The Way Through the Wilderness

“The Way Through the Wilderness”

“Streams in the Desert; Joy in the Journey”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, March 1, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Isaiah 43: 16-21, Matthew 4:1-11, Secrets of Heaven, Paragraph 2334

The hardest thing about writing a sermon is not “what to say” but “what NOT to say.”  There is so much bounty in God’s Word.  So many gems of wisdom!  This thing was ten pages long when I started it, but fear not, I did some relentless trimming.  I pray that the outcome is a lovely bonsai, not a… well, mangled bush.  So here we go.

“I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

In 2007 I had the privilege of going to the Holy Land. I breathed in the clear, clear air and walked under the brilliant blue sky.  The air is clear and the sky so blue because there is almost no humidity—no airborne water vapor at all.  You see, most of southern Israel is a desert.  Water is a rare and precious commodity.  Unless regularly irrigated, or immediately after a rain, nothing grows.  Nothing, except the occasional most drought-resistant shrubs. Maine is a lush rain forest in comparison to southern Israel.  There is simply NO WATER.  For miles and miles there is nothing but rough, extremely rugged rock.  This isn't a soft, sandy desert, but a deeply ridged and rocky landscape. 

The craggy mountains are sliced and intersected by “wadis,” or deep gullies carved by rare flash floods.  Crossing this landscape before the advent of modern highways involved a lot of climbing and descending into steep ravines, stumbling over large boulders, or taking repeated wide detours to find a less challenging path.

  Think about it: John’s prophesy that “every valley will be lifted up and every mountain and hill made level” takes on a whole new meaning when one  considers what must have been involved in trying to navigate such a hostile geography.  This is the wilderness the Children of Israel wandered in for 40 years; this is the wilderness in which our Lord Jesus suffered his forty days of temptation.

But that’s not all.  Being a desert, not only do the temperatures rise to scorching highs in the day, they plummet to near freezing at night, because, with no suspended water vapor trapping the heat near the surface, all the accumulated heat disperses back into the atmosphere at nightfall.  The lack of water in a desert impacts every aspects of the environment, rendering it shockingly inhospitable to human life. 

You and I may never have to contend with the actual Negev wilderness, but each one of us is called to cross our own spiritual Negev.  To make our own journey from the spiritual Egypt to our personal Holy Land, you and I must traverse this spiritual wilderness.

Saying “yes” to this journey invites intense spiritual work. No amount of physical wealth or powerful technology or top-notch insurance can make any difference when we face this personal gauntlet.  Only one thing can help us on that journey, and that is the presence of God—the original local nomadic guide, with his wisdom and compassion.  God’s love and wisdom are the only things that will get us through.  These show up in the Bible as the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that guided the children of Israel in the wilderness. 

So where do I get me some of them?

As I've said before, Swedenborg talks a lot about love and wisdom.  He tells us that they are two distinctly different things that are in relationship inside us.  He tells us that the bread of communion represents God’s love, and the wine represents God’s wisdom.  In another place he says again the bread represents God’s wisdom, and the wine represents God’s love.  Wait….

Is the bread the love, or the wisdom?  Is the wine the wisdom or the love?  Huh?

The answer is: “Yes.”

Deeper study of Swedenborg’s material shows us the very yin/yang relationship between these two essential capacities of our nature. Wisdom holds deep within it tremendous love (or it isn't real wisdom), and genuine love is always guided by a deep inner wisdom. The two capacities mirror each other and work together in a profound and miraculous way.  This means we can always find BOTH qualities in every correspondence.  Wine or bread can represent love or wisdom, depending on the context and the emphasis.  The same is true with many other representatives in the biblical narrative.

So, I submit that though Swedenborg tells us repeatedly that water corresponds to truth, when we are looking at a rocky, sun-baked landscape, where rocks represent truth, and sunlight represents truth, the thing that is needed for survival in this case is possibly not more truth.  In considering the wilderness and surviving spiritual temptation, it is entirely possible that our need for water could represent our need for supportive, utterly essential life-giving love.

