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WHERE IS GOD WHEN WE SUFFER?
Romans 8:18-39
July 27, 2008
Betty Berghaus
The young mother and wife sat anxiously in the hospital waiting room while her husband was in surgery. He had been treated for cancer for several years, with radiation and chemotherapy. But the cancer had returned, in the form of a mass near his spleen. She sat with her mother-in-law, but they were both very quiet. The couple’s young daughter was in school and would go home with friends. Finally, when the doctor came out, he told them that the tumor was attached to several organs, and could not be removed. The wife sat at first in shock, then opened her Bible to the well-worn page and read again, almost without seeing:
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” Believing and needing those words, she made her way out to her car, closed the door, and wept.
Months later, the young man died from the ravages of that cancer. The young woman turned to that passage time and time again, but also began to focus on another verse of the passage: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.” That passage encouraged her as she continued to work and to care for their young daughter, holding on to God’s promises and hope, even in the midst of grief and despair.
That young woman was, of course, me, and with the prayer of verse 28 in mind, I eventually went to Duke Divinity School, and was called to this position, where I hopefully have helped folks through some of their tough times. My daughter, as most of you know, is in the Peace Corps, teaching AIDS prevention and doing other good works, as she earns a Masters in International Health. I believe that, in our lives, that promise of God’s good intent is being fulfilled, and I rejoice in that.
That is my personal story, and my very personal connection with the words of Romans 8. Scripture can be read in very many different ways. It can be read very literally, sort of like a book, although that becomes harder when we reach such passages as those long lists of “begats,” and the detailed laws of Leviticus! Even the letters of Paul can be dense, with sentences that seem to go on for pages!
Scripture can also be read spiritually, as we turn to the Bible for direction, for inspiration, for comfort. The Psalms are particularly helpful spiritually, as they, though written many years ago and in very different circumstances, seem to reflect our own experiences and feelings. Other passages, like the Romans 8 one, can also comfort us and direct us. The end of Romans 8 is often used as a comfort in memorial services.
Scripture can also be read critically. This does not mean that we criticize the text, but rather that we look at the text with a critical eye towards its historical setting, its context, and the original meaning of the language in which it was written. We do this in order to better understand the original meaning and intent, as that guides our interpretation of the text for our lives today.
I have read Romans 8 most often spiritually, and it has served me well. And I recommend it often to others who are struggling. This week I spent much more time looking at Romans 8 more critically, and I had some new revelations about the passage.
Rome, in the time of Paul, was a metropolitan city, perhaps the center of the ancient world. It was wealthy, as it was the trade center and the diplomatic center. All roads did lead to Rome! Population, including women, children, and slaves, was probably more than a million. The city had grand temples built for gods and palaces built for emperors.
Paul’s letter to the Romans was not the first epistle he had written. It was written later in his career, and probably gives the greatest picture of his Christian theology. He was writing to churches he had not visited, to educate and encourage them. It was still a time when Christians had to be careful, when they could be persecuted for their faith. In a few short years, in fact, the emperor Nero would lay blame for the fire that ravaged Rome on the Christians and would have many of them cruelly executed. Paul wrote to a church that knew suffering, both personally and corporately. The letter is even somewhat apocalyptic, in viewing the present world as corrupt and unredeemable, and with salvation coming for the faithful with God’s final redemption. The battle before the people then was not seen as just spiritual but was also cosmic in nature, as they faced and endured the forces of evil.
Paul himself had already suffered, and would suffer more. He had been one of the faithful Jews who persecuted Christians. Two biblical passages place him at the scene of the stoning of Stephen. Then his dramatic Damascus road experience blinded him temporarily but opened his eyes and mind to see the truth and glory of the risen Christ. He was taunted, beaten, and imprisoned as he crusaded for this new cause with great fervor. And so Paul could speak the words of Romans 8 for himself as well as for a suffering church.
What we may suffer now, he said, will pale in comparison to the glory we will find when we live as children of God. The pain we go through now is akin to the labor pains of a woman about to give birth. All mothers know that it is very painful to bear a child, but that it yields such awesome results that it is well worth it! And we forget the pain as we move forward caring for our children. We have already been saved, in one sense, by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. But there will be a final and more complete victory, Paul says. We must be patient and trust in God in the meantime, because God intends good for us, and God’s good purpose will ultimately prevail. God has already claimed us and redeemed us. God has justified us, or put us into right relationship with God, through Jesus.
Those words of “predestination” and “the elect” as in Romans 8 always trip folks! Even Presbyterians struggle with the concept that some are elected for salvation, and others are condemned. But, for Paul, this kind of language was reassuring. Paul saw the evils of the world, and he saw faithful Christians struggling. He bore the good news that God has laid claim on us from before we were even born (Psalm 139:13 – “For it was You who formed my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.”), and that God’s goodness will ultimately triumph. That goodness has been initiated on earth in Jesus Christ and in the Christian Church. It is particularly good news for a people who suffer, like the early Christians or the enslaved Africans in the early years of this country. Nothing in heaven and on earth can separate us from God’s love, says Paul. This concept is not new and unique to Paul. See again Psalm 139:7-8: “Where can I go from Your spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there.”
