beaten, flogged, nailed, and crucified, it would also cause him great emotional distress to see his beloved chosen ones betray him, abandon him, and deny him. He would feel the emotional distress of being spat on, mocked, and ridiculed by his own people.
On top of this, he knew his own heavenly Father would forsake him. He would cry out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
He knew he would receive the full pain we deserve for our sin. He knew he would be treated as cursed, defiled, and perverted with sin by his own Father because that’s the wages of sin he bore for us.
He knew he would receive the wrath of humans and the wrath of God.
Yet, despite asking for the suffering to be taken away, he prayed, “not my will, but your will be done”.
The will of God even exists through suffering. Jesus was willing to trust God’s will for him so that God’s plan of salvation would be completed. He was willing to truly suffer and die in your place and my place.
You see, our God doesn’t avoid pain and suffering, but sees purpose in it. Apart from the purpose of salvation, Jesus also learnt obedience through what he suffered.
His suffering was real, and he offered prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears which were taught through his suffering. His prayers for you and I were perfected through his suffering.
In the same way, our own suffering can teach us to pray more earnestly and more deeply than any good times we may ever experience.
In this way, Jesus isn’t a God of happy feelings, success, victory, good times, health, and wealth. He’s a God who suffers, who dies, and thankfully, who lives.
He lived and ate with dropouts, sinners and all those types of people society would have nothing to do with. He lived and worked among the sick, the leprous, the demon-possessed, and the dying. Unlike today’s society, he didn’t avoid pain and suffering, but was willing to endure it and even sanctify it.
Pain and suffering doesn’t always come your way because you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. But with the Holy Spirit’s help, we may give a new meaning to our pain.
So, what new meaning may we learn through our pain and suffering?
If we learn to rely on and trust in our Triune God instead of our own ingenuity and strength, our suffering has taught us a valuable lesson.
If we’re brought closer to the cross of Christ to see all he has done for us and how freely he gives us his forgiveness, grace, peace, and life, then our suffering has purified our faith.
If we learn to suffer ridicule and mocking for our faith with patience and dignity, then we’re honoured to share in Christ’s sufferings.
If, through our own suffering, tears, and prayers, we learn to identify with those who suffer so we may accompany them through their suffering, and so we learn to pray for them, our suffering has taught us something priceless.
So then, if God leads you to pray for someone who’s suffering, by all means pray for healing and relief from pain and suffering, but you might also pray for their strength, endurance, patience and perseverance.
Pray for what they need. Pray for mercy. Pray for them to trust God and his gracious and merciful will. Pray God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Pray they may not be led into temptation or despair, and pray for their deliverance from evil.
Ultimately point them to Jesus, because you have a high priest, who was even greater than Melchizedek, in our Lord Jesus who listens, knows and understands the full meaning of pain and suffering.
Even if your own prayers are stilted, mumbled or incomplete, Jesus perfects your prayers before his Father in heaven. Jesus is heard by his Father because of his reverent fear.
So yes, many people try to avoid pain and the suffering we attach to it, but by the grace of God we can endure it, because we have a God who is completely familiar with it, sees purpose in it, and is willing to endure it with us.
We know we can pray to him in complete trust, knowing we’re heard because God listens to his Son, who prays for us and with us. We don’t need to be afraid of suffering, but perhaps even welcome it because it leads us closer to trust in Jesus alone.
Even if you want to avoid pain and suffering at all costs, be assured Jesus doesn’t. He learnt to perfect his prayers for you through his suffering and death, and he prays for you when you suffer.
In this way, it's good to know...
...the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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