Can water represent love?  Well, think about it.  Love, feelings, and emotions—are they static and solid, or fluid and difficult to restrain? What is more likely to swamp us, ideas or feelings?  We can “drown” in emotions, be “flooded” with feelings and “filled” with love—all language that suggests a fluid nature more like water than rocks. Our bodies are 98% water, and Swedenborg tells us love is our very life.  We are gestated in water, baptized in water, and will die without water long before starvation can carry us off.  So for me at least, water and our need for water images our need for love far more than truth, and this is NOT contradictory to Swedenborg’s message.  You don’t have to agree with me, but when it comes to crossing my spiritual wilderness, nine times out of ten it is love and comfort I need to get me through.  It is the warmth of a hug, the reassuring squeeze of the hand of friendship—not a book or a quote or a lecture.  Honestly, when you are truly hurting, which is more helpful, a hug or a platitude?  A Kleenex or being told, “Don’t cry?”  A silent, sympathetic, non judging presence or a sermon?

Secrets From Heaven, Paragraph 1690:3 says, “Every temptation [which is what the “wilderness” corresponds to] is an assault upon the love in which a person is, and the temptation is in the same degree as is the love. If the love is not assaulted, there is no temptation. To destroy anyone's love is to destroy their very life; for their love is their life.” Emanuel Swedenborg

We are in temptation when our love is under attack---not our ideas, our love.  Love manifests and cloaks itself in ideas, but never let us mistake the fact that any genuine temptation is an attack on what we love, not what we think.  Confusion and deep questions and a crisis of faith will only occur in the midst of such a temptation, but they are not the real issue.  Genuine spiritual temptation means what we love is under attack.  And love is always good.  

Even twisted love, otherwise known as evil, derives any power it has from the kernel of goodness at its core.  And it is the attack on that goodness that creates the suffering.  It is the attack on God-with-us that creates the pain.  Jesus suffered because this is what suffers in us.  We are not wrong when we are suffering temptation.  It means that we are spiritually alive.  It means we are responding to God’s call to live and love more deeply!  It hurts like…well, hell but please don’t waste one scrap of energy beating yourself up for being in temptation if you are.  As Winston Churchill said, “When you are going through hell, keep going.”  Don’t beat yourself up for being there, keep going!

So, knowing all that we know about spiritual temptation, what do we do to prepare ourselves?  Given our Swedenborgian-status-special-Biblical-knowledge, how do you and I prepare to be Swat-team buff and ready to face our personal wilderness crossing?  How do we become wilderness-crossing-ninjas—not only surviving but ready to rescue everyone else?

Step one, we get over ourselves.  The twelve steppers have it right: “We admitted we were powerless before our personal wilderness….”

The truth is we will probably survive about as well as anyone else does.  We may even end up whining and complaining as loudly and often as the most cantankerous of the children of Israel.  We may give up again and again on God, even having seen the miraculous provision of water and manna for our survival in every prior experience. 

Because the story of the Children of Israel in the wilderness and their repeatedly failing faith and almost ADD inability to trust in their God isn't in the Bible to shame us into doing better than they did.  It is there to say, “This is what the journey looks like.  This is what mortals do in this process.”

We are the ones who get stuck on thinking we’re supposed to be better than we are.  We are the ones who think that somehow, because we supposedly “know better,” we should be able to do better.  That’s called pride.  Honestly, looking at the whole of human history, how often has “knowing better” ever meant we chose to do better?  Our idealism is adorable, but rarely realistic.

The Lord’s miraculous love and tremendous wisdom knows that we have lousy spiritual attention spans.  God is way ahead of us.  It is kind of darling how earnest we are and how hard we try to be perfect.  But the truth is, we are two-year-olds trying to do quantum physics here.  It is important to us that we try, and it is good for us to try, but the victory ever and always belongs to God. It is probably good for our pride that we don’t realize just how powerless we are.  But the truth is, despite all their shortcomings, God brought the Children of Israel through the wilderness intact, and God will do it for you and me as well no matter how inept we might feel.  We just have to show up.  We just have to say, “Yes,” to the journey. Then the only thing that might make the journey more comfortable is letting go of doing it more perfectly than anyone else.  You won’t.  I won’t.  We are not that powerful.  And that is perfect.

God’s power.  God’s love.  The spiritual journey to which our God calls us is the journey to venture more deeply into love.  Love equals compassion, and the one who needs compassion the most from you and me is not our lousy neighbor, not the idiot from our work-place, not even Hitler.   The one who needs compassion the most from you and me is our own, broken selves.  Yourself.  Myself.

