St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for the Holy Trinity (June 3, 2007)
Liturgical Color: White
Reverend Doctor Lyle McKee
"Suffering, Hope and God"
Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in the loving presence of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Welcome to Joy Only Church! We here at J-O-C, or JOC as we like to call ourselves to emphasize how good humored we always are, believe that Christians simply don't have the Holy Spirit unless they always wear a smile. The love of God given at baptism, the joy of Jesus Christ our constant companion and best friend, and the warmth of the indwelling Holy Spirit put pure joy in our hearts, loving works in our hands, and a rosy cast to our fulsome cheeks.
If you're truly filled with the Spirit, we here at JOC know that everything is honky-dory. Pain is no more. Disease has been slain by the Spirit. Suffering is a bygone thing. Only heathens worry about such things. The power of God is in us, and trial and tribulation have disappeared from among us.
Our motto, stolen piously from the well-known song, is: "Don't worry. Be happy." We love to be together in a self-congratulatory way. And we are always wary of strangers who might wander into our holy fellowship for fear that they might dampen our spirits, infect us with negative attitudes, and generally bring us down. We don't need any nabobs of negativism to nuke our niceness.
In short, we are quite happy the way we are, thank you very much. At Joy Only Church, we are a JOC! (pause)
Now don't be concerned. We are not such a church, have not been, and never will be. Indeed, regardless of the hype that many congregations seek to foist upon folks about what it means to be a Christian or part of their so-called "holy" fellowship, no such happy church exists anywhere on the planet. The entire idea, of course, is a joke (JOC)!
Faith is not a fairy land or never-never land that takes us to a place apart from the realities of pain and suffering. They do and ever will remain a part of what it means to be human and Christian
However, Paul in today's second lesson speaks to a way of living with suffering that is not consumed by it. Rather, Christians are granted the grace to live through suffering in order that it may be redeemed.
Last Sunday I spoke about the connections of both suffering and joy to the birth of the church. Both the cross and Pentecost are relevant to establishing the Christian faith.
I've heard from several of you especially about that one aspect of what was considered last week-suffering. Some wanted to get at the root of what suffering means, noting the odd and almost contradictory ways in which scripture and we use the word. How is it that some translations use the same word for abiding pain as for permission, as in "suffer the little children to come unto me"? Part of the problem, clearly, is one inherent to language; words simply mean different things to different people and in various contexts. Terms, in order to be useful, need to be defined by the one employing them.
Others simply wonder about why suffering exists in a world supposedly controlled by an almighty God. Why does God's good creation contain so much disease, so many so-called natural disasters, and so much violence? Folks here aren't confused that there might be such a thing as a Joy Only Church.
Last week's conversation is extended today with Paul's words to the church at Rome. In a time when Christians endured persecutions, this was not mere idle chatter. This is the speech of a community that refuses to give in. It is the speech of a community that refuses to view present loss as the final truth; a community that knows that God is not finished. Paul is applying his pastoral skills to help the struggling converts in Rome endure in the face of considerable hardship, and we get to listen in as we try to discern what it means for the church that lives in the real world rather than in a fairy tale.
The text is chosen for this Trinity Sunday, no doubt, because of its references to the three persons of the Trinity in only five verses:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.
For a doctrine that is never mentioned in scripture, any passage that refers to God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit in concert is valuable for understanding how the church developed this idea of a Triune God.
Still, our concern today is to reflect further with Paul about suffering and how it might be transformed—not avoided or denied. He begins by claiming that "we rejoice in our sufferings."
That is quite the paradox. We're destined for the glory of God, but in the meantime we're supposed to boast in our sufferings. To some of us this sounds like putting a gun to our heads and pulling the trigger. It's intellectual suicide to rejoice in the midst of trials. They lock people up for that kind of thing.
But—and this is a big exception-there actually are good reasons why we rejoice in our sufferings, according to Paul. We rejoice because we know—that is, we have knowledge given only to the eye of faith and ultimately credible to it alone—we know, that suffering produces endurance; endurance, character; and character, hope.
Paul says we rejoice because we know. But what do we know? When we rejoice in our suffering we are responding to God's secret, a secret God lets us in on: God helps us to engage the suffering not to drive us from God, but to draw us to God. This is what we know!
Though at times our trials fairly threaten to undo us, there is good reason to rejoice. Rejoicing in suffering deepens our hope and creates a longing in us for the realization of that hope. It gives us a hunger and thirst for God. Suffering brings about little deaths in us, so that God's life may be more fully lived out through us. This is why we rejoice: through suffering we may come to know God more intimately.
We know that in all things that God works for the good of those who love God. God works in us to conform us to the image of Jesus. In other words, suffering, moved through rather than skirted, will bring blessings.
And so Paul invites us to endure suffering with equanimity and patience rather than blaming God or rebelling against God. Paul calls us to remember Christ's triumph over the powers of evil. And Paul suggests that our endurance will nurture a character that holds a deep compassion for the suffering of others. In short, suffering may produce in us a more fervent faith, a more abiding hope, and a more charitable love.
We at St. Thomas know that Joy Only Church is a joke, but we also know that joy is not beyond us. Faith may not always allow us to live comfortably in the world, but we have something better than comfort: We have a hope that never fails. We have a faith that gives us access to the grace of God forever. Paul is bold to boast, and he encourages us to boast as well, in God's glory.
Suffering is a part of Christian discipleship not because suffering is good (it isn't) but because there is suffering in God's world, and so in God's heart—the God of suffering love.
The capacity to turn suffering into hope is not a psychological trick. It's an act of the spirit that is not about optimism or fake joy. It is grounded in trust in the fidelity of God who is the key player in our past, our present, and in our future.
People who move through suffering to hope are not people who have a vague sense that things will work out all right. People who hope are those who know God. People who hope have confidence in God. Without denying any present disorder, confusion, or distortion, people who hope watch, wait, pray, and expect, knowing that God is at work and will create along with us a future that is filled with peace and justice.
In the end, the transforming power that redeems suffering is the love of God. Paul says as much when he writes that:
hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.
When our hope lies in God's love, it is absolutely trustworthy. It will not disappoint or fail. It is grounded in what is eternal with an assurance that is as close as our own hearts.
Suffering and the Church are no joke (JOC). They are bound intimately and redemptively together through the work of our savior Jesus Christ, present to us by the God-granted gift and power of the Holy Spirit. Amen
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto eternal life. — Amen
