SUFFERING: PART 2

Anne Morrow Lindbergh: "I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable."

And Parker Palmer: "Distancing ourselves from each other's pain is the hidden agenda behind most of our efforts to 'fix' each other with advice. If you take my advice, and do it right, you will get well and I will be off the hook. But if you do not follow my advice, or do not follow it properly, I am off the hook nonetheless: I have done the best I could, and your continued suffering is clearly your fault. By trying to fix you with advice, rather than simply suffering with you, I hold myself away from your pain."

We neither like to suffer ourselves nor see another suffer. Even less do we want to become involved in another's suffering. Perhaps that is the reason why so many suffer in silence and suffer needlessly. Yes, suffering teaches us. It reminds us of our own vulnerability, our own finiteness. It also reminds us that for suffering to be of any value, others must become part of our pain.

It seems to me that to suffer alone is the greatest pain of all. To allow another to suffer alone may be the greatest sin of all. As Palmer suggests, we seem to understand this and so we often, maybe all too often, end up giving advice instead of giving of ourselves. Then we are off the hook, so we would like to think.

But what the sufferer needs is not our words of wisdom but our willingness to be present in his suffering, to mourn with her, to help understand the situation. The sufferer needs not our advice but our love and our willingness to remain vulnerable with him and to suffer with her as well.

We know this to be true because when we are the one who is suffering, who is feeling lost and alone, what we desperately want, even though we are reluctant to voice it, is for someone to be there with us -- to mourn with us, to understand how we feel, to be patient with our impatience, to love us as we are, to be open to the sometimes craziness that suffering causes, to be just as vulnerable as we are.

What we will also discover when we join another in his suffering is that we are not alone. God is with us. For it is in opening ourselves to share the suffering of another that we at the same time open ourselves to the love of God and the strength that comes from that love, but we only learn that truth from first opening ourself to the other.

No one wants to suffer and no one of us wants to see another suffer. Yet we all do. There is no escape. As long as we live, suffering will be part and parcel of this life. What we are called to do is not so much work to eliminate suffering as to be present with those who are suffering. We may never come to understand the whys and wherefores of suffering; but in our being present with one who suffers, we will come to understand ourselves.

SUCCESS OR FAILURE?

I have never placed much stock in fate. Most of what happens to us is the result of free will. Yes, we are all born with genes and chromosomes that have a profound effect on who we are, what we look like, even our moods and dispositions. Children of alcoholics are prone to alcoholism: it is in the genes. Homosexuality is genetic. Heterosexuality is too. Depression, it seems, can be passed on from parent to child.

We are not in control of everything. We are not under the control of everything either. The tendency of human nature is to blame our failings and shortcomings on someone or something else: our parents, our genes, even the devil. On the other hand, when we accomplish something that is laudable, we want to accept total credit rather than to be thankful for our parents, our genetic makeup or even our God. Fate was the root cause of the bad; free will was the root cause of the good.

Michael Ignatieff: "We would rather believe that it could not have happened otherwise than to entertain the still more agonizing thought that it need not have happened at all. It is false comfort to believe that cruelty [for instance] is human destiny, when in truth it is human failure."

No one of us likes to fail. We take failure personally. If we can pass off the blame for our failure on fate ("it could not have happened otherwise"), then, perhaps, we can sleep better at night. But if we have to accept the fact that failure is often the result of our free will ("human failure"), we tend to toss and turn in our sleep – and well we should.

The acceptance of human failure, human frailty, the acknowledgement that we are not all powerful, almighty, is at least the first step on the road to recovering some sense of responsibility of the messes we make in our lives and the messes we help create in this world. It is not a pleasant thought to realize that we have no one else to blame – like society; and nothing else to blame – like our genes; not a very pleasant thought indeed!

The second step is to acknowledge that just because we are somewhat less than perfect, we are still not allowed to settle for imperfection. My children, and I as a child, use and used that as an excuse to lessen responsibility. It does not, but we give it a good try. And if the truth be known, I still find myself, at times, settling for less than the best from myself.

