It's Part of Our Story

And not only that, but we also boast 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 that has been given to us. Romans 5:3-5

There's just no other honest way to say it: it's been a hell of a month here at Salem. I'm surely not the only one among us who is somewhat glad to close the book on July, and pray fervently that August is nothing like it.

Granted, there have been many highs: walking through the Exodus story with our Confirmands at Mar-Lu Ridge; praising and serving God with 33,309 high school students at the ELCA Youth Gathering; worshiping with and hearing from Annie Bunio, our missionary teacher in Tanzania (although technically that was August 1st).

But the lows have been very low. This month alone, we have had to say goodbye to three faithful, beloved, active members of Salem; and mourned with at least three other member families at the untimely loss of spouses, parents, and even children. My prayers remain with the Grempler family; the Van Sant family; Alice Meier and her family; The family of and all who were close to Claire Graham; Mary Kay, Shannon and Alaina Willing and their family; and Paul and Lynda Bell, their son Robert, and his children; among so many others who are crying out to God for comfort and peace. I invite you also to join me in daily lifting up Dave, our senior pastor, as he seeks to provide spiritual leadership and a word of good news in this time of deep struggle.

I have long held the belief that times of crisis are not very good times for theological teaching. The absolute worst funeral sermons I have ever heard have been theological expositions on the finer points of the resurrection of the body, or of atonement theory from a "turn or burn" standpoint, when what everyone really needed to hear was that God is weeping with them, and that Jesus is making all things new.

But with all that said, I'd like to share with you something that might be helpful now, or might be something to come back to later: in the cross of Christ, we have a unique way of processing our suffering. The cross allows us to stop avoiding, ignoring, or trying to escape suffering, but rather to allow its presence in our story as God's children. We can stop trying to "make everything OK," but rather admit we're not OK, and hand our stories over to God.

Saint Paul wrote about how the message of the cross seemed to most people of his time to be utter foolishness. And if we really look at it, maybe it would seem that way in our own culture, too. We live among a people obsessed with "holding it together," with projecting an image of success, of unflappability, of single-handedly overcoming every kind of adversity life throws at you. Western culture idolizes the "rags to riches" stories, the stories of "self made" men and women who take the hand that they're dealt and turn it into health, wealth, fortune and fame. I'm still not sure our culture knows what to do with a God who, being all-sufficient and all-powerful, emptied himself and became a human being, and suffered death right here among us. It doesn't compute. It doesn't allow us to do what we tend to do with our suffering: to minimize it, to ignore it, to stick it in the closet and pretend it's not there.

But when we affirm that in the cross of Christ, God came to suffer with us, we are affirming two important things.

The first is that the fact that we're suffering is not "OK" with God, and it doesn't have to be "OK" with us. Jesus would not have spent his entire ministry healing the sick, feeding the hungry, casting out demons, and taking such an outspoken stand against political and religious oppression that it ultimately cost him his life, if he believed all that stuff was "God's will." He did not tell the synagogue leader that his daughter had died because "God needed another angel in his choir," and he did not justify the ailment of the paralyzed man by saying it was somehow "in God's plan." He healed them. In his every word and deed, Jesus demonstrated that God wants abundant life for us, and God weeps with us when, because of a sinful world gone haywire, that life is taken from us. God does not push buttons to make people suffer. Instead, on the cross, God takes our pain and dies with it there. Martin Luther once said, "a theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it is." We don't have to do theological gymnastics trying to justify why our pain is somehow "good" and God wants it. God doesn't. God wants to take our pain to the cross, and raise us to new life.

The second thing we affirm in the cross is that although our suffering is not "OK," it can be part of our story--even a central part. You would think that in telling the story of Jesus' life, the first Christians would kind of gloss over the story of his death. It's unpleasant. It brings back painful memories. It makes the "hero" of the story look vulnerable and weak. In telling our own life stories, we often gloss over those painful times. They rarely make it into our photo albums, or our family Christmas letters. And yet they are a part of our story. They help to form us, and make us who we are. And by finding ways of retelling our story, even the most difficult parts, we can discover how God has been present with us all along, not causing our suffering, but bearing it with us and finding ways to turn our pain into healing. To be a child of God is to be more than what has happened to us, but to let all that has happened to us be a witness to our crucified lord: the one who rose from the grave, and was recognized by his disciples not by a crown or shining lights of glory, but by his own wounds. In the same way, our wounds may stay with us, and remain a part of our story, but in the hope of Christ, we know the story itself will be one of healing.

As I said, all this may be too much to process now, and to be honest, part of why I'm posting this is to try and process it myself. But alongside my prayers for healing for so many of my sisters and brothers in Christ, I also lift up prayers that when we are in pain, we can come to the cross: that we can lift up our stories to Jesus, and see his presence with us each step of the way.