The text for today’s message is the Epistle, especially focussing on the following: “We rejoice in our sufferings.” Suffering with joy. It seems a contradiction in terms. I haven’t met anyone in the four and a half years I’ve been here who actually likes to suffer. Usually we assume people who find pleasure in suffering have deeper troubles than we know how to deal with.
But Paul’s not saying that we have to enjoy our sufferings. There’s a big difference between enjoying sufferings and rejoicing in them. Enjoying suffering is to turn the goal of your sufferings in on yourself. But to find joy, to rejoice in your sufferings is to see God, is to see your Saviour, in the midst of your sufferings.
That’s really the key to Lent, in so many ways. We celebrate Lent, as a church, for 40 days, but not in order to make ourselves feel good. If it is your practice to give up something for Lent, please understand that any such self-deprivation is only a good practice insofar as it points you to Christ. Anything that you give up for Lent for any reason other than to focus on Christ or serve your neighbour ultimately does you no good.
So it is with our sufferings. Sufferings can and do come to us in many, many ways. They can be imposed on us from the outside, or come from within. Our catechism speaks time and again of “the devil, the world, and our flesh” as being the unholy alliance which leads us to sin, suffering, and struggle.
The devil has as his goal driving people away from Jesus Christ. Especially those who belong to Jesus by virtue of Baptism. You see, he is powerless to steal people from God. Jesus told us that nobody can snatch His own people away from the Father. But that doesn’t stop the devil from trying many and various ways to sneak us away. To get us to remove ourselves from God’s care. This is the devil’s specialty, to turn us inward on ourselves and get us to bring sufferings on ourselves. Sufferings of a financial or emotional or sexual nature, sufferings which make us ashamed of ourselves, sufferings which make us think of anything but our Lord. There certainly doesn’t seem to be anything to rejoice in with those kind of sufferings.
It’s kind of like the trap that the Samaritan woman at the well found herself in. When I talk about the trap, I’m not referring to Jesus’ words–not at all. Jesus’ words freed her from her self-made trap. No, the trap was that she ran into a lifestyle which would take her to hell. Equally curious to Jesus asking her for water was the fact that she was at the well when she was. People didn’t go to the well at the middle of the day if they could avoid it. The indication is that this woman, due to her lifestyle–five husbands already and currently living with a man who wasn’t her husband–was trapped. She was away from God’s Word. Even the Samaritans, who only held the five books of Moses in regard, knew the commandment “You shall not commit adultery.” They knew this command. They knew, even if in a corrupted way, that there was a law that God held them to. The Samaritans, for all their faults, were part-Israelites. Their pure-blooded relatives, the Jews, held them in great contempt because they had introduced all sorts of falsehoods into the faith, but at the core, the Samaritans still knew who the true God was and His law.
She was suffering of her own will, from her own weakness. She was suffering because she had ruined her own life. She had separated herself from the bulk of her people. She tried to justify herself and her people, but Jesus knew who she was. Jesus knew her story. And Jesus showed her the truth, gave her the Living Water–salvation.
And this passage is certainly not the only one in which there is this sort of progression from suffering to hope, where people are delivered from themselves. This is the peace that comes from God, the grace of the forgiveness of sins in action. Once the sin is forgiven, then there is peace, then there is joy that results from the sufferings–not the sufferings themselves, but the grace of God which comes to us.
But Paul is in this passage primarily talking about sufferings which come upon us from the outside. Not the problems which we cause for ourselves through our sin, but rather the problems which come to us as a result of our following Christ. Because we belong to God, the world will do its worst to us on account of our faith in Christ. Paul himself had experienced that–by this point, anyway, he had certainly had several attempts made on his life of various types, and had suffered from the misunderstandings of well-meaning fellow Christians, too. And in various ways, you and I will suffer as well.