Jesus's expectations of us and we of ourselves is a striving for perfection. For that to begin to happen, we first have to accept responsibility for our own actions and not blame them on someone or something else. The second step is to realize that we need help in becoming better/perfect. We need Someone and other someones to help us. We cannot do it alone.

The irony of life, I think, is that while we often fail all on our own, we never succeed all on our own. We don't need anyone's help to fail. We need all kinds of help to succeed, to be the person God wants us to be. We probably should spend less time looking for someone to blame when we fail and more time looking for someone to help us so that we don’t fail in the first place. That help is all around.

LEAD US (NOT) INTO TEMPTATION

Whenever we say The Lord’s Prayer, we ask the Lord to “lead us not into temptation.” I wonder: does God actually lead us into temptation, so much so that we have to ask God not to do so? As a child of God does God deliberately place us in tempting situations where we will, perhaps more likely than not, give into those temptations and sin? That would be akin to a parent placing a box of candy in front of a diabetic child and then walking away. No loving parent would do that. Would God, does God, do that to us?

I don’ think so; and yet we ask God not to do something which we believe God doesn’t do in the first place. What gives here? What is given is that we are born into a world where the temptation to do what we know we should not do bombards us every day. We can’t escape it and, all too often, we given into those temptations and say and do something very foolish, selfish and sinful.

What we are asking God to do is, when the world around us leads us into those tempting situations, to keep us mindful of what is happening and what can be the consequences of doing so and then giving us the grace and strength to not give in. If you are like me, we are almost always aware of what we being tempted to say or do. What we are not so much aware of is what the consequences will be when we give in to those temptations.

Those are the times of trial from which we ask God to save us, as the newer version of the Prayer has it. And they are indeed trying times. Why? Simply because giving in to every temptation, whatever that temptation may be, will give us immediate pleasure. And just the thought of that pleasure can be so overwhelming that any reflection about the hurtful results of our action is obscured.

There is no escape from temptation, not in this world and in this life anyway. It comes from free will. We always have choices. It is what we do with those choices that really matters. We know that. We have learned from past experience, from having given into a temptation to say or do that which was very pleasurable at the moment but, in the end, caused more pain and suffering than we even imagined.

The problem is that, for the most part, most of the temptations we give in to are not earth-shattering or life-changing. They cause pain but not enough. It is only when we say the Lord’s Prayer, slowly, deliberately, thoughtfully, that we become aware of the pain and suffering giving into the temptation to be selfish can cause to us and to those we love. But, if you are like me, too often whenever I say that prayer, the words come out of my mouth but my head and heart are somewhere else.

I think Jesus deliberately taught us that prayer to remind us of how consequential our words and actions are and on how much we need God’s grace and strength to always say and do what is right even if it is a difficult time of trial, which it often is.

SUFFERING

If there is one word that perhaps best describes the events of Good Friday that word is “suffering”. Jesus suffered in an indescribable way as did those who loved and followed him. That suffering manifested itself in severe mental, physical, spiritual and emotional pain. It was deep seated and deeply felt. Jesus's cry to his Father about feeling forsaken is a verbal indication of how painful that suffering really was.

All of us have suffered. Some of us are presently doing so. We all will again. Suffering is part and parcel of our human existence. The question that arises amidst suffering is "Why?" Anne Morrow Lindberg once reflected: "I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering also taught, all the world would be wise since everybody suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to be vulnerable."

Suffering for suffering's sake is empty, even futile. Yet, even mournful suffering (as at the death of a loved one), understood suffering (knowing that it is the result of some foolishness on our part), patient suffering (while in the process of recovery), loving suffering (while taking care of an aged parent), open suffering (realizing that we are mortal), and vulnerable suffering (because we cannot escape it) – even all that, even altogether, is not enough.

For no matter how much we understand what suffering is all about, even understand why we are suffering in the first place, sometimes even then, to use a sport's metaphor, we blow the whistle before the game is over. We allow ourselves to be satisfied with suffering for suffering's sake because we suffer in honest grief, love, patience, understanding.

