Suffering and Hope [Romans 5:1-5 - Trinity Sunday C]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Romans 5:1-5

 

Suffering and Hope

 

Candy Land, a game “lovingly” described on Wikipedia as requiring, “no reading…minimal counting skills [and] no strategy,” is a wonderfully accessible way to introduce even the youngest of children to the timeless idea of journey.  It is true that the Candy Land journey is a bit more simplistic than the journey through life – all laid out as it is in a predictably static two dimensions.  But while the path on the board is clear, every trip has its own challenges. At times the cards you draw will set you off in the direction of your goal; at others times there are setbacks and slowdowns in the cards.  You might be forced to retrace your steps a time or two; your plastic child could at times get stuck in some sticky sugar for a turn.  But what is always true is that the road begins at the Cupcake Commons, runs past the Lollypop Woods, and ends at the Promised Land of Candy Castle.  And if you stay in the game, your hope will eventually be rewarded.

    

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, the apostle describes the interior journey of the Christian life with similar clarity.  Just as in Candy Land Cupcake Commons precedes Lollypop Woods, and Lollypop Woods precedes Candy Castle without fail, Paul assures the reader that, even in the midst of life’s complexity, there exists a sure and certain path to spiritual maturity: suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.  And though hope awaits us, the path between faith and hope is not without setbacks, slowdowns, and trials.  In this life, as we make our journey, we are sure to encounter suffering, inevitably more than we want.  But suffering is not the final destination; keep drawing cards.  Because if you stay in the game, and keep the faith, your hope will eventually be rewarded.

 

Paul was formed in the Jewish faith and was a devoted student of the Hebrew Scriptures.  And so the backdrop of his pastoral theology, the foundation of his assurance, is ancient Israel’s time in the wilderness, the formational journey from Egypt to Canaan, from suffering to the realization of their hope. 

 

The Exodus people do make it to the Promised Land, their hope did not disappoint, but the journey was not without setbacks, slowdowns, and trials.  They suffered in the desert.  There was not enough food, not enough water, too many snakes, and far too much manna.  The forty years they journeyed from Egypt to the Promised Land probably should have lasted only the twelve days of a Christmas season.  It’s as if they kept drawing that annoying card that takes you back to the beginning of the game.  The distance was short, but the interior journey required more time.  Standing on the shore of the Red Sea they weren’t yet ready for the Promised Land.  The journey from faith to hope required much more time than the journey from door to door.  But in the end their suffering produced endurance, and endurance produced character, and character produced hope, and hope did not disappoint.  Hope split the Jordan River and brought down the walls of Jericho.

 

Now none of that is to say that God wills or wants suffering to pollute this world or our lives.  The suffering to which we have been exposed recently, in this nation and in this world, as violence and war terrorize the planet, is beyond terrible.  The images from Ukraine, the stories told by the survivors in Uvalde, are devastating.  Paul is not celebrating suffering as a means to an end.  True human suffering runs far deeper and is felt much more profoundly than a fitness cliