The Generosity of a Suffering God

Some years ago over a shared meal, a woman spoke of “the generosity of suffering” in response to the shared musing on whether God suffers or not.

Western theology would have it that God does not suffer because God cannot suffer (since suffering implies change) and still be God.

Can such a statement stand?

At the time, I write, I think not, for ‘God’ and ‘cannot’ do not inhabit the same realm, for 

where God is . . . cannot cannot be.

For solidarity’s sake, I want to hope that God suffers, but dare I ‘wish’ suffering on God?  Doesn’t that make me a monster?

Do You suffer, Lord?

O Lord, I hope not.

But perhaps my friend was right – there is a generosity in suffering – a giving of self – that giving which is necessary before suffering can be – the kind of which she speaks, in any event – the suffering which is a gift.

What am I to do with that?

That All May Share of the Feast

We end our study of the Beatitudes on Transfiguration Sunday – the day commemorating that long-ago day when Jesus’ disciples saw Jesus, transfigured, changed.  The better word might be revealed – that is, the disciples saw Jesus not as somehow different than he was, but as he really was all along.

Why should Jesus’ transfiguration matter to our understanding of the beatitudes?  Perhaps in the glorious revealing of Jesus in his true fullness lies the key to all our mysteries – perhaps there, in Jesus’ own glorious light, lies the revealing of all he sought to tell us on that mountain day of sermons and blessings.

Perhaps there, in Jesus own light of revealing lies the truth of the beatitudes: the call to see not as the world sees, blinded by so much that gets in the way between us and God, but to see with all the nonsense stripped away, what Jesus has been showing us all along . . . our state of upside-down blessedness, as real as Jesus’ own shining forth.

Consider the last of the blessings, then, from the light of Jesus’ own revealing . . .

Matthew 5.10 (NRSV)  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Privileged the ones harassed because of their beliefs for the sake of justice:  because of them is the kingdom of heaven.

Blissful those hounded for the faith for the cause of justice: theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5.10-12 (NRSV):  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Some things to note:

1. Here does Jesus move from the 3rd to the 2nd person – from ‘they’ to ‘you’.  Now it gets personal.

2. Jesus does not bless all suffering.  All suffering is not ‘blessed’ and none of it is good, even the blessed kind.

3. There is a juxtaposition, a contrast here, that still ends in the place of blessedness: both those who suffer because they cling to justice and those who suffer at the hands of injustice itself are blessed. Within the whole of the beatitudes, we begin with the blessing of the poor in spirit and end with the persecuted.  If it be the beggars whom Jesus first blesses, a certain sense emerges in the progression of the beatitudes in linking them to the idea of God’s justice.  William Sloane Coffin once observed that the very need for charity is evidence of injustice.  That is, the fact that some need, prompting others to give, shows us that all is not well in God’s world, for if all were well, there would be no need for our charity.  Understood in this way, Jesus begins by blessing those who show the world what’s wrong with it simply by their lack and he ends by blessing those who work to change the world into a place where there is injustice no longer.

4. The promise here is present (rather than future) tense: the kingdom of heaven ‘is’ (as opposed to ‘will be’) theirs.

5. Righteousness itself, that is, the insistence on justice – in one’s dealings with others – is a form of prophecy, of truth-speaking the will of God to others.

***

That All May Share of the Feast

Looking, then, towards Jesus’ beatituding of some among us, through the transfigured, the revealed, Jesus, might we then see thusly . . .

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the beggars our kings? . . .  lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of plenty where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the heartbroken our prophets? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of soothing balm and curing kindness where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the broken in life our signposts? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world where all may safely dwell and do their appointed work, there, sharing of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the justice seekers our conscience? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of fears banished, hopes fulfilled where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the mercied mercying ones our priests? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of care and understanding where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the God-seers our children? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of imagination and possibilities where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the creation-restoring reconcilers our healers? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the realization of a shalom-wholeness of things where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the hounded ones our witnesses? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the day when foolish humans will require no more sacrifice and all will share of the feast?

Oh, happy, blessed, blissful, privileged transfigured, transfiguring ones . . . who knew that there, behind the clothing of your wretchedness lies your blessedness.

Amen.

Now Thank We All Our God

It’s Wednesday tea time, when some gals in the church and I gather together to pray and talk and study.  Today we’re looking at hymns, considering favorites, looking at back stories.

Angelika comes with Now Thank We All Our God.  What Angelika shared from the life of Martin Rinkart, who wrote the words to the hymn, is of a godly man living in a time of great suffering: The Thirty Years’ War was ravaging Europe; the plague had resurfaced and as the only surviving  pastor in his community, Martin buried 4,000 people; and a famine further wracked the already decimated population.

It was into that space of suffering and devastation that Martin Rinkart wrote, Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things hath done, in whom His world rejoices.

How, in the midst of the crucible of suffering, are such words even possible?  We ponder the question together, one speaking of God’s grace emerging in ways discernible after the suffering has ended.  She speaks of the grace of hindsight, of what I think of as Joseph’s benediction upon his murderous brothers at the end of Genesis: what you intended for my evil, God used to the good.  It is the idea not that God visits suffering upon us, but rather that God transforms the suffering into something useful, something beautiful even, and in the transforming of the ‘thing’, God transforms us.