It is important to be fully present while in the throes of suffering and pain, as Jesus was. It helps us to focus on the cause of the suffering, which in and of itself is a learning and teaching experience. If we do not learn from our experience, if we do not understand even a little why we are suffering, and even if the cause of our suffering was outside our control, the pain will be even greater the next time around.

But suffering eventually comes to an end. And with the end comes resurrection, comes new life. Without that knowledge, without that understanding, the present pain can be and just might be unbearable. Jesus endured the tremendous physical suffering on the cross, with all the mental, emotional and spiritual pain that went with it because somehow in some way he knew the suffering would end in resurrection. That is why the suffering of Good Friday must be seen in the light of Easter Sunday.

That is why the sufferings we endure during our own – and many – Good Fridays must be seen and understood in the light of and knowledge that our Easter Sundays, our resurrections to new life, will follow, somehow in some way.

Happy Easter and Happy Easters!

THE THREE MOST IMPORTANT WORDS

A friend of mine sent me a quote that he thought might be a gist for a reflection/sermon. The quotation: ".....one or two words that people utter that carry great weight and significance, and can be fraught with meaning and implication: Yes. No. It's a girl. He's gone. I love you. I'm sorry. It's OK. I'm here" He’s right, of course.   

As I thought about those words and after listening to a recent Gospel, I think there are three even more important words that both trump all of these and, in a way, explain them. The scene in the Transfiguration in Matthew’s Gospel. Peter, James and John hear a voice that says: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” (17:5). The three words? Listen to him.

God is telling us to listen to what Jesus has to say to us, both in his words and in his actions, really listen. If we would, if we had over the centuries, this would be a much different world. But we haven’t and we don’t. It’s almost as if we are listening to anyone and everyone else. We are bombarded by op eds in the newspapers, on line, in personal conversations, all purporting to be the truth. The one looking back to us in the mirror is not an exception.

In many ways what I think God is asking of us is to think before we speak or act, to ask of ourself if what we are about to say or do is what Jesus would say or do were he in our place at this precise moment is time? Before, not after, when it is too late and the damage has been done. We tell a lie knowing full well that it is not the truth. Others hear us and believe us for whatever reason they do; and they act on it, causing pain and suffering to others, perhaps, and often, countless others. 

The damage cannot be undone and apologies or fines or even jail terms do not and cannot atone for our deliberate sins both as individuals or groups of them. What we are left with is damage control. Passing the buck, blaming others, attempts at justifying our words and actions – none of that escapes our responsibility for what has been done. Yet, we would have no need for any attempts to do so had we listened to Jesus in the first place.

I know. I know. Do I really think blog casters or op ed writers or public demonstrators really think about the Gospel message, ask what Jesus would say or do? No, I really do not. How could they when the results of their words and actions are so blatant and so damaging to the body politic?

I think about that and about those words that we utter that are fraught with the Gospel message: Yes. No. It's a girl. He's gone. I love you. I'm sorry. It's OK. I'm here. Those words come from deep in our hearts. There is depth to them, an innate understanding of the consequences of what we are saying, of the responsibilities that follow; and we are okay with that. Why? Because we have listened to what Jesus has said to us about what it means to follow him. It’s not easy to listen and to act, and we often fail living in what these days is a toxic culture, but we do are best, given God’s grace and strength. Listen, really listen. That’s what God asks of us and what we must ask of ourselves.

THE ROCK

My two favorite Christian symbols are the cross and the rock? The rock? Yes. I keep a rock in my desk drawer – and probably should carry one in my pocket – as a reminder of my faith, of what it means to be a Christian. It reminds me that my faith is to be as solid as a rock, built on a rock. But it is more than that. The cross, of course, reminds me that living out my faith will not always be easy but that God will always give me the grace and strength to do so,

In Matthew's Gospel Jesus tells Peter that Peter is to be the rock on which Jesus will build his church. That statement has been interpreted to mean that Peter and his successors, namely, the Bishops of Rome, are to be the head of the church. I will not get into that theological debate. For the moment it is beside the point.