Now, it’s not likely that you will face death for believing in Christ. Not in Canada any time soon, at any rate. But try being a teenager in Winkler, or even in Morden, more and more these days, standing up for our church’s belief in infant baptism. Here everyone else in school is being told that you have to wait for baptism until you’re older, and yet you were baptized as a baby and have been taught, from the plain words of Scripture, that Baptism is a gift of God and not to wait. You’ve just taken the confirmation vow that you would rather suffer all than fall away from the faith, but there’s such a pull on you to compromise your faith that it’s hard to bear up. No wonder so many of our kids over the last 100 years have ended up leaving for other churches, or just left church altogether–it’s hard to always have to explain yourself, even though we believe we have the truth of the Scriptures and what they mean. Standing for the Scriptural truth that we can’t make a decision for Jesus–as our catechism says, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to Him”, and as Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father draws him”–standing for this truth is hard in a culture which is bombarded by songs and programs on the radio, whether CFAM or CHVN or CKMW which are constantly inviting us to do just that. If you look for Bible examples of people making a decision for Jesus, you’re not going to find it. You will see people impacted by the Word of God and responding, repenting, requesting baptism, but you don’t see people making personal decisions to follow Jesus in the Bible.
It’s hard to just say what the Bible says and to try to put your own opinions or ideals below the authority of the Scriptures. But that’s what we’re called to do. It’s hard to be a Lutheran in the midst of Mennonite country, but that’s who we are. I remember one of the Mennonite pastors in Winkler, not that long ago, encouraging me that we need to have the Lutheran presence in this area to keep the Mennonites on track too! I say this not to put the Mennonite faith or culture down, but we need to be true to who we are. And sometimes that involves suffering.
Suffering produces endurance, we hear. Endurance produces character. Character produces hope. Suffering leads us to hope, because our hope is not in our suffering or in our church or in ourselves. Our hope is in Christ. We have the love of God, the promise that God’s Holy Spirit has been poured into us. The other good comfort we have in the midst of our suffering is that God’s time is always right.
Whether we are suffering or things are going perfectly well, whether we have our lives neatly ordered or our plans are in utter disarray, the final part of our epistle for today applies to us. Allow me to reread that for you at this time: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)
We do have the strength of the Holy Spirit in us, by virtue of baptism, by faith, through the Lord’s Supper. No question. But when we weren’t part of God’s kingdom, when we didn’t belong to Him, at the right time–Christ died for the ungodly. At just the right time–when the world wasn’t really watching, but when all the prophecies of the Old Testament could be fulfilled. At just the right time–when there was a general peace in the Mediterranean basin and the Word of Jesus could have a ready spread across the Roman world. At just the right time–when the Greek language was at its peak of general usage and adoption. At just the right time–when God’s people needed His grace and mercy the most.
Jesus died for the ungodly. Not for the good, not for the folks who have it all together. But for the ungodly. Ultimately, that means everyone. Because nobody can be good. Nobody has it all together. Nobody trusts God the way they should, with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind, all the time. Jesus died for folks like you and me who have sufferings and struggles and messed-up times. Sure, somebody might die for someone who’s been very good to them, but to give your life away for those who are ungodly–only Jesus could do that. Only Jesus did. And it’s because He did that we have faith in the first place. We have been justified by Jesus. That’s a done deal, completed for us at the Cross. There all sins were taken away, past, present, and future.
This is the heart of the message we have and we hold to. All our teachings–whether on Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, how we become holy, even how we worship on Sunday–are centred on this basic principle that Jesus has done it all, and there is nothing we can contribute. We live in the faith and hope that comes from knowing that regardless of what sufferings or struggles we may face, we have a Saviour who does not let us go, a Lord who had our best interests in heart when we were His enemies–how much more, now that we are His friends through His death for us!
Remain in Jesus, dear friends, remain in His Word, in His gifts of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Live the faith He has given you and bring others to the living water, that they too may find hope in the midst of the sufferings of sin and rejoice in the good news of salvation. Rejoice in your sufferings, for Jesus has suffered death that you might live, and lives that you might spend eternity with Him. In Jesus. Amen.
Last updated February 2008 by the webmaster.