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Sermon - The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (A) - 27th July 2008
St Aidan ’s West Epping 8.30 am
Readings: Matthew 13:44058; Romans 8:26-39; Genesis 29:15-28
When I was quite young my parents took me to see a performance of the musical “Oliver” and that performance had quite an effect on me. I’ll never forget that story about the young orphan boy in 19 th century England who seemed to be abandoned or abused by everyone. Even the scene where he asks for more had its cruel side. All he was asking of his world was just a little more gruel but even that request was too much in a cold, heartless world. He was sent off from the workhouse to an undertaker’s where he had to sleep at night amongst the coffins, some empty and some used. It is a scene where Oliver is at his lowest. And at that point he is given a song to sum up his sense of abandonment. The song is “Where is love?”
In his life, there had been no love. So where was it? I’ll never forget that moment – but it’s a question people often ask – where is love. Or they ask a similar question – “Where is God?” They look at our world and what happens in it and they ask “Where is God?” or if God was a God of love – where is he now? It seems such a natural question for us to ask so it may come as a surprise to discover that it is actually a modern question. It’s a question that has only arisen during the last 200 years. Before then, the world had always been viewed as a place of suffering and our hope was that God had something better in store for us beyond the grave. But this world was usually seen as a “vale of tears” – the natural residence of suffering with little respite. This was a world where infant mortality was very high, where people saw themselves as fortunate to survive for forty years, and that was considered a good life. These were the expectations of people who lived 200 years ago.
And hasn’t the world changed. Our expectations have changed dramatically. We expect to life long and healthy lives now. We expect to live pain free and comfortable. We expect to be successful, to reach our potential, to maximise every opportunity. Our expectations are almost out of this world. And our expectations on our children are incredible. We expect our children to go to year 12 in high school. We expect them to go to university. And with all these expectations we also have a fear that these expectations won’t be realised, and if they aren’t realised then somehow our lives are compromised. And it’s in that context that we cannot tolerate suffering. We have no place for it, no understanding of it. So we have our expectations on one side and on the other we have the ever-present reality of suffering.
Just as the world was becoming more intolerant of suffering it was becoming more and more aware of it. So our last century has seen the horrors of the first world war, the unbelievable cruelty of the holocaust, and in recent years, the terrible events of the Bosnian was with its ethnic cleansing where thousands of men and boys were executed for simply being of the wrong religion. And its in that context that people ask “So where is God?” If he is all-powerful he could stop the suffering. If he was all-loving he would reject this suffering. But because it continues on – either God is either not all loving or not all powerful, or perhaps there is just no God at all.
This is the modern conclusion to the problem of suffering. Suffering seems to exclude the possibility of an all-loving, all-powerful God. Christians have tried several ways to address this problem. Some have seen suffering as a purifying process where we suffer because of our sin and the suffering brings us to repentance and prepares us for heaven. But that argument doesn’t quite work. It is easy to think of examples of people who have done terrible things and yet not only have they not suffered any consequences, they seemed to have profited from the bad things they have done. This often appears as a theme in the Psalms where Israel complains that the wicked go unpunished while the faithful in Israel continue to suffer. The other problem with this argument is that it doesn’t explain why the innocent suffer? Again we don’t have trouble thinking of examples of that. But we see this problem raised in the book of Job. His comforters said he should repent so that his suffering might end. But Job asked what wrong had he done to deserve such suffering. And that question remained unanswered throughout the book. So if we try to explain suffering as a process of purifying us or preparing us for heaven we run into difficulty.
But others have attempted to understand suffering as a learning process or an opportunity for growth. And there is no doubt that some people report ongoing benefits from their suffering, that they have grown in their faith or they have a better appreciation of life as a result of their suffering. But there are problems here as well, because this experience of the benefits of suffering are not universal. Some people are crushed by suffering. Some give up all hope because of what they have endured. And for many, their suffering is very quickly followed by their death so there was no opportunity for learning by the experience or changing their lives as a result of it. So how can we be a people of faith in such a cruel world?
There are no easy answers, but what we do have are some strong hints to a solution in the Bible. One of the first hints is that God does not abandon us to a world of suffering. The miracle of the Incarnation is that God became a part of his own creation. In Jesus, God experienced at first hand the suffering of this world. But he did more than this. At the cross, Jesus experienced suffering such that few of us will ever know. But it was not done merely so that God might know what we know. Someone once said that through the cross Jesus addressed the “gonewrongness” of the universe. The cross is about suffering from beginning to end with the hope of putting an end to suffering for all time.
The New Testament speaks about this process in a variety of ways. This is what is being hinted at in the phrase, “The Kingdom of Heaven”. The world as it is, is not the kingdom as God would want it. However, all this talk about the Kingdom in Matthew 13 is all about the process of addressing the “gonewrongness” of the world where, through the Cross, Jesus is putting the world to rights again. By comparing the Kingdom to a treasure, or a pearl or a net, Jesus is telling us vital things about this Kingdom. First, we learn that it is coming, though at this stage it is still hidden. This world will not be left as it is. Change is on the way though it has not yet arrived. But that change will be unavoidable.
Second, we learn of its great value, like a pearl or a treasure of such value that any person would sell everything in order to purchase it. Third we learn of its true nature. Jesus hints at this in two ways. There are the fishermen who cull through their catch separating out the good and bad fish. Then there is the house owner who brings out his treasure, both old and new. The fishermen remind us that we need to listen and to think about what Jesus is teaching us. The old and the new treasure remind us that the promises made early in the Old Testament are treasures we still possess as well as the new teaching from Jesus. So whether the treasure is old or new – it is still treasure. It still enriches us.
Fourth, this message of the Kingdom is such a message of hope that it is one we can only marvel at. Notice the response of the crowds. They were the first to hear this teaching of God’s plan for a suffering world and they were amazed at what they heard. But finally, notice as well that though some believed, many took offence at Jesus’ teaching. So we are left with the challenge of faith. Through the mass media, perhaps through our own experience of life we are too well aware of the suffering of this world. But Jesus has entered this world and has acted to bring in his new kingdom, his new creation.
We are left with the reality of the present and the hope of the future. Will we trust him to do what he has promised? Will we live in that hope to do what he has promised? Will we live in that hope or be crushed by our present suffering. It is the challenge of faith to look at our world the way it is, and yet to affirm that all is not lost. And that our future is guaranteed by the man who died on a cross, who guaranteed our future through his death on a cross, and who rose to a new life, a new creation, a new kingdom.