The real point, I believe, is that Jesus wanted a rock-solid faith from Peter and the rest of the Apostles. Not only must they confess that he is the Messiah, they must believe it and, most importantly, live it – and even be willing to die for that faith: rock-solid faith. The church universal, the church as a whole, must be built on the rock-solid faith of the people of the church. If our faith is weak, if it is built on sand, shifting sand, if it is lukewarm and wishy-washy, we, as church, will never survive.

For in order to do what is demanded of us as Christians, to love one another, even our enemies; to serve one another, even those who are different from us; to share our faith, even with those who could care less; in short, to love our God with all our heart and mind and strength and our neighbor as ourselves, all that demands a rock-solid faith.

I wear a cross around my neck as a reminder of my faith. But sometimes I think I should take that rock our of my desk drawer, tie it to a string and wear it around my neck as well. In fact, I should probably wear that rock alone. It would remind me not only of how solid my faith must be, but also, and perhaps more importantly, that when I live out my faith, in my relationships with others, what they want of me is not so much that I help them carry their crosses but that while they are carrying those crosses, I don't throw rocks at them and make it harder for them to live out their faith, and vice-versa.

But that faith comes not simply from the asking. Yes, we must want it and ask for it, but we must also work for it and work at it. It is not enough simply to confess that Jesus is the Messiah, that he is the Son of God. That's all for starters. Much more is needed, demanded. That, I think, is Jesus's point when he tells Peter and the rest of the Apostles – and us – about forgiveness. For, you see, the key to the kingdom of heaven, the key to being able to live a Christian life, that key is forgiveness.

As long as we refuse to forgive those who hurt us, as long as we keep throwing rocks at them, so long will we keep them out of our family, our church, our lives. The rock is a reminder to me that not only of the power of my faith but also the power that is in my hands to forgive in order to build community, build church, build family. And the cross is a reminder that it won’t be easy but it can and must be done.

THE REAL ISSUE

It seems to me that the real issue behind much, if not all, of the debate on human sexuality that is engulfing our church, our society, our world, is that of power masquerading as authority. It is only when we take off the masks that we are able to see the issue for what it almost always is: the desire to have power/control over another/others.

To be sure, authority is vital for the ordering of any community, be that community as small as two or as large has three hundred million. Someone has to have the final say‑so, the authority to decide if the new car is to be blue or red, to decide if we go to war or not. When that authority, which is willingly bestowed by those under authority, is employed lovingly, there are little or no problems. We may not always like the decision, but we trust that the one in authority knows what is best for us because that authority truly loves us. Our children do not always agree with our decisions about them, but they know, we hope that we love them and are doing what we do because we love them.

On the other hand, when the one in authority – be that authority parent, politician, president, priest or pope – abuses that privilege, when it becomes an issue of power, then problems arise at home, at church, in the world. When the subject over which authoritative decisions must be made is that of human sexuality, the issue of the abuse of power can be crucial. If someone, some authority, can control, has the power to control, another's sexual life, that authority controls the other.

The point, however, is that authority can be misused. When it is, it ultimately degenerates into, for a lack of a better term, power politics. Our country is beset with power politics over sexual issues. Abortion is a sexual issue. Homosexuality is a sexual issue. Divorce and remarriage is a sexual issue. That is not to say that they are not real issues or that they are unimportant. It is to say that the way we have approached these issues lately is with a club in our hand rather than love in our hearts.

When we say to others, "If you don't like it, get out, out of the country, out of the church, out of whatever", we miss the point of what being a citizen and being a Christians is about. It is not about having the power to control another’s life – physical, spiritual, social – and using and abusing it, asserting that we are right and you are wrong and we will make laws to punish you if you disobey. Sadly, tragically, in many quarters that is what it has become or seems to becoming.

No, it is not about what it has become: about control. It is about caring about the other. It is about trying to understanding what we cannot understand and maybe will never understand. It is about trying to walk in another’s shoes even though that is impossible. It is not about either-or, this or that, right or wrong.

We are all sexual beings. I no more understand my heterosexuality than someone else understands his homosexuality. None of us ever will. In the meantime, we must live as Christian sexual human beings. We must begin to see these sexual issues for what they are: issues of being, and not what they have become: issues of power and control.