RETHINKING RELIGION. Rethinking Suffering.
Mark 8:31-38
Peace and comfort to you from the Father in his Son through the Holy Spirit, friends. Amen.
Last week, we read about the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, and his temptation in the desert. Today’s Gospel reading takes place around three years later, near the end of his ministry. It seems strange to jump nearly three years in a week. But what we hear Jesus say in this reading connects the two events.
To recap the temptation: Immediately after being baptized by his cousin John the Baptist, Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit out into the wilderness, where he fasted for forty days. Our forty-day Lent season echoes Jesus’ time in the wilderness. During those forty days, the devil came to him with three temptations. First, he came to Jesus - who was deeply hungry - and told him, “Use the power which is yours as God’s Son and make these stones into bread.”
Well, why not? Seems like a good idea. But Jesus refuses. He knows that he was led out by God’s Spirit not to make himself comfortable, but to practice faith in God. If God led him into the wilderness, God will provide for him in the wilderness.
Next, the devil took Jesus to a high mountain and showed him all the world’s kingdoms. Then he offered to give it all up if Jesus would only bow down and worship him. Jesus’ simple reply: “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”
Satan tries once more. He takes Jesus to the top of the temple in Jerusalem and suggests, “Why don’t you throw yourself down from here? After all, God promises in the Bible that his angels are always protecting you!”
But Jesus replies, “God’s Word also tells us, ‘Don’t put God to the test.’” Throwing himself off the temple would test God. To test God is to challenge him to do something which he has not promised to do. God does send angels to protect his people, yes. But God never promises in the Bible that someone who throws themselves off a building should expect angelic intervention. Had Jesus done so, he would have ended up as a bloody pile of broken bones.
Now we jump three years. As Jesus is taken aside by his devoted disciple Peter, who earnestly tries to dissuade him from this suicide mission, that third interaction with Satan comes to Jesus’ mind. And he rebukes Peter with the very same four words with which he dismissed Satan three years earlier. “Ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου, Σατανᾶ!” “Get behind me, Satan!”
Peter means well. He cares about Jesus, and - to be frank - he’s also worried for himself. Peter is a married man, with a family to think about. And if Jesus is going to be handed over and killed, Peter expects similar treatment! But Jesus’ great enemy - your great enemy as well, Satan - uses Peter’s reasonable concerns to try and derail God’s plan to save us from death.
With that earlier temptation up on the temple’s pinnacle, Satan wanted Jesus to die. With this temptation, Satan wants Jesus to avoid dying! Satan, it turns out, does not care one bit whether Jesus lives or dies, so long as Jesus does not die carrying out his work on his cross. So long as Jesus gives into the temptation which would avoid that particular suffering.
We talked about temptations, or tests, last week. We’re looking this week at suffering. These two concepts go hand-in-hand. They’re not the same. Test, or temptation, refers to a choice being set before you. Suffering refers to circumstances.
The English words test and temptation are sometimes the same word in the Bible’s original languages. Generally, they refer to a choice between loving God and neighbor, or not loving God and neighbor. When we call that choice a temptation, we’re highlighting Satan’s intent in bringing it into our lives. If we call it a test, or sometimes a trial, we’re highlighting God’s intent in placing that choice before us.
Suffering, generally, is any circumstance in life we would rather not experience. There’s a subjective aspect to suffering. What one person regards as suffering isn’t always seen that way by others. One person who’s single might yearn to be married. Their singleness is suffering. Someone else might be content as a single person. The apostle Paul was a content single man. In his letters, he didn’t write of his singleness as suffering.
Suffering almost always accompanies temptations. But suffering isn’t the same thing as temptation. And they don’t always come in the same order. Suffering can precede temptation, it can follow temptation, it can also arrive by itself.
Imagine you’re an overworked parent trying to make ends meet. (No one on Long Island understands what that feels like.) You work long hours, maybe two jobs, alongside your partner, and your family still doesn’t have financial security. Those circumstances cause suffering for you. Then, when you’re already suffering, while at work, you find an opportunity to steal from your employer. Temptation, following suffering.
Another example. You are that person’s coworker. You’re friends. You know that things are hard for your friend. You find out that they stole. Now you’re being tested. Telling your coworker to confess, or reporting them yourself, will probably destroy your friendship. And knowing that they will likely lose their job will hurt your heart. Suffering will follow the trial here.
And there can be suffering that doesn’t really involve temptation. Someone living with a chronic illness, for example, suffers. There might be choices about treatment, other choices. But they won’t necessarily be presented with a choice that involves either obeying God by loving him and loving neighbor, or failing to do so.
