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Sunday, March 28, 2010
Suffering and pain
Sixth in the Series: Where is God When It Hurts?
By Rev. Jerry Herships
Mark 11: 8 – 10
8Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. 9Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! 10Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
Mark 15: 29 – 32
29Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30save yourself, and come down from the cross!” 31In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.
How quickly we change our mind. Seeing these two passages back to back show us how quickly the public can turn. But that is yet another sermon…
I think the one thing that I have heard, more than any other reason as to why people struggle with God, are the ideas and thoughts around suffering. It usually starts with the sentence, “I don’t believe in God. I can’t believe in any God that would allow…” Then you can fill in any number of things: war, murder, child abuse, cancer, etc. It is understandable. We talk about having an all loving, all powerful God.
The argument has always been:
If God can prevent evil & suffering and doesn’t, God is not all loving.
If God can’t prevent evil & suffering, then God is not all powerful.
We know there is evil & suffering in the world. Now there are people that will tell you that there is no REAL evil & suffering in the world, it just LOOKS like evil & suffering. I don’t buy that.
There are others who say that without evil and suffering, there would be no good. They are like yin and yang. Those folks would tell you that suffering builds character. I have to tell you that I think that is true….in some cases. There are cases where suffering can be soul building and life giving. Unfortunately, I think there is suffering that is soul crushing and life taking. You only have to watch the news to see some pretty awful things going on in this world.
So I come down on the side that there is indeed evil and there is indeed suffering. I also believe that God is all loving. This leaves one thing: Letting go of God being all powerful. I am willing to do that. And here is the reason…Two Words: Free Will. I think God could have had absolute and total power over this world but made a conscious decision NOT to FORCE us to love God. The love of God and each other had to come freely. God was willing to let go of total power so that we could love freely. Unfortunately this meant we have the free will to not love and in fact do pretty awful things, which can lead to a chain reaction and more awful things.
So we have suffering. Now what? I am reading a great book right now called, Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering & Salvation. The book is by Stephen J. Nichols, a research professor of Christianity and Culture. It profiles people like Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton and Son House (the latter two both had short stints as preachers). The book follows up on James Cone’s debunking of the idea that spirituals are church music and the blues is the devils music. Cone is an African American professor of systematic theology at Union Seminary. He says the spirituals and the blues have more of a symbiotic relationship. Granted, spirituals tell us about redemption and hope. But the blues artists also talk about the ideas of exile and bondage, against a backdrop of hope, throughout their music. The song goes:
They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad.
Wednesday’s even worse, Thursday’s awful sad.
The eagle flies on Friday, and Saturday I go out to play.
Sunday I go to church where I kneel down and pray.
Nichols says that listening to the blues apart from its theology misses the blues altogether. As Nichols points out, “the blues artist may have left the church, but the church, and especially the spirituals, hadn’t left them.”
The blues help us understand and embrace despair and longing and disappointment. They help us get in touch with the feeling of estrangement…what fancy religion professors call alienation. At the same time, the blues help us understand redemption and hope.
Robert Johnson was arguably the most famous Delta Blues musician in the world. He was famous for having sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads in exchange for being able to play an amazing guitar. He also had his share of sorrows including losing his first wife and child who died in child birth. He sings about these things in Preaching Blues when he says, “Blues grabbed mama’s child; and it tore me all upside down.” Johnson felt real pain. In Crossroads Blues he sings, “Asked the Lord above have mercy; save poor Bob if you please.” It was met with stony silence. By the end of the song he sings, “I believe I’m sinking down.” As Nichols puts it, “Johnson sang of the devil because he felt abandoned by God.”
Anyone ever feel like they are sinking down? Anyone ever feel like their prayer has gone unanswered? Anyone ever feel abandoned by God?
We see it all over the Bible, from Job to the Psalms to David. No one can escape the blues and suffering. Remember, David was God’s number one guy, and yet in Psalm 32:3 David cries out, “While I kept silent, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.” Groaning all day long sounds like the blues to me…reminds me of Johnny Lee Hooker.
We heard about Jesus’ suffering and pain last week, His cries from the cross. This has been a heavy Lenten series. I got an email this week that said, “Jerry, loneliness, suffering, guilt, failure…jeez, when do we get back to the happy stuff? Where is the more love, more laughs?” I have to tell you that I was kind of feeling the same thing. I told him it would make Easter seem that much better!
There is some truth to that. We watch how the world continued to push back on Jesus. We watch Christ’s life go from bad to worse during the last week of his life. Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer both said Christ came into this world and the world pushed Him away, all the way to the cross. Remember when he cried out on the cross, “My God, my God?” His cries were met with the same thing that Robert Johnson felt when he was at the cross…roads. Silence.
I am the first person to understand that people have given up on the church. We get a lot wrong. Son House and Charley Patton gave up on the church as well, but they never gave up on God. And their hope was that God didn’t give up on them.
I encourage you all to listen to some blues this week, particularly the Delta Blues. Listen to the pain, listen to the suffering, and listen to the hurt. Country music does this real well, too. This week, don’t push away the pain. Have a good cry and at the same time, know that this is not the end.
I’m here to tell you that God has not given up on you. God DOES hear your cries. God DOES hear your suffering. God DOES hear your blues. Put your suffering and pain at the bottom of the cross. Give it all to God. Know that we believe in a God that is big enough to handle ALL your pain and more. We will see, by this time next week, that the story does not end with the pain. The story does not end with the suffering. The story does not end at the cross. God’s story doesn’t end there…and neither does yours.
Next Sunday, we’ll show you how to beat the blues. Hope to see you there.