The Suffering Line
Mark 8:31-38
A group of knights returned to their castle after a long hard day of fighting.
“How are we faring?” asks the king.
“Sire,” replied one knight, “We have been pillaging on your behalf all day, burning the towns of your enemies in the west.” “What?!?” shrieks the king. “I don’t have any enemies to the west!”
“Oh,” says the knight. “Well, you do now.”
The best of intentions sometimes leads to the worst of outcomes.
Our scripture for today helps us sort out what we can do during the worst of outcomes. We don’t like to think about things like suffering, which is why we need times like Lent that give us a built-in way to start wrapping our minds around difficult concepts.
This text is pivotal in the gospel of Mark. It sets the stage for the final scenes of Jesus’ life and work. As you listened to the words today could you get any sense of what it might have been like to be the original listeners hearing all of this? Is it any wonder that Peter thought this was all “getting a little too real” and pulled Jesus aside to tell him to chill out? Actually the word that is translated “rebuke” is a fairly strong term. To silence the demons takes more energy and passion than a mild rebuff. Those of us who have struggled with our own demons know that it exacts a cost from us. Yes, the gospel is a story of grace and hope and love… as well as a story of costs.
Lent has no “warm and fuzzy” scripture texts to use. Believe me. I looked. The Older Testament reading for today was Genesis 17 about circumcision. Not a text that really inspired me… The Psalm for today is Psalm 22. It’s the one that Jesus is said to have quoted from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Epistle lesson is from Romans 4 and again we are back to a discussion of circumcision. So I felt God leading me to focus on the Gospel reading. But like the other texts, it is hard to hear, hard to follow and hard to understand.
Jesus discloses to the disciples that suffering lies ahead for him as Messiah. He tells them not to share this information with others because they won’t understand. As I pondered this story what I got from it is that comprehending the impact of suffering seems to be the line we cross that distinguishes learners from observers. To put it in theological language, it is the line that distinguishes disciples from by-standers. Once we step over this line we see the issues of our world through the lens of suffering. Once you’ve stepped across that line of understanding, the suffering of the world becomes personal, passionate and potent. Standing on the sidelines is no longer an option. In fact, it can really tick us off that others don’t get it. Have you ever had the urge to want to shake somebody and say, “Pay attention! This is important!”?
There was an interesting “Fresh Air” show hosted by Terry Gross this week. She interviewed Dr. Bart Ehrman, author of “Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them). He talked about his experience of living as an evangelical Christian believing the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God. During seminary he discovered just how the Bible came to be, how the books of the Bible were put together, the discrepancies between the gospels, the historical evidence of authorship. These realities caused a crisis of faith that required a different answer than he had been taught. So he began, like many of us have done, to search for a new way to interpret scripture and to use the biblical material. Unfortunately his journey led him away from faith. I use the term unfortunate because I don’t think that has to be the answer. Ehrman said the pivotal reason was that he could no longer consider how to think about a good God when there was so much suffering in the world. It is the question that is as old as Job, isn’t it? We all have struggled with how to make sense of evil, suffering, pain. I am told that the former Catholics among us have often been taught that suffering was the way to salvation. If you weren’t suffering, you weren’t doing it right. Like Ehrman’s situation, I want you to know that there is another way. Suffering is a reality but it was never God’s goal for you. It was never God’s goal for Jesus. The idea that God had to send Jesus to die creates a horribly sadistic God. Instead, the power of the gospel story and what I believe was truly remarkable, and as a result, life-changing, is that Jesus willingly gave his life to confront evil and injustice. Willingness on Jesus’ part to suffer the consequences of his convictions is not the same as God having some need to make Jesus suffer. Do you see the difference?
I’d give my life for that. Would we? Sidney Howard once said, “Half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.” For what would you sell your soul? That was the question Jesus asked the disciples to ponder. What is so valuable to you that you would trade your life, risk suffering, risk death?
Perhaps it is time we re-frame our understanding of what it means to suffer. Suffering is experiencing agonizing pain and suffering is resistance. We usually think of those who suffer as being ones who have no power to relieve their own pain – those under political or economic tyranny, women caught in societies that give them no rights, children in abusive situations, refugees caught in civil war or revolution. Those and other similar situations seem to be the worst kind of suffering to endure. Suffering can also happen to those who choose not to use power to relieve their pain for a just cause. We may choose suffering when something is that important. A mother endures suffering through childbirth to bring her child into the world. A police officer puts her own life in danger to protect an innocent person from crime. Some of us have had to suffer through years of academic study to gain a degree or be certified in a profession. People like us endure DOMA and “don’t ask, don’t tell” because someone else has more political clout. You endure something because there is a goal in mind – a greater good that will come from your resistance. This text speaks to our global condition.
But even on a more personal level this text speaks to us. We cannot create healthy relationships without suffering through the struggles of negotiation and empathy. We resist giving up.
We cannot create healthy community without working through the personality conflicts that always are a part of every group of people working together. We resist simplistic fixes.
We cannot know deep and abiding love without suffering the possibility of losing that love. Suffering is not the goal. It is the by-product of human resistance to gain something important.
During Lent we often grapple with aspects of our faith that challenge us to the core. Typically people respond to those kinds of challenges in one of two ways. We either face it or we run from it. In theological terms, we step over the suffering line and allow the experience to hone and deepen our faith or we stay on the sidelines and pretend that suffering doesn’t touch us (with emphasis on “pretend”).
Being part of a congregation like All God’s Children calls on the deepest part of our commitment. For us here, spirituality is not simply an academic enterprise – it is our lives. The issues for which our voices are needed are not peripheral or unimportant. They are essential to the health of our families and the freedoms all of us deserve. The opposition we encounter isn’t impotent. It damages our health, our sanity and our families. There are no easy answers. There is simply resistance to those laws, ideas and actions that destroy rather than edify. People hear us say we are blessed and blessing others. That sounds sweet but I know the costs that living authentically has had on so many in this room to risk speaking your truth to your family, to your boss, to your neighbor, to your children. You are on the front line of the resistance – the line of suffering.
No matter the final outcome, it is worth it to stand on this side of the line for that is where we find the presence of God.
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com Suffer or Skedaddle? March 2009.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101389895 Dr. Bart Ehrman interview, March 4, 2009.