Barbara Brown Taylor is a famous preacher and one of the things she says is that she hates to have to preach on suffering because she always worries that “God is going to put [her] to the test on what she has just said”. This is meant as a joke of course but, as it is often with jokes, it also reveals some of the fears we keep inside. In this case, I guess, Barbara Brown Taylor realizes that it is always quite easy to speak about suffering theoretically, but it is something completely different when we experience it directly. In fact, it can be quite insensitive to talk about understanding suffering when we have no way of knowing what people we talk to may be going through. And so, maybe, we should refrain altogether to ever preach on suffering!
And yet, there are two things that come to my mind immediately when I hear the passage of our Gospel today:
The first thing that comes to my mind is that suffering is such a big part of our life and of all lives. And then, the second thing that comes to mind is that indeed we do such a poor job addressing it, we rather ignore it or downplay it, as preachers, as Christians but also as plain human beings. Actually, we now live in a world where suffering seems to have no meaning at all, and it does not make things better. If anything, it makes things worse. So, having in mind Barbara Brown Taylor “cautionary joke”, this will be, if you will, my tentative sermon on suffering. I certainly don’t plan to address it all or solve it all (I guess that’s where the trap is). Rather, based on this very passage of the Gospel, I just would like to highlight what we can gather on what Jesus has to say about the issue.
Well, if you remember from last week, Jesus asked the disciples who people were saying about him, and then he asked the disciples what they thought about that. That’s when Peter stepped up and confessed he believed Jesus was “The Messiah”, the “Son of the living God”, and Jesus praised Peter for his faith. Today, we pick up exactly where we left off, but it is Jesus who is going to speak. Peter has confessed he believed Jesus is the Messiah and now Jesus teaches the disciples what it means to be the Messiah.
One of the things that is interesting to notice is, as we said last week, that this passage divides the Gospel in half between Jesus’s itinerant ministry with the teaching, healing and miracles
and Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem with the rising hostility and the death on the cross. And sothis passage that splits the Gospel in half is in itself split in half: Peter’s confession about the Messiah (Part 1) and Jesus’s declaration about what it means to be the Messiah (Part 2). I am mentioning that not because I think it is a “fun fact” or a smart literary technique, although it is, but it seems to me that it is important to notice that because this really describes how Jesus’s life have been like: From a successful ministry going uphill (literally, because the next passage is the transfiguration on the mount) to the second part of his life going downhill with increased hostility and misunderstanding, to the condemnation and then down to the grave.
Which means the following: Suffering was such a big part of Jesus’s life. It was at least half of his life. And we don’t like to think about that. The way we read the Gospel at church and organize our liturgy, it seems that Jesus suffered only three days in his life during Holy week. And if you miss Holy week because you were out of town, you would barely realize that Jesus had suffered at all. But really, the way Matthew, but also Mark and Luke have written Jesus’s story is very clear: Half the time, at least, was a time of suffering for Jesus. He suffered, as mentioned today, from those who rejected him and hated him (The religious leaders) and he also suffered from his family and disciples misunderstanding him (as it is with Peter). In other passages we also see people being ungrateful to him (The ten lepers) or using him (to get some bread). Jesus sometimes even complains at time he cannot sleep (He does not have “a stone to lay his head”), and the evangelists notice Jesus was so rushed he didn’t have time for himself or just to get some food. And of course, there is the passion looming ahead.
And it is important for us to notice that because suffering is such a big part of our lives. Suffering is such a big part of our lives and such an important part of our lives. Still, most of the time we don‘t want to acknowledge that, do we? Most of the time, we react like Peter who says to Jesus: “God forbid it! This must never happen to you”, or never happen to me, or to anyone. We see suffering as an accident, something that won’t or shouldn’t happen even when it is all around us. Now this reaction isn’t completely wrong: First of all, it’s natural to not want to suffer and to not want the people we love to suffer, and on a deeper level, indeed suffering shouldn’t happen. The book of Genesis shows us that suffering wasn’t part of the plan. It’s only when the man and the woman part from God that the man has to work hard to find his food and the woman experiences pain in the labor of birth. So the Scriptures teach that pain isn’t part of the plan and yet it is a visceral part of this fallen world. We still treat suffering as an accident when it is now our collective fate and cannot be avoided. And this is basically what Jesus says here as well. Not only we see that suffering was a big part of Jesus’s life but he does not promise the disciples to remove suffering from their lives, rather he tells them to “(…) pick up their cross[es] and follow [him]”.
