READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Acts 11:27-12:5
1 Corinthians 4:9-15
St. Matthew 20:20-23
Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you all from God the
Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and
love. (2 Jn 1)
Who speaks to you all today, saying,
“You will drink my cup…”
And as we ponder the mystery of our Lord calling St. James
today, and Jesus’s miracles, we see a God and Savior Who takes a personal,
intimate interest in the lives of His people. In other words, in the suffering
and oppression of His people. For not only does He come to Call, alleviate, and
heal, but He takes on all evil, suffers, and dies, in order to rid us of our
evil and create eternity with Him and without it.
To get to that point, though, is a monumental chore, because
in order for that eternal day of bliss to come, we must suffer and die with our
Lord Jesus Christ. That brings us in front of many challenges to our faith and
our sanity as we have to live through a world that has been so devastated by
sin, death, and the devil that hardly anyone believes anymore.
In the face of this evil, people despair of God and His
promises and become atheists, sometimes. And most times they vent their
frustrations about God in a very public way. The most common is the unbelievers
question: why bone cancer in a three-year-old child?
The question is meant to destroy faith because it is meant
to do three things: 1) it presents an evil against, apparently, the most
imaginable innocent person, 2) it appeals to all the emotions attached to,
caring for, and loving a child, and 3) it is meant to prove that God does
nothing about these sorts of things all to conclude that God doesn’t exist.
I can even give you an example. I once counseled a man at
the death of his wife. She had been fighting cancer for years and the last few
years of her life, she was winning. She was back to being able to do things
again, instead of being in a bed. She was gardening, walking the dog, and doing
laundry.
One day, that clean laundry needed to be brought upstairs,
the machines being in the basement. Climbing the stairs, for whatever reason,
she fell backwards, hit her head on the concrete, and died. Here is where I
coin my phrase, what doesn’t kill you, delays the inevitable. A seemingly
senseless death with no rhyme or reason as to why she had to struggle through
life only to lose to a basement floor.
Or what about the stray bullet from a gang fight that
strikes and kills someone completely unrelated to the incident? What about the
American bombs that are dropped on women, children, and doctors who have
nothing to do with our current foreign policy deficiencies?
The 5000 and the 4000 people that Jesus feeds are hungry.
Why do they have to be hungry in the first place? Why can’t they be made not to
eat and simply live life without having to be hungry?
Life is full of seeming meaninglessness. No one can explain
these things. All the unbeliever does is point out biology and spout off some
$10,000 college words. There is no point to these sufferings and oppressions,
to him.
So to the atheist, though I don’t think they really are
atheists, to the unbeliever who wants to get God with this question about why
He allows 3 year olds to get bone cancer, I have this question: explain to me a
world void of meaning. A world where the 3 year old asks you, why he is sick,
and you tell him something like, because that’s just how it goes. The
unbeliever has nothing better to say than the Christian, in response.
To the unbeliever, the world has no meaning, therefore it is
survival of the fittest or the luckiest. Whoever is stronger, or more fit,
wins, and whoever is unfortunate enough to be struck by the universe is just
unlucky. No love. No mercy. No rhyme or reason. Just plain meaninglessness.
This is a world of chaos that no one would survive very long
in, either physically or mentally.
Life under faith and under the cross of Christ does give
meaning to these seemingly meaningless things.
First off, through the lens of the cross, we see that the
entire world is corrupt and does nothing but kill you. You may eat your
vegetables every day, discover a diet that the Bible says is holy, and keep as
far from GMO’s as possible, but the world will eventually kill you either at
three years of age or 103. No one is getting out of here alive.
In this light, we see that of ourselves there is nothing
good. That the corruption also lies within us. We do not remain guiltless
simply because we are presumed innocent, not in prison, or have a clean rep
sheet. We all know our own darkness keenly and that is why the Christian will
run to Confession and Absolution as often as he needs and before every Divine
Service.
Secondly, God speaks to faith and tells us that it is He Who
brings calamity upon us. Not only the story of Job, but all the kings of the
Old Testament, when they didn’t listen, God punished them. We hear from Hannah
in 1 Samuel 2:6: “The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to the
grave and brings up.” Hosea 6:1 says, “Come, and let us return to the
Lord; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind
us up.”