But Rinkart isn’t writing after the suffering is past.  He’s writing in the middle of the suffering, right from the heart of the spiritual and physical blast site.

And in the German, Angelika tells us, it’s even more obvious, this joy and faith-claim to God: [God], who from our childhood, has given us too much. . . 

“Too much”.  The phrase stands out so much more than the English Hath blessed us.  Even when it seems as if we have nothing, God has given us “too much”, so great is the divine blessing of relationship.

Martin Rinkart was speaking hope from suffering to suffering.  It was the benediction not of the fool, but of the experienced.  And from the experience, Rinkart does not celebrate suffering; rather, he sees through the suffering to the reality of God standing there.  And what Rinkart sees is bounty.  And peace.  And divine nearness.  And grace.  And guidance.  And perplexity.

What Rinkart ‘sees’ is God.

Diminished

A young friend sat with a new friend and heard a story of evil unspeakable.  I do not know the details.  I do not have to.

It is not to our own evil that I speak, but to the evil of others, not us, but still somehow very much us.

Being a minister, a pastor, means that people share themselves with us in ways unique . . . we walk with them through dark and lonesome valleys as much as over joy-filled mountaintops.

Their wounds are shared with us . . . and in a sense, their wounds become ours . . .

The cost of the journey to the pastor, the therapist, the professional listener, even has a name: “compassion fatigue”, as if you could become tired from caring about other people.

The name is not adequate.  It is too understated and too overstated, all at once.

It says too much to say that caring about other people makes you tired.  People are not a set of jumping jacks or a run around the track to be recovered from.  A good nap, that’s what I need . . . or so suggests the notion of fatigue.  But it says too little to say that it’s merely fatigue, this cost to my body and soul of the lent ear.

I think, perhaps, that John Donne hit closer to the mark: we are not fatigued by the pain and wounding of others . . . what we are is diminished . . . somehow made less than we were before . . .

The evil that others do to still yet others diminishes me.  It makes me less than I was.  Less sure.  Less confident.  Less important.  Less human.  Less.

In empathy, I can cry for their loss, their hurt, their woundedness, but I am also crying for my own less-ness.

Let it be said that in the listening, there is holy space.  There is room for the divine silence that is really the divine anguish, expressed beyond something as ordinary as sound.  It is the place of the rent curtain, of Rachel weeping for her children, of the earth splitting itself and the sun disappearing from sight in the sky.  It is the place beyond words where only the Holy Spirit travels, alone, comforting and comfortless.

Yet into such breaches does the pastor walk, often unwittingly, only to be blind-sided by yet another story of horror made ordinarily surreal by the comfortable living room surroundings in which the story is so often told.

Feeling helpless and hopeless, the pastor listens, nods the head, tries to seem caring and wise and come up with something important to say, something, anything, that will somehow magically change the past.  And then she remembers what she has learned time and time again . . . the past cannot be changed. . . it is the listening here and now that matters . . . there is healing in honoring the story and the teller . . . there is honor in the lent ear, reminding the wounded one that her story matters, that she matters.

It is not everything.  And it seldom even feels like enough.  But it will have to do, because it is all there is.  This ground is not the ground of redemption or purpose.  There is no purpose in the gratuitous infliction of pain and harm upon the defenseless.  There is only pain.  The pain matters because the person to whom it happened matters.  They were made less than, they were diminished.  And in hearing their pain, so am I.

I'm So Glad

Weeks ago, somebody spoke to me about suffering in a way that gut punched me - bringing back, as it did, memories of Tom Fox . . . of his murder in Iraq . . .

I called dear friend Anita, who was there through it all.  She reminded me of something important: when it comes to suffering the pain of loss, it’s not something we ‘get over’, at least not in the sense of it no longer being true.

The fact is, all that happens to and around us affects us – always.  The ‘it’ of the thing becomes a part of all our continuous present moments.

I won’t ever be over Tom’s death, his murder.

Tom’s passing from this life is a part of my story too, simply because I knew him.

Recently, I began reading James Loney’s book Captivity.  Jim was kidnaped along with Tom and two others: Norm and Harmeet.  The book is compelling reading.  I have dreaded picking it up.  The only thing that got me to is that if Jim could live it and write it, the least I could do is read it.  And I am.  Often I put it down, doubled over with the pain of remembering.  But I am reading it.

This past week, I have been in Indianapolis for the Presbyterian Big Tent gathering.

One of the gifts of being here is the continual and random encounters with people I have known but not seen face-to-face in a long time, most of them from my time at PTS (Princeton Theological Seminary).

Over and over again, we say the same thing to each other: “I am so glad you’re in my life.”

When I hear it, I understand perfectly.  I feel exactly the same way.

All of the ‘its’ that become a part of the fabric of our lives certainly include the tough and painful times: the deaths of those we know and care about, the suffering of another whose life intersects with our own, our very own personal suffering.  And those suffering moments do, as my friend Anita maintains, become a part not only of our past, but also of our continuing present.

What is so easy to lose sight of, however, is so too the good ‘its’.  And the joy of friendships past is indeed a present reality.

Molly, Bridgett, Kiran, and so many others, I am so very glad you’re in my life.