This is certainly hard to hear and scary, but it also means a certain number of things:
1 – There is suffering in the world because we have done something wrong collectively, but not individually. Suffering in this world is a consequence (rather than a punishment) from our separation from God but it does not mean that it is only bad people or people who make mistakes who will suffer. Jesus, the Messiah, suffers and suffering is also the fate on those who strive to follow Jesus. Maybe because they realize it cannot be avoided, they stop ignoring the suffering in the world or downplaying it, and also because they encounter more hostility for trying to do the right thing and saying the truth about human brokenness and need of redemption.
2 – A lot of our suffering comes also from the way we obsess about suffering and tries to avoid suffering. In this way, I think it is a bit comforting that Jesus tells us we may be better off accepting suffering by “picking up our cross”. It does not mean we will not fight (after all, we “pick up”our cross, we don’t let them break our backs), it means we won’t “lose our life trying to save it”, running away from something we cannot escape. It is not shameful to suffer, it is not a mistake. Suffering is there and we have to work through our suffering. It occurred to me once in a difficult time of my life that maybe suffering, learning to suffer and learning from our suffering, is the most important work we have to do. For Jesus at least, suffering was at least half of his ministry. His ministry wasn’t just all the successful things with the teaching, healing and miracles. Being rejected and mocked, and crucified and put to death was also part of the job. Don’t we call it “the work of Redemption”?
3 – So what do we all learn or need to learn when we suffer? Well, we all suffer from different things don’t we? We suffer in our bodies, in our minds, in our hearts in very different ways. We may suffer from acute or chronic illness, from old age or disability, we may suffer from a job we don’t like or a difficult relationship, we may have depression or addiction, PTSD and so on. What is common each time though is what a theologian calls “The suffering inside the suffering“, and it is always the same: When we suffer, we don’t just suffer what we suffer (the disease, the heartbreak etc), we suffer experiencing our limits and our weakness. We suffer because we realize there are things we cannot fix and will never be able to fix, and we experience cannot save ourselves. This is the heart of the suffering. And so suffering is like the side of the moon we can see but there is the other side we cannot see, and again, it is what Genesis taught us and what Jesus means when he says that Peter thinks like humans think, and not like God. From God’s point of view suffering isn’t just suffering, suffering is the name we give to what is in fact our separation from God, when we reach our limits. We feel separation, isolation, we fear death where there should be continuity, union and abundant life. And so when we suffer we discover this truth about ourselves, what we may call our fallen state. We experience not just theoretically but in our very flesh the absence of God. Like Jesus did, for us and with us. Suffering is a spiritual experience, maybe the deepest one we can do in this sad world.
4 – This also means that suffering is always (I hate the word “test’) a trial and a temptation. Suffering asks us to decide if we are going to choose denial, despair or if it will brings us closer to trust in God and be reconciled with God. You may have noticed when people suffer a great trial, they often comes back with having lost their faith or having a renewed faith in God. This is not accidental. Temptation is not only about parting from God because we desire the wrong things, like money, power etc., the real temptation occurs when we suffer and this is why Jesus calls Peter a “Satan”, an adversary, a tempter. Of course, Jesus wanted to avoid suffering, nobody should like or want to suffer. And yet, there was no other way, Jesus also had to experience his limits to do the work of reconciliation and reunion with God. Suffering can become holy when we choose God.
5 – Now more than that, what Jesus teaches in this passage is something it seems we cannot even hear. Certainly Peter didn’t hear it, neither did the editors of the Bible. This passage indeedis known as “Jesus announces his passion”, when it’s really not the final point! This passage should be called “Jesus announces his Resurrection“. This is what we read in the passage: Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and undergo great suffering (and) and be killed and on the third day be raised. Indeed there is another side to suffering, and it’s definitive reconciliation with God and life in God! Jesus reminds his disciples that there is something beyond even the worst of suffering (Certainly the cross is one of the most awful way of dying). How comforting could it be in the midst of our suffering if we would remember that suffering isn’t for ever and that suffering isn’t the last thing? Actually, Jesus promises the disciples that even during their lifespan, they would see the glory of God (and indeed they do when Jesus is raised from the dead, but even in the next chapter with Jesus’s transfiguration). There will be an end to the disciples’ personal sufferings but also to all suffering: the Son of man is to come with the angels in the glory of the Father, and we may now have a different appreciation on what it means that he will “repay them” for “their work” (= Comfort them of their trials).