On Suffering
By Kendall Brown
Text: Luke 13: 1-9
March 14, 2004 Kendall's Notebook Page 22
In her book, Home By Another Way, the Episcopalian preacher and author, Barbara Brown Taylor, recalls a story, similar to many that every experienced minister carries in his or her memory.
Barbara was serving as a hospital chaplain. One day she was called to the surgical waiting room to attend a young mother. The five year old daughter, had always been a picture of health and bubbling life and energy. She was the joy of her family, neighborhood, and church. Suddenly, one day while playing with her friends, she started to complain about a terrible headache.
The test revealed a tumor, and Barbara Taylor was called to be with her mother while the little girl was in surgery. When Barbara walked into the waiting room, she found the mother sitting next to a large floor ash tray overflowing with cigarette butts Mom smelled as if she had puffed every one of them. She was staring off into space as the chaplain sat down next to her. After a few awkward moments of small talk, Mom said, “It’s all my fault. It’s my punishment for smoking these darned cigarettes. God couldn’t get my attention any other way so he made my baby sick.” After an outburst of wailing and crying, Mom also added, “Now, I am supposed to stop, but I can’t, I’m going to kill my own child.”
The chaplain’s experience was not all that far removed from Jesus’ experience in the story we heard today. Pilate was known for his terrible cruelties and some people reported to Jesus some of the most recent news. Pilate had slaughtered some Jewish worshippers and then added insult to the injury by mixing the victims blood with the blood of sacrificial animals and pouring it over the Jewish altar.
One strain of philosophy found in the Old Testament, the Wisdom School, teaches that suffering is punishment for some sin. As devious as that thought is, it seems to take hold with many people. The disciples themselves asked Jesus about the reason why the Blind man had been blind all of his life. Jesus reminded them that the Wisdom School of thought doesn’t have all the answers and that the man’s blindness was not caused by any sin of his or his parents or ancestors before.
Jesus plainly tells his questioners that the tragedy that befell the Galileans was no fault of theirs, neither was the accident, that killed others when a wall fell, caused by any fault or wrong by one of the victims. Pain and suffering are inescapable experiences in life for all of us. Sometimes our pain speaks to our faith and calls us to summon courage and endurance and witness to all that is best in us. I think of a woman who was recently reflecting on her two year battle with breast cancer. She had joined a support group which became an important part of her life even as she became an important member of that group. In a couple years, the group experienced all the heights of joy and the depths of sorrow that life can offer. They lost a couple of their members whose health never recovered. They shared with others the great news from the doctors that all their tests had come through negative, showing that they were cancer free. The woman was asked if she could, would she have anything different about her life during the past couple years. Her answer is surprising, for it embraced the very pain that we so much try to avoid. She said that she would not change a thing about her life – even – the cancer, because she had never lived so fully and completely as she had during those past couple years.
Along the Road
I walked a mile with Pleasure;She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with SorrowAnd ne’er a word said she;
But oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me!
Robert Browning Hamilton
Sometimes our pain speaks to our faith and calls us to summon courage and endurance.
Sometimes others’ pain speaks to our faith and calls us to be heroes and noble caregivers. Parents know about this one. There have been a few moments during the past 5 years that my daughter has been in California – so far away, when all I’ve wanted to do is just drop everything, fly out there and be with her – and all I could do was lay awake at night and cry. Parents know what it means to think and feel with all your heart, “Why not me, I’m old, I’ve lived what could be called a good life. Why not me instead of my child?” Recall the story of King David. David had just learned that his oldest and favorite son had been killed on the battlefield. He went to the temple, rent his clothes and cried out, “Absalom, Absalom, my son, Absalom, if only it were I, Oh, Absalom, Oh Absalom.” Those words carry as much pain as Jesus cry from the cross, “Why hast thou forsaken me?”
Sometimes other’s pain and suffering speaks to our faith and cries for us to be noble caregivers and persons of love. We hear the news of bomb victims in Madrid, or soldiers dying in Iran, or students perishing in a car crash on the Westside and our hearts go out and in those moments we come in touch with all the best of what it means to be human.
Sometimes our pain speaks to our faith and calls us to try to explain the suffering. We raise the question, “Why!” never stopping to think that if we actually knew the answer, it would not relieve our pain in any way. Pain brings out the best in us in our faith in so many ways, but when it comes to offering an answer to the question, “Why?” our faith is an abysmal failure.
I think this is one of the points where other religions have some life lessons to teach us. Buddhism has a basic understanding that life embraces opposites. Such is the familiar sign of the Yin and the Yang found in jewelry almost as much as little crosses. The Yin and the Yang symbol is the circle with two halves, one black the other white, separated by an s shaped curve. Sometimes a little black dot is included on the white half and a white dot is shown on the black half. The symbol stands for the basic religious teaching that life includes all opposites. Suffering is as much a part of life as is joy.
Jesus never taught that suffering is either a punishment or a teacher sent from God. He accepted the unexplainable reality of suffering. He was conscious of the horror of pain as revealed in his prayer in Gethsemane, “Father, remove this cup from me.”
Pain in all of it’s horror and suffering speaks to our faith and calls us not to let it have the last word. If the mom who blamed her smoking for her daughter’s illness had gotten stuck there, then she would have given the pain and suffering the last word. She did get beyond that. As Christian caregivers, when we hear people say blaming things, we need to accept those moments as times to listen and not give all the answers. A broken heart is using a philosophical question to speak of it’s brokenness.
Healing doesn’t come through the answering of that question. Healing comes through the power of presence. Just being present to the broken hearted is all that one can do.In that presence you bear witness to another presence. The cross before us every Sunday morning reminds us that pain is not only a part of our lives, but also a part of God’s life. The cross also reminds us that God is present with us in our pain. The Saints, especially those who achieved great mystical and prayerful heights, like St. Francis – we will be learning more about him this Wednesday night – know that pain is something to push through. They have learned and teach us about what it is to which we are pushing through. On the other side is not relief, not some wonderful pleasure palace, perhaps not even the end of pain. On the other side is to be united with God in the oneness of God’s love.
John Donne a long time ago expressed the other side with these words in the form of a prayer:Bring us, O God, at our last awakening
into the house and gate of heaven:
to enter into that gate and dwell in that house,
where there is no night nor burning sun,
but one equal light;
no voice nor silence
but one equal music,
no fears nor hopes,
but one equal possession.
No end nor beginning
but one equal eternity
in the habitation of your glory and dominion,
world without end. Amen.
The presence of pain in our lives calls our faith to define for us what will be the last word in our lives. Think of the most painful place in your life. What is it that you want to find on the other side. No better finding can be sought after than what the Saints have found in their unity with the love of God.
In today’s Scripture lesson, Jesus is quizzed about the suffering of innocents. In response, Luke tells us that he told the parable of the fig tree. A quick reading can leave us with a wrong reading. A quick reading and the wrong reading is that Jesus said repent or a worse fate awaits you than what you have witnessed in the Galilean massacre.
Jesus’ answered in a way that says to those who were asking about pain and suffering that they needed to put first things first and that their concern about pain and suffering shouldn’t be the first priority in their lives. He said repent, and in the context of the story of the fig tree, repent is all about your roots and your fruits. Be rooted in faith and the love of God and bear fruit that shows the love. Make that your first purpose in life and may that focus become a guide for you to your own oneness with God. Once in that oneness, pain and suffering become no less real or painful. But no longer do pain and suffering have the last word, because by having good roots of faith and fruits of faithful work, you become focused on the greatness of God on the other side of all life’s pain and pleasure.