I’m going to share something with you:  My particular heredity gifted me with an inner critic so harsh as to rival the most abusive nasty parent.  It never was and probably never will be more criticism that I have needed, but more compassion, more gentleness, and far more patient loving-kindness than I would ever naturally give myself.  I have had to get over an enormous pride—pride, I tell you, that was not because I ever truly felt I deserved it, but pride that is a massive defense against the relentless, merciless, profoundly abusive inner critic (that I now know is a legacy of my particular genetic line).  A cruel personal demon.  A nasty hereditary trait that is not unusually special by the way—I don’t even get to take pride in how harshly that inner critic can abuse me.  Dang!  Because a vicious inner critic is not even as rare or special as my pride would like to think.

But the point isn't whether I'm prideful or special.  The point is that what has helped heal me—what has helped get me through that leg of my wilderness—was not stones.  Which is to say, not criticism or advice.  Not the stone of “I shouldn't be so proud.”  Not the stone of “I should love God more.” Not the stone of “I should try harder;” but the life giving, miraculous experience of being radically loved in the midst of feeling so miserably unlovable.  Immense, overwhelming, utterly delighted tenderness.  Being bathed in that cleansing benevolence when we are so utterly dry is what saves you and me, and continues to save us in the midst of the glaring sun and harsh and scraping landscape of personal temptation. 

That God loves you and me even in our profound brokenness is the saving truth of God’s love.  It is true for me, and it is true for you.  Show up. Care.  And forgive yourself for being so imperfect. Who did you think you were, God?  We are so cute.

“I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert,” says our God.

It is the Lord’s bounteous, miraculous love that lifts the valleys before us and turns the mountains into plains, not our preparedness, not our amassed store of wisdom, not how many bible quotes we have memorized or how much Swedenborg we know.  It is God’s love that does that work—the spiritual water that fills every cell of our spiritual bodies and that sustains us and operates at levels far beneath our conscious control.  That is what wins the victory and transforms the desert.  If we can just let go of thinking we have to do it perfectly—when we can stop judging ourselves so harshly and stop trying so hard, we just might open ourselves into relaxing into God’s providence.  And when we can do that, then, then we will see how the river of God’s love lifts up and softens that barren rock and causes the desert to bloom with joy and life.  Amen.

The Readings:

Isaiah 43:16-21

Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, and a path through the mighty waters,
Who brings forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power (They shall lie down together, they shall not rise; They are extinguished, they are quenched like a wick):
“Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.  The beast of the field will honor Me, the jackals and the ostriches, because I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to My people, My chosen. This people I have formed for Myself; they shall declare My praise.

Matthew 4:1-11 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”

But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus said to him, “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’”

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”

Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.

Secrets From Heaven, Paragraph 2334 “All temptation includes feelings of doubt about the Lord's presence and mercy, about salvation, and so on; for people who experience temptation suffer great emotional distress, even to the point of desperation. They are kept in this state primarily so that they may eventually be confirmed in the certainty that all things are governed by the Lord's mercy, and that they are saved through Him alone….” Emanuel Swedenborg

Is Love Alive? - a sermon for second Advent

Is Love Alive?

Sermon for the Advent of Love

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Dec 7, 2014

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Luke 1: 26-38, Matthew 1:18-25, Selections from Heavenly Secrets 1820:2

There is a bit of dark humor that really appeals to me.  And as it applies to today’s topic I will share it with you now. It goes like this:

“We are born naked, wet, and hungry.  Then things get worse.”

So, today I want to talk about the vulnerability of love, and just how vulnerable God was willing to become to deliver His message of love.  He didn’t show his love by being the mightiest, or having the biggest guns, or the most money, or the best Homeland security, but by being the most vulnerable.  He allowed himself to be tortured and murdered to show us in the most palpable way imaginable that love transcends even unjust arrest, torture, and death.  He chose to be vulnerable.  His strength was illustrated by his “weakness”.

So as we are celebrating His birth, with joy and gifts and lights and hope, can we remember what He chose?  How will it all end?  Will LOVE live?

Raise your hand if you have ever heard of a “Blue” Christmas service.

 

A “Blue” Christmas service is one that makes a space for those whose pain and loss during this “most wonderful time of the year” is too great for them to be able to join in the festivities.  When most of the rest of us are wishing each other “Merry Christmas!” or “Happy Hanu-Solsti-Bodhi-Kwaanza-kkuh!” a Blue Christmas service carves out a safe and sacred space for those who need to be with the truth of their emotional reality—sadness, sorrow, loss, homesickness, pain, separation, or bereavement.  It is a gentle, quiet space, not even pretending that everyone should be joyful.

