February 12, 2012 | 4:00 p.m.

Sermon

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 23
Mark 8:27–9:1

Blessings surround us tonight. We’re gathered here together in God’s house, surrounded by beautiful architecture and listening to beautiful music. We’re joined by the choir tonight, which makes this service especially nice. And each one of us, I’m sure, has many blessings to count, good things that we bring with us as we come together to worship God. Given all of that, I thought it would be a good night to talk about . . . suffering.

Seriously, I decided to preach this sermon today because we are about to enter into the season of Lent in the church, the forty days leading up to Easter. During Lent, there’s a lot of talk about suffering in the church, and I think a lot of that is misunderstood. During Lent, some people adopt a new spiritual discipline; others choose to give up something; still others just engage in thinking a bit more critically about what it means that Jesus had to suffer. But many of us do nothing at all and just bide our time waiting for Easter to get here, because we would much rather not talk about suffering. But it is an important topic, a real topic, and a topic that connects us to the life of Christ. So I hope that in exploring Christ’s suffering together today, as you approach Lent this year, you might think about it differently and perhaps more positively.

There is nothing brand-new or wonderfully creative about pointing out that many of our words and actions in life lead to predictable results. It applies in countless circumstances. Exercising and eating right leads to looking and feeling good, while smoking and drinking does not. Studying hard and choosing a job that is a good fit leads to a successful career. Putting time, energy, and dedication into personal relationships tends to make those relationships better. Protesting the Syrian government places your life in significant danger.

There are plenty of linkages between our actions and commitments and the kinds of results they lead to. However, all of these rules have nuances and exceptions. Sometimes our actions lead to different results than we expect: sometimes the relationship you really care about and work on doesn’t work out; sometimes the pack-a-day smoker lives to be ninety-five. Sometimes the consummate professional gets laid off in the midst of a recession.

Knowing that life is unpredictable in this way, we often must choose our actions and commitments and try not to worry about how things are going to turn out in the end. Many times we must choose the actions we think are best, and then we live with whatever results we get.

Finding career success is a good example. Career fulfillment and success is something I talk about quite a bit with members of the church, and based on my experience, as well as a good amount of research I’ve read, it seems fair to say this: people who are the happiest in their careers tend to do what they do because they enjoy it or believe in it and not because of the money or prestige or any other results it will bring.

My reference to the Syrian protester is similar: no one in their right mind protests a repressive regime because they want to experience the likely outcome of being tear-gassed, tortured, or killed. They do it because they believe in their cause; they want a better way of life for themselves and their families and friends. Suffering is a likely result of their commitments. Some protesters may avoid it, many will not, but suffering is not the point; it is not hoped for. It’s just a likely outcome that is realistically accepted.

I expanded on this example because this afternoon I want to talk about suffering—about Jesus’ suffering and the suffering that exists in our own lives and the danger of misunderstanding the relationship between his suffering and ours. Getting the relationship right has to do with the distinction I’ve been talking about. Actions we commit in life are often related to particular outcomes, but that doesn’t mean that the outcome is what was hoped for when we did what we did in the first place. And this is a vital thing to understand about who Jesus was and what it means to be a Christian. Jesus did not suffer because he thought suffering was good. Jesus preached and acted and believed in things that were important to him; he suffered because those things were threatening to other people, people who were in positions of power in his culture, and he suffered because he would not give up the struggle for what he thought was right.

This is an important reality for us to talk about because we talk about Jesus as a model of how to live, and it is an inescapable reality that Jesus is a person who suffered and died. It is one of the things we know most clearly about him and is an idea that has had a tremendous influence on what it means to be Christian. In the early church, monks moved out into the wilderness, starved and punished themselves, to try to get a sense of what Jesus had endured. In the Roman Catholic church, priests took vows of poverty and chastity, and in the Protestant Reformation, Puritans dedicated to the restoration of simple, austere worship removed art and music from the church and did all they could to be sure their followers did not indulge themselves in the pleasures of human existence. All of this Christian behavior begs an important question: Jesus suffered, yes, but is a life of suffering what he wants for his followers? I think the answer is no. What Jesus wants is lives of commitment to the beliefs he preached about and lived by, and sometimes that leads to suffering.

In the scripture lesson I read this afternoon, Jesus introduces the disciples to the idea that he will suffer and die on the cross. The story reads, Jesus “began to teach [his disciples] that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Peter challenges Jesus on this idea, presumably for the reason any of us would: Jesus is his teacher and friend, and Peter doesn’t want bad things to happen to him. But Jesus insists, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Jesus suffered, yes, but to think that he called his suffering a good thing is a dangerous misinterpretation. The fact about Jesus’ life and ministry is that he made choices that led to suffering, but suffering was not the goal. The life Jesus led and the choices he made did not go along with the expectations of his culture. So he accepted the likelihood that his life of advocating for justice, freedom, and peace was going to get him in trouble. He refused to abandon his cause; he insists to Peter that he must go on with this life, regardless of its risks, because he knows he is doing the right thing.

Suffering is a risk of the life Jesus calls us to live, but God does not desire our suffering, and suffering for its own sake does not make you a better Christian. Jesus does not call Christians to allow themselves to be sexually abused by their parents or beaten by their husbands. Jesus does not call Christians to accept verbal abuse at work or to punish themselves physically because it will make us more holy. Jesus’ road to the cross wasn’t just about the suffering; it was about his choices for the good that led him there.

“A cross was not a random form of suffering,” writes theologian Bill Placher. “It was the punishment those in power in his time imposed on rebels and troublemakers who challenged things as they were.” Ethicist John Howard Yoder wrote, “The cross of Calvary was not a difficult family situation, not a frustration of visions of personal fulfillment, a crushing debt, or a nagging in-law; it was the political logically-to-be-expected result of a moral clash with the powers ruling his society. Risking that particular kind of suffering is not a form of accepting an oppressive order, but a way of challenging it” (William Placher, Mark, p. 117). In other words, God doesn’t call us to suffer for the sake of suffering. God calls us to find something in the world that is worth believing in and engage in that thing, and if the result happens to involve some suffering, then so be it. That is the Christian message about suffering.

But that isn’t the whole message, and here is why: the first and most powerful teaching of Christ is not about suffering. It’s about love—loving God and loving our neighbors. And so the final word about Christ’s suffering is not depressing but joyful, and it can be conveniently expressed through something we know not about suffering, but about being in love.

Picture a couple newly in love and imagine the things they do for one another—things that cause them to suffer. Couples who are in love stay up late into the night for no other reason than to be together, and then they go to work completely exhausted. If they are a long-distance couple who sees each other only occasionally, lovers sacrifice all kinds of daily tasks and enjoyments to make time for lengthy phone calls; they work long hours to make time for the trips; they stop buying things for themselves so they can pay for flights to see each other. In choosing to be with a loved one, we will often choose not to spend time with family and friends and will struggle with those other relationships as a result. In choosing to commit to a loved one, we give up a part of our freedom—we decide we will not flirt with, sleep with, confide in the same way with anyone else, perhaps for the rest of our lives. When we are in love, we make compromises about everything from sharing the space in our bathroom to vacationing with future in-laws when we could have gone to the beach. And the remarkable thing is that when we are in love, we don’t care about any of these hardships. It is not the suffering we cannot imagine; the only thing that is unbearable is the idea that we might not be able to love.

Sixteen hundred years ago, St. Augustine said precisely the same thing about Christianity. When we are committed to Christ, “we are frustrated only when we are prevented from acting out of our love” (William Placher, Mark, p. 118).

There is immeasurable joy that can be found in something that really matters to you, that matters enough that you might actually sacrifice your convenience, your money, or some element of your lifestyle because you’ve found something in the world that you can make better. Christ does not call us to suffer for the sake of suffering; what Christ calls us to is a life so full of love that the suffering isn’t even noticeable.

Please don’t choose to suffer for the sake of suffering. Instead, find something you care about, something that you love deeply, and consider what you can do about it, and try not to worry about the results.

Amen.