Sermon 44 - Bad Things Happen to Good People
Romans 5:3-4
Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Gloria's death wasn't my first grief rodeo.
My favourite cousin died when I was seven. I don't really remember an awful lot about that. I mean, I was seven years old. What was I supposed to learn from that at seven years old?
No, it wasn't until my sister died that I started to learn about grief. My sister was twelve when she died. I was fifteen. What I learned about grief at that point was that nobody would talk about grief. Nobody would talk about death. I desperately wanted to talk to somebody about my sister's death. And nobody would.
What I didn't learn then, but did learn some time later, was that a lot of people gave my parents a hard time about my sister's death. You know that comment about that bad thing wouldn't have happened if you had enough faith? You probably don't believe that any Christian would actually say that to a grieving parent. Well, they do. They said it to *my* parents.
(There is a corollary to this story. Actually, a year or so before my sister died I had started a project of going to the leadership in our church, the pillars of the church, the old and wise Christians, and asking about matters of faith and even church history. And predictably I got some really rotten answers. I'm a Baptist. I wanted to know about Baptist history. Where do we, as Baptists, as the Baptist denomination, come from? So I would ask: Who was the first Baptist? And of course I got the answer, why, John the Baptist, of course! Anyway in one of these sessions, talking to one of the old guard from the church, he, in musing about life and religion in general, started into this business of "bad things don't happen to you if you have enough faith." I knew that he was one of the people who had given my parents a hard time. And he had obviously forgotten who he was talking to. And you could see the moment when he realized who he was talking to. And he desperately started to backpedal on the comments that he had made. This didn't apply in all cases and certainly not in my case, of course! At the time I simply smiled, but I must admit that I took some really unrighteous delight in his difficulty at that point.)
As I wander to and fro upon the face of Port Alberni, seeking what church I might find some fellowship in, I know that I terrify people. In every single church in Port Alberni there are people who avoid me. Not just don't talk to me: if they see me they will deliberately turn and walk in a different direction so that they don't have to come in contact with me. I terrify them. The simple fact of my existence is a threat to their theology. I am a grieving widower. I am also a depressive, suffering from treatment-resistant depression. I am also, even more recently, suffering from some as yet undiagnosed loss of energy. I have the greatest difficulty in getting even the normal administration of life completed. Let's face it, my life sucks. And the thing is, there is no reason for it. There are no solid metrics for faith but it would be hard to say that I don't have faith. Nobody has yet been able to point out any unacknowledged sin in my life. Given the fact that I have no energy, I am not terribly useful right now, but I'm not really a bad person. So why is it that I am living in hell?
And it's not just me. I've got a friend. A man who has devoted his entire life not only to the church but to the ministry. He is, in fact, a really good preacher and certainly great at pastoral care. And for the past couple of years he's been having extreme difficulty. He's had to undergo medical procedures. He has had to give up almost all of his ministry. He is facing financial difficulties. Why is this the case? He does not lack faith. I very much doubt he has any unacknowledged sin. Why are bad things happening to him?
And I don't have to stick with my problems or my friend's problems or my sister's problems or my parent's problems. There's an example right in the Bible! It's got a whole book devoted to it. The book of Job.
Job is a good guy. Oh, you don't have to take *my* word for it. The Bible says that Job is a righteous man. Set aside the fact that we are all sinners, and we have all fallen, and we live in a fallen world. The Bible says that Job is a righteous man. Obviously he has done nothing to deserve all the bad things that happened to him.
Oh, and by the way, in the total of bad things that happened to him well, God killed my wife. God took away my wife. And I still think that I'm better off than Job, since God took away everything and left Job *with* his wife! And his wife tells him, curse God and die!
And then his friends show up! And for a whole week they just sit around and commiserate with him. In silence. If you don't know what to say to a friend who is grieving, silence is a good bet! But, of course, after a week they can't stand it anymore, and they start telling Job that he has done something bad, and that's why he's suffering! Bad things just don't happen to good people, so that means that Job can't be a good people! Even though the Bible tells us that he is. And then, finally, God shows up, and *He* tells the friends, you have not told the truth about me as my servant Job has! God himself says that Job has not lied; Job is the only one who has not lied; Job is the one who has insisted that he has not done anything wrong and yet he has suffered. And God agrees with him.
Paul, in the book of romans, well, he is in good company when he tells us to mourn with those who mourn. But we don't like to mourn. We especially don't like it even when it's not our problems that we are mourning. We would rather forget the bad things happen to anybody, let alone good people. But bad things happen to good people. And yes, it's all very well to say that suffering produces character and perseverance and hope. But while you are actually still suffering, that is very cold comfort indeed. Yes, hopefully it's true. And hopefully the suffering is of short duration, in comparison to the benefit of the perseverance and character later on. But, even so, maybe it would be nice to just give a cup of cold water in His name, rather than trying to convince people that they don't actually need any water.
In the book of James, there is a scene where Charlie Brown and Linus come across Snoopy, who is cold and shivering in the snow. And each of them says to him, be have good cheer, Snoopy! Yes, be of good cheer! And then they walk off leaving Snoopy bewildered in the snow.
Sorry. That's *not* the book of James actually, it's the book of Charles Schultz. But, that is, effectively, what the book of James says. It's pretty silly to tell people to cheer up, when they are in the middle of a disaster, and then walk off and leave them without any help.
I'm sometimes a little bewildered by sermons on faith. Very often they will be talking about someone who actually does believe in God, but then they say that that person doesn't have enough faith. What are the metrics for faith? How do you know they don't have enough faith? And if you don't know, for sure, shouldn't you err on the side of providing comfort, rather than confrontation?
Being a grieving widower, I follow a lot of grief accounts on social media on a variety of platforms. One particular type of complaint tends to show up, relatively rarely, but definitely regularly, and often very painfully. That is the complaint by someone who says that they are constantly being told by their friends that they, the bereaved, are being very brave. They are being very strong, they are being resilient, and it seems, all too often, that the bravery, and the strength, and their very resilience, is being weaponized against them. You are being brave, so that means that we don't have to help you. You are strong, so that means we don't have to help you. God will give you strength and resilience in this, your time of trouble! That means we don't have to help you.
Hello, non-bereaved people. You ever think that, in addition to giving us the opportunity to be brave, God is granting *you* the opportunity to be comforting?
Think about it.
So, I am trying to use a particular passage from scripture in another sermon. There was a woman. Well, I mean, that's bad enough right? And she was a foreigner. She was Greek, probably by birth or parentage. She had previously lived in Syro-phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive a demon out of her daughter. Her daughter was suffering. A suffering child. Now, I know she's a foreigner, and Jews didn't have much truck with foreigners. But here she is, a mother, with a suffering sick child.
And what does Jesus do? He refuses! He calls the woman a dog! He calls the child, the suffering child, a dog! Unworthy of being healed!
(I'm using this story in a sermon and I'm trying to make a point. Every time that I get to this point in editing the sermon, I start crying!
It's very inconvenient.
Why on earth am I crying about this? Well possibly because I am suffering at the moment, and God is not doing anything about it. Am *I* unworthy of being healed? Or even comforted?
I'm trying not to take this personally. I am trying to remember that everything will be all right in the end and that if it is not yet all right then it is not yet the end.
But, it's hard, you know?)
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