Somehow, loss, separation, disruption, and bereavement are more sharply outlined during the holidays when all those around us seem to be celebrating.  One woman confessed to me recently, “Why does everyone have to tell me to have a Happy Thanksgiving?  It’s not a happy thanksgiving.  My mother died and we aren't celebrating at all.”  In her pain she heard, “Happy Thanksgiving” as a command, and it sharpened her sense of grief.  It is not uncommon for raw loss to come out as anger or bitterness.  And unless we have been trained to deal with such loss when we encounter it, we are likely to feel uncomfortable or guilty or maybe even judgmental of the one who is voicing such hurt and pain during the holidays.

My hope is that today’s message will open our awareness to include with compassion and comfort all the experiences of this holiday season—the joyful and sorrowful, the bright and the bitter, the sweet and the sharp—believing that somehow they are united by love and remembering that love makes a space for all sides of us. 

Suffering need not diminish the sparkling joy; nor does any delight and pleasure need to invalidate the sorrow.  They can live side by side in this season, but it may take intentionality to learn how to be comfortable with all of it.  Sometimes the joy and pleasure will be contagious and brighten the days of the sorrowful.  At other times the suffering is so acute that the surrounding joy must show respect in quietness, holding those suffering in love and patience.

According to Swedenborg, we are what we love.  Love is what drives us and motivates us and inspires us.  And love is what hurts most acutely when attacked. 

We love, and we love deeply.  Our greatest joy is when people we love are doing well, and when we hear news of new love and new life.  The toughest times are when something we love is threatened, or is suffering, or has been lost. 

Joy and love open us up.  Pain and fear shut us down.  Do you see the relationship?

To guard what is most precious to us, we build defenses around it.  We don’t want the things we treasure most to be hurt or threatened in any way.  Some defenses are reasonable and prudent. But sometimes, if we have been hurt deeply, we build bigger and bigger defenses, hiding from more and more of life, swearing we will not be hurt that way again.  It makes sense that we do this, but building stronger and stronger defenses will not serve us in the long run.  Because defenses, while protecting the things we love, also block love’s movement and expression, like a princess walled up in a tower to keep her safe; or like a light hidden under a bucket.  One’s defense mechanisms themselves can end doing more harm than good.

So let’s look at how today’s scripture selections speak to love and defensiveness and vulnerability.

In our first Scripture reading, we see Mary hearing the news that she would become the mother of God.  This promise was actually inviting Mary into tremendous vulnerability.  A woman when pregnant is far more vulnerable than she is ordinarily.  To be an unmarried pregnant woman in that culture was one of the worst fates Mary could face.  During labor she would be reduced to complete dependency on those around her for her life and the life of her baby.  Yet Mary essentially said, “So be it,” to all of it, even though her pregnancy could mean Joseph’s rejection. Mary said, “Yes,” even though she could be left alone with an infant and no means or support. Granted, she had an angel reassuring her, but still, Mary’s trust here is remarkable.

Then we see Joseph being asked to accept Mary even though she was pregnant. Joseph clearly wasn’t happy with Mary’s news, because he took at least overnight, and possibly longer to decide how to respond.  In fact, we read that Joseph had pretty much decided to cut Mary off “quietly” until the angel intervened. The Joseph side of our nature is like that.  It nearly says “no” to God’s birth into our lives because it is more cautious.  Joseph was afraid, or the angel would not have said, “Do not be afraid to take Mary to wife.”

But with the angel’s promptings, Joseph did eventually say “yes” to the care of Mary and thus to the birth of this Divine child into his life. 

In Swedenborgian theology, there are two sides to each of us, rather like the two hemispheres of our brain.  There is the open, connecting, creative, optimistic, inclusive side of us (or our right-brain side); and there is the protective, analytical, sorting, boxing and prioritizing side, (or our left-brain side).  Mary shows up here as our right-brain response to God’s advent into our lives.  She is the part of us ready to accept and gestate this Divine in-breaking with very few questions. That part of us simply says “yes” right away. 

Joseph is representing our left-brain energy.  His role will be to protect and provide for this child that is not his own.  He is hesitant and skeptical; he takes time to discern the risks and benefits. He nearly says no, before an angel speaks in his dreams and turns him around. 