In other words, not every choice we’re called to make in life is a test. The choice to have surgery or chemo after a cancer diagnosis is not a test. A Christian can go either way. The choice of what to study in college - or whether to go to college - is not a temptation. In such things, Christians are free to make use of their gifts, and their own reason, as they see fit. Only when we encounter a choice between love and sin are we being tested, tempted.
Those kinds of decisions are what Jesus is speaking about when he says in today’s reading, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” This phrase would have been strange to the crowd. To us, it doesn’t sound that odd. We use “crosses” as a metaphor for hardship and difficulty. We say things like, “Everyone has their own crosses to bear.” But that phrase only exists in English because of Jesus’ words said here! One of the many irreversible impacts, large and small, that his life and teaching has had on our world. Back then, no one used “cross” as a metaphor for difficulty. A cross was a literal thing. It was a combination torture instrument and method of execution. In our day, methods of capital punishment seek to end life as quickly and painlessly as possible. This was not true throughout most of history. Long and drawn out methods of execution were far more common, and the cross was a particularly nasty one.
So what Jesus says here doesn’t make sense to the crowd in the way it does to us now, who know about his death on a cross. To them, it sounded as strange as it would to us if Jesus said, “take up your electric chairs and follow me.” But even if the particular phrase was confusing, the thought is clear. “Those who want to follow me,” Jesus is saying, “should expect difficulty. Should expect suffering.”
Here, Jesus is referring to suffering which accompanies tests and temptations. Suffering like continuing to live paycheck to paycheck because you refused to steal from your employer. Or suffering like seeing a friend lose their job because you convinced them to confess their theft. We can give this kind of suffering a special name. Suffering under the cross. This is the suffering which shows up in our lives because we follow in Jesus’ way.
Not all suffering is suffering under the cross. Singleness when one desires marriage, or chronic illness, are not in themselves suffering under the cross. But a Christian young woman who’s still dating may suffer under the cross when her boyfriend is angry that they aren’t sleeping together. A Christian with chronic illness may face temptation under the cross when the pain he suffers makes him short-tempered at home. In both situations, their suffering might find some relief if they turn from following Jesus. The young woman may want to sleep with her boyfriend. And she might reason that it will strengthen the relationship. The man who’s ill may feel some emotional release in an angry outburst toward his family.
This is where seeing the temptations which Jesus faced in our readings these two weeks helps us rethink suffering. Satan, we see, does not care whether we suffer or not, so long as he can turn us from love for God and for neighbor. If he can do that by bringing suffering into our lives, great! If he can do that when suffering is removed, also great! Satan does not specifically care whether you suffer or not here on Earth. He did not specifically care whether Jesus lived or died. His goal is simpler. It is always, always, to drive God’s people away from love.
Jesus calls on his followers to rethink suffering. To see the opportunities for love that are always present as we suffer. The man who suffers through his chronic illness and resists the temptation to lash out - the young woman who stands firm in her faith-worked understanding of sex as a gift from God, given to be enjoyed in marriage - they both grow in patience, in self-control, in resilience, in love.
But it still hurts. When we suffer, we suffer! Knowing that God can work growth through suffering doesn’t take away the pain we feel.
And I know you feel pain. I know that when you head home today, some of you will deal with physical pain, illness. Some of you face relational suffering; broken homes, family members who reject the Gospel you share with them. I don’t know anyone - not here, not outside these walls - who doesn’t deal with some form of suffering.
And I am a young man, a young pastor, who - for my part - I have not yet dealt greatly with suffering. I have not yet been taught all the lessons suffering teaches.
But Jesus has. Jesus was, as the Bible calls him, “the man of sorrows, one acquainted with suffering.” And where I do not have, personally, insight into all that suffering can entail, Jesus does. I have three thoughts from his teaching for us to take home as we rethink suffering; thoughts which I hold close to my heart in trying times.
One, which simply echoes a point we saw last week. To face suffering does not mean that God doesn’t love you. God loves his Son very dearly; has loved him from all eternity. Yet he allowed him to suffer. Suffering does not mean God doesn’t love you.
Two: You are not alone in your suffering. God’s Spirit lives in you, and when you suffer, the Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit groans and pleads with God on your behalf. God does not separate himself from you in your suffering.
Three. The way you and I react to suffering is not the basis on which God will judge us. Thanks be to God for that! Because we do not always suffer well. We often run from suffering. We seek to avoid it. We sin in response to suffering. We don’t handle it well.
But the apostle Paul writes, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We have now been justified by his blood.” His blood. His suffering. Not ours. So we can face our suffering without fear. With humility, certainly. But with confidence. God is with us. God loves us. God has reconciled us to himself. To him be glory in every age, through the praise-filled lives of his people. Amen.