So where is God when we suffer? The simplest answer is that God is right in our midst. The misunderstanding of the idea of predestination is that God guides our every move. And so if bad things happen, God must cause them. But that is not so. God gave us free will. We make plenty of mistakes; we stumble down the wrong paths. But when we embrace the love of God, we strive to follow God’s good will, and we learn to trust that God is present with us throughout all that happens in life. Predestination lets us know that God will finally triumph, that God will redeem. And that is just what Paul was saying. “Suffering and affliction,” says Paul Achtemeier, “are not God’s last word, as raising Christ from the dead has demonstrated.” (Achtemeier, p. 150) David Bartlett says, “Christians do not need to say that every tragedy or loss is part of God’s plan. We can say that in every tragedy or loss God is still God and still moves our lives and all of history toward what is good.” (Bartlett, p.78) He says perhaps we are asking the wrong question. When we or others we care about suffer, we tend to ask “Why would God let such things happen?” That question, says Bartlett, is unanswerable. “The questions we may begin to answer are, ‘What can God do with this evil to help bring about good?’ Or, ‘How can we be God’s partners, God’s servants in that work?.’” (Bartlett, p. 78) But getting to the point where we can look beyond the suffering in such a way takes faith. It takes a faith that has been nurtured and not neglected. And sometimes that faith can be restored by the love of others in our times of trial. We see in the love of others the work of Jesus Christ.
There may be other questions which we ask the wrong way. We ask why – “Why does he have to suffer?” “Why doesn’t God do something more about this?” That takes us back to the predestination idea. If God has pre-ordered our lives, why would God want this to happen? But we know in our hearts that God does not will evil. Genesis 1 tells us that God created the world and all in it and saw that all was “good.” God did not look at the world and call it “perfect,” but He called it “good.” God created human beings with minds and wills of our own. We have choice, and we can choose what is right, but we can also choose what is wrong. We see that from the beginning, from Adam and Eve in the Garden choosing to disobey God and eat of the Tree of Knowledge. The rest of creation is also not perfect. Biological order evolves, in both good and bad ways. Creatures adapt to changes in environment, for instance, fish developing limbs for walking when wet habitats dry up. However, we also hear in the news how viruses have mutated and grown to resist the medicines we use, creating the need for new ways to fight them.
In an imperfect world, bad things happen. Natural disasters occur, diseases spread, accidents happen. And yet we seem to think, especially in this modern age, that we can fix anything. With scientific, and medical, and even technological advances, we strive to eliminate disease and suffering, and to even put off death. The tendency to see suffering as evil goes back to the Old Testament. Deuteronomic thought, present even in some of the Psalms, would say that the wicked suffer and the good prosper. And we would sometimes wish that so, even in today’s world. But we know that it is not necessarily so. We know that bad things can happen to good people. Our sufferings are often more personal than those of the audience Paul first addressed. We hope and assume that we will never, as a people, be persecuted for our Christian faith. And yet we can suffer corporately. We all suffered when the terrible events of 9/11 took so many innocent lives. We ache as the number of dead at war mounts up over 4000. News accounts of violence and abuse should disturb us, as we care for the sufferings of others. But by and large, our suffering is more personal in nature.
So where is God in our suffering? God is right in our midst. When we trust that to be true, perhaps we can begin to face the suffering with a totally different outlook. Suffering is a part of life. The question becomes instead, how do we get through this? And we get through it together, and with the grace and love of God, as we realize that God is always with us all.
The book Sabbath by Wayne Muller tells the story of a woman whose mother had died after a long illness. The mother loved the sea and wanted her ashes to be scattered by the water. The daughter dutifully chose a day for this task, and she dreaded doing it, thinking that she would weep and would feel very lonely as she let her mother’s remains go. But she headed there and decided to do what her mother asked with patience and trust. She stood at the edge of the water and took a handful of her mother’s ashes from the urn. She held them and prayed, and just then a wind came and swept the ashes from her hand and scattered them all over the beach. The wind even swirled the ashes out of the urn, and on and around the daughter. She had thought she would be sad, but she found herself seeing her mother dancing in celebration of the resurrection in those swirling winds.
A few years later she took a young friend to that beach, a 4 ½ year-old girl. She had told the girl about her mother’s ashes. And when they got to the beach, the little girl bent down and picked up some sand. She asked, “Is this your mother?” The daughter said, “Yes,” and smiled. The little girl brought the sand to her lips and kissed it, and then let it go.
God lives in the midst of our suffering, and God loves us. May we fully embrace that love, and then, perhaps we can at least let go of the suffering of our hearts.
Praise be to God! Amen.