Here is the point then: I would rather God be involved in my
suffering, than for it to have no meaning. For, just because God is involved
does not mean He wishes it upon me. Rather it means that because God is
involved, not just allowing it, that it will have an end and not last forever.
Listen to God in Hebrews 12, “ For
consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you
become weary and discouraged in your souls. You have not yet resisted to
bloodshed, striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which
speaks to you as to sons:
'My son, do not despise the chastening of the
Lord,
Nor be
discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
For whom the
Lord loves He chastens,
And scourges
every son whom He receives.'
If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with
sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are
without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are
illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected
us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection
to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us
as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His
holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful;
nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those
who have been trained by it.” (v.3-11)
If the world is giving out suffering, there is no end and none
of those benefits and no meaning to it. If God is giving suffering, we know and
believe His goal is forgiveness and eternal life and this is first and foremost
proven in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ: God Himself.
Because God is not just a third party on the scene, He takes
physical responsibility and physically participates in the suffering of His
Creation. He takes on our flesh. That means that He not only deals with His own
Body, but then also deals with everyone else’s. Such that, when He is on the
cross, dying, He is suffering multiple times over, with everyone’s sin and
everyone’s suffering of all time.
“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that
we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor 5:21). He joyfully
endured the suffering and shame of His cross, despising its shame (Heb 12:2).
In His suffering and dying, our release from all corruption and suffering is
purchased and won. God suffering is righteousness for us.
He also then unites us to His suffering, death, and
resurrection in Baptism so that when we suffer, our suffering ends just as His
did: in Glory. The profit of being chastised by our heavenly Father is that you
receive everlasting holiness, peacefulness, and righteousness. The benefits of
being torn by the Lord in time, is that He will bind us up in eternity.
Jesus says that “a disciple is not above his teacher, but
everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40).
God, our true Teacher, called you to all His
Goodness, even if you suffer because of it (1 Pet 2:20-21). And now since all
of life is good, sanctified by Christ in His Body, there will be suffering as
default. But, “rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s
sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with
exceeding joy” (1 Peter 4:13). Not just because it sounds nice, but because
now your suffering ends, just as it did for Jesus.
And yet, the unbeliever is on the right track. The right
track is to confront God and hold Him accountable for all this suffering. The
right track is to approach the One responsible for this world and demand an
answer from Him. And God answers, not with decrees or commands or college
words, but with His very own Body and Blood.
The Lord takes responsibility and keeps His own Name holy by
offering Himself up in order to rescue and redeem His people. For even though
life is suffering by default, the end goal is not suffering, it never was. The
end goal was always rest. This is the meaning that God, the Almighty gives to
our suffering and the suffering of every 3 year old, and it is tattooed on His
hands, feet, and side.
The unbeliever does nothing but offer hollow words of higher
thinking. The God of all offers up His Body and Blood that in them you may find
comfort and true healing of all your woes.
And since we have that same, Crucified and resurrected Body
and Blood directly in front of us, we can confidently say that, “having been
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through
whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and
rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that,
but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces
perseverance; and perseverance, character; and
character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because
the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was
given to us” (Rom 5:1-5).
In this short, time-constrained life we endure afflictions.
Here, in time, we battle the powers and principalities that desire our despair
and anguish that they themselves feed on. There in eternity, they have no
place. The universe and high, holier-than-thou platitudes have no interest in
your sufferings and offer no hope for the future.
The Servant God comes to you as a man, gives you His entire
Kingdom and life for all eternity and tells you that you suffer now so that you
may reap the benefits of perfect healing. You have pain here, but there with
Him it will be as a dream that is past and forgotten. You will be, and are
today, held in honor, in Christ as our Epistle reveals to us.
Such honor, that the Lord of heaven and earth comes to serve
you this medicine of immortality Himself. For from that tree of Jesus’ shame
flows life eternal in His Name; for all who trust and will believe, salvation’s
living fruit receive. And of this fruit so pure and sweet, the Lord invites the
world to eat, to find within this cross of wood the Tree of Life with every
good.
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