In the name of God ☩
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Holy
Week is a week of contradictions, of oxymorons, of conundrums – the beautiful
cross, the saving death, the suffering Messiah. Much of Holy Week doesn’t
comport with how we’ve been trained to live by our culture. Today’s Collect
presents another example of how Holy Week presents us with things that are not
always as they seem: “Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the
present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed.”
Joyfully accepting
suffering doesn’t strike me something that we often do. Suffering is tolerated,
it is muddle through, it is overcome – but joyfully accepted? That seems
absurd. And that’s not the end of it. In this suffering, we are to be confident
of the glory that shall be revealed through it. As if welcoming the suffering
wasn’t enough, now we are told that this suffering is going to reveal glory to
us? We like getting good things, like having glory be revealed to us, but it
sure would be nice if the glory could come in a nice package with a bow on top
instead of through suffering.
This is, of
course, exactly how the Cross works. Jesus accepts his Cross out of his deep
love for us all and the glory of God’s salvation comes through it. But this is
not how we think it ought to be. Suffering servants aren’t featured in
Hollywood blockbusters. Instead, we have superheroes with super strength, super
powers, super good looks, and super technologies. Weakness is strength;
submission is victory; death becomes life. Through these things that we often
avoid, the things we most need are delivered. Things are not always as they
seem.
There’s an absolutely
amazing and Spirit-filled interview between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert
that you can find online. To be clear, this isn’t about what side of the
political spectrum these two might fall on. Their conversation is about the
human condition. It’s particularly powerful because it took place not long
after Cooper’s mother had died. Colbert’s family history is one of tragedy.
When he was 10, his father and his two siblings closest in age to him died in a
plane crash. And so Cooper is asking for guidance on how to deal with tragedy.
Cooper chokes up
as he asks Colbert about his comment that he has come to love the thing that he
most wishes hadn’t happened. He then further quotes a line back to Colbert – “You
said, ‘What punishments of God are not gifts;’ do you really believe that?”
Colbert says, “Yes. It is a gift to exist. And with existence comes sufferings.”
Colbert clarifies that while he wishes that the plane hadn’t crashed, he is
grateful for the life he now has, and he can’t pick and choose which parts of
his story he gets to keep. Loss gives us awareness of other people’s suffering
and allows us to more fully love one another. Suffering is a part of life, and
life is a gift, so, Colbert says, he’s come to see the gifts in all things.
Then he adds, “And that’s the great thing in my tradition – that Christ suffers
too, that God does it, too, that you really are not alone.”
That line, “What
punishments of God are not gifts” is one of those “things are not as they seem”
sorts of lines. It’s based on a paraphrase from JRR Tolkien. Now, yes, we need
to be very clear in saying that God does not cause our suffering. This is made
very clear when Jesus says, “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks
for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks
for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to
give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give
the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” So understanding that by “punishment”
we don’t mean that God is inflicting pain upon us, we can hear Tolkien’s words
as helping us to find the grace in things not always being as they seem. He
writes, “A divine punishment is also a divine gift, if accepted, since its
object is ultimate blessing, and the supreme inventiveness of the Creator will
make punishments (that is, changes of design) produce a good not otherwise to
be attained.”
The idea is similar
to what St. Paul says in Romans, “We know that all things work together for
good for those who love God.” What Tolkien is saying that gives comfort to
Colbert is that when, because of Sin and accident, things do not go in
accordance with the will of God, God does not abandon us, but rather still
seeks to bless us with a good that could not have otherwise been attained. This
is the story of the Cross – that blessings come through Sin and Death. The
Resurrection would not have been possible without the horrors of the Cross. There’s
even a phrase from the early Church that speaks of the blessing of the
disobedience of Adam and Eve. In an ancient Easter text, it says “O happy fault
that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer.” It’s what we do in
celebrating the Eucharist, giving God thanks for the Passion by which we are
redeemed. What punishments of God are not gifts?
While suffering
and punishments are not things that we seek, they do not mean that God has
forgotten us or will not continue to seek to bless us. This is how we can
embrace the contradictions of Holy Week and joyfully venerate the Cross of
Christ – we trust that the love of God is with us in all things, knowing that
love covers a multitude of sins.
O Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his back to the
smiters and hid not his face from shame: Give us grace to take joyfully the
sufferings of the present time, in full assurance of the glory that shall be
revealed; through the same Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth
with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