When I think of these two energies and all the ways they show up in my life, one example that makes me smile is this church’s board, and the lovely mix of dreamers and money-crunchers, optimists and … well, the hesitant and careful.  We need both energies. One isn't better than the other any more than the left hemisphere is better than the right in our brains. To function at our best we need a healthy marriage between them, in our personal inner lives, and in our communities, and on every church board.  In every aspect of life we get onto trouble when the dreamers charge ahead without the consent of the careful, or when the careful stonewall every dream because of risk-aversion.  The two sides must work together as a team, trusting the wisdom inherent in each; and most of all, as in the story of Mary and Joseph, needing to remember that it is God’s direction and guidance that will accomplish the plan not their own dreams or prudence.  Neither Mary nor Joseph alone could have been able to birth, catch, hold, clean, swaddle and nurse this Divine expression of Love at his most wet and squirmy and vulnerable.

Love makes us vulnerable.  And loving someone small and defenseless who is relying on us for safety and survival makes us the most vulnerable of all.  

Our reading from Swedenborg says that evil attacks what we love most. Herod went after every single baby and toddler for miles around.  Our softness, our tenderness, our openness—these things are seen as a threat in a macho culture.  When we are all about our own ability not to get hurt, or to be the strongest, or to be “invulnerable,” anything seen as “weak” is anathema.  Everything is viewed in threat and risk terms, and everything that can make us vulnerable is the thing to be guarded against above all. 

That was not Jesus’ message nor his model. 

While it is a normal human response to react to pain and injury by throwing up defensive walls, defensive walls stop the flow of love.  They leave no room at the inn.  They create a space to hide, and hiding is not what we were brought here to do.

The experiences of sorrow and loss around this holiday are experiences of love too.  They express great love, or we would not hurt so much.  While the pain and loss can make us wonder if we will ever feel joy again, the answer lies in the pain itself.  The love is alive or there would be no pain.  It truly is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.  And where there is love, there is God. And where there is God, all things are possible.

So if you are feeling naked, wet, and hungry, and like things are just going to get worse, remember: Love has a way of accomplishing what it sets out to do.  It holds back nothing from those it loves. True vulnerability is the bravest and strongest part of us, no matter how things look, because it is willing to go into and through the darkness, trusting in the new dawn.

So this Christmas, let us try to say “Yes” to the birth of vulnerability in our own lives however that shows up for us.  When an angel asks us to take a risk for love, will we dare to say “yes” and trust that God has a plan?  Mostly, will we heed the call of love, and be brave enough to face the darkness even with all the feelings of vulnerability and pain?  Because that is the path love takes and the way to new life.  Amen

The following was the interlude:

Winter Song,By Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson

Bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum
Bum bum, bum bum bum bum
Bum bum, bum bum bum bum

This is my winter song to you
The storm is coming soon
It rolls in from the sea

My voice, a beacon in the night
My words will be your light
To carry you to me

Is love alive?
Is love alive?
Is love (pause)

They say that things just cannot grow
Beneath the winter snow
Or so I have been told

They say we're buried far
Just like a distant star
I simply cannot hold

Is love alive?
Is love alive?
Is love alive?

This is my winter song
December never felt so wrong
Cause you're not where you belong
Inside my arms

Bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum
Bum bum, bum bum bum bum
Bum bum, bum bum bum bum

I still believe in summer days
The seasons always change
And life will find a way

I'll be your harvester of light
And send it out tonight
So we can start again

Is love alive?
Is love alive?
Is love alive?

This is my winter song
December never felt so wrong
Cause you're not where you belong
Inside my arms

This is my winter song to you
The storm is coming soon
It rolls in from the sea

My love a beacon in the night
My words will be your light
To carry you to me

Is love alive?
Is love alive?
Is love alive?
Is love alive?

The Readings

Luke 1: 26-38  Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,  to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.  And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”

 But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was.  Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.  And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus.  He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.  And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”

Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?”

And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.  Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren.  For with God nothing will be impossible.”

Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

Matthew 1: 18-25  Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.  Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.  But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”  When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

Heavenly Secrets 1820:2, 5 portions

Since few people know what temptations really are, let a brief explanation of them be given here. Evil spirits only attack what someone loves, and the more intensely we love, the more fiercely do those spirits attack us. By attacking what we love most deeply, they attack every single thing about us, since each person’s very life consists in what we love. Nothing gives evil spirits more delight than to destroy someone; and they would attack what we love relentlessly if the Lord did not drive them away.

Dealing With Despair

I preached this sermon in 2008, thinking it was not one of my better ones.
Afterwards, several people told me it was just what they needed to hear.

Since many folks I know and love are going through some pretty rough stuff right now, I will repost it.

“Why Is My Pain Unceasing?” - Dealing With Despair
Jeremiah 15:15–21, Matthew 16:21–28
By Alison Longstaff
St. James Lutheran Church, New Dundee, Ontario
Sunday, August 31, 2008


One nice thing about pain is that it feels so good when it stops.

The reason my pain is unceasing is that I recently started Ashtanga yoga, and I can barely move. But that is not why we are here today.

In our Scripture readings, we heard a lot about suffering. We heard a pain-filled cry to God to end the suffering in Jeremiah. In the gospel reading, Jesus is warning the disciples about the terrible suffering he will endure. Peter objects, and Jesus shouts at Peter, “Get behind me, you Satan!” in a shocking, very un-Jesus like moment. He says, “You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Peter was the voice of the tempter when he declared that such suffering and death should never happen to Jesus. Jesus knew it was imperative to focus on the spiritual work about to be accomplished and not on the suffering. He had to focus on His Divine mission and not be distracted. Perhaps Peter was the voice of the demon attacking Jesus, trying to convince Jesus to opt out of the suffering. This would explain the intensity of the rebuke.

Jesus had to keep his eyes set on the Divine to accomplish his mission.

Life on this earth includes suffering. Even here in North America, with our health-care and insurance policies, relative wealth and myriad safety measures, we can’t seem to escape suffering. We often think we shouldn’t have to suffer. We keep creating more ways to protect ourselves, as if constant comfort and total security were the answer to all our problems.
So why are we still so restless and unhappy?

Some of the countries that rank highest for overall national happiness are places like Nigeria and Bhutan. What’s that about? Nigeria suffers from extreme poverty, and many people live in mud huts. How can they possibly be happier than us? Well, it seems they have a deep reliance on God. They are a very Christian country, and they live their faith in every way they can. They are desperately poor, yet they sing and pray and share the little they have with each other, and they are happy.

Toronto journalist Jonathan Power interviewed Olusegun Obasanjo, a Nigerian who became a Christian and a preacher after being unjustly imprisoned. In his three years of captivity, Obusanjo became a sort of chaplain to his fellow prisoners. He says, “The time I had real joy in my life was when I was in prison. I felt then that there was just God and me, and my fellow prisoners whom I must try and help." Extreme hardship robs us of everything- but God. Perhaps this is why some of the most loving and deeply spiritual people are also people who have suffered great hardship.

In the midst of the deepest suffering God becomes all we have left, and this breaks ground for a deep and rich faith to grow. I’m not saying we should all chuck our current lives and go live in a third-world country so as to really suffer so we can experience God. Suffering finds us, no matter where we live. I am saying that it is good to remember that suffering can be our greatest teacher. God wouldn’t allow anything to happen if it didn’t serve some purpose for good. So even the painful times in life---perhaps especially the painful times---are carefully overseen by God to deepen us and eventually bring us joy.

My one objection to books and philosophies like The Secret and A Complaint-Free World is the way they can promote the idea that we are solely responsible for what happens to us in our lives. The idea is that if we cultivate a good attitude, we invite good things into our lives, and that we invite misfortune by having a bad attitude. The logical conclusion to this is that if we just work hard enough to have a great attitude, nothing bad will happen to us. But if it were true, those Indonesians must have had one bad attitude to invite that tsunami onto them. Every victim of every tragedy could be blamed for their misfortune. I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.

No, such a philosophy falls too easily into a judgmentalism toward the suffering. “It must be their fault. If only they were positive like me, they’d be okay.” This is a lie. It demonstrates a strong reliance on one’s own efforts for “salvation,” and no reliance on God.

My mom has been in chronic physical pain for over twenty-three years. She has fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, which means “everything hurts.” And she has depression. (Well, duh. Poor thing. Who wouldn’t?) She’s on all sorts of medicines, which have their own strange side-effects and cause other problems. I don’t know how she manages. I can’t hack chronic pain for even a day. I get grumpy and whiney and can be very impatient when waiting for my next dose of pain reliever. But twenty-three years?! Did I mention that she also gets regular migraines? She has tried every treatment in the world, from steroids to vitamins to acupuncture to moose meat, and nothing helps.

I love her. I don’t want her to suffer. Sometimes I get really impatient with her. (Surely she’s doing something wrong!) I judge her for not trying hard enough or not trying the right things long enough. My judging comes from how hard it is to see her in pain. But my judging her never helps. My impatience never helps. Again and again, the best and only thing I can do for her is to love her to bits, and spend time with her, and believe with my whole heart that God has a plan. Period.

Have you ever heard someone say, in the midst of some awful situation, “I suppose God has a lesson for me,” as if he or she could stop the suffering, if they could just figure out what the lesson was and learn it? But I don’t think God works this way. I don’t think God ever sends suffering. I think God allows it sometimes, only when He can bring some long term good out of it for everyone involved.

Has my mom been suffering for twenty-three years because there is some lesson she is refusing to learn? I can’t believe that. She’s doing the best she can. She just got dealt a rotten hand. She didn’t invite this onto herself any more than my classmate’s two-year-old son invited death from liver cancer onto himself. Terrible stuff just happens.

Yes, a positive attitude can greatly improve certain aspects of our lives, and can spin off some nice side effects. Optimism and hope are our wings, and when we have them, they lift us up and over a multitude of life’s hurdles. But sometimes, through no fault of our own, our wings get plucked or broken. Sometimes a hoard of locusts swoops down on that rich and thick harvest of positive thinking and in a heart-beat, strips it to dead stalks. Sometimes we are left walking or crawling down life’s dusty road, not flying, experiencing every bump and ditch and thorn and mud puddle. “The rain falls on the just and on the unjust,” says God in the Gospels. Or, to quote contemporary wisdom, “Shit happens.”

So we must set our minds on divine things, and not on human things.

There is so much in this life over which we have no control. There are all sorts of forces at work around us, and we are far less powerful than we think. Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts. We want a happy, comfy life now. God wants us to have a happy, comfy life for eternity.

We are part of a great tapestry. Stuff that looks bad to our eyes now, is allowed to happen because God sees a bigger picture. But don’t forget, God isn’t some cold, distant artist. When we suffer, God suffers along with us. He knows what it is like to be a mortal. He was one, in Jesus. Jesus suffered to bring a much better outcome for everyone down the road. But, just the way the disciples couldn’t see why Jesus allowed Himself to suffer, we often can’t see why we or our loved ones are allowed to suffer. We can’t see God’s plan, but it is there.

Shit happens, and not all the positive thinking in the world save us from it. No one is that powerful, no matter what we’d like to think. All twelve steppers can tell you that powerlessness is the first and most important thing to learn. We have to embrace and face life on life’s terms, not ours. Facing our powerlessness throws us finally and completely into God’s arms.

“Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?” Set your mind on divine things, and not on human things. Spiritual growth, personal growth involve finding our relationship with suffering, not avoiding it. Why else would God invite us to take up the cross to follow Him? Jesus fought through temptation after temptation on his journey to the cross. He showed us the way. He showed us that it will come out all right, no matter how hopeless it looks.

God loves us desperately. He doesn’t want us to suffer. But sometimes the most loving thing He can do for us is to let us have our experiences, good and bad. Eliminating the struggle for us eliminates the joy and triumph we will feel when we finally arrive at the finish line. Suffering draws out good qualities in us like endurance, stamina, and patience. It frequently teaches us compassion and opens us up to the Holy Spirit. It is like spiritual roto-tilling, breaking up old and set things about us, turning us upside down and making room for new and wonderful things to flow in.

Suffering helps us more fully appreciate the truly good things in life. It also teaches us how precious are the times of peace and good fortune. We don’t take them so much for granted. Suffering deepens us, whether we like it or not. And it reminds us who’s really in charge of the universe, and that it’s not us. It teaches us to trust in God; and to set our sights on divine goals and not on human ones.

For those of you who are in the midst of suffering, take heart. Every single thing in life is in God’s hands. Not one hair of your head falls without notice. No matter how long the night may seem, the morning always brings new hope.

"Why is my pain unceasing,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?

…They shall not prevail over you,
for I am with you
to save you and deliver you,
says the LORD.
I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked,
and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless." (Jer. 18,21)

Amen

Nigeria: Happiest Nation on Earth?
by Jonathan Power, Published on Monday, December 29, 2003 by the Toronto Star


Barbara Merrell Smith passed away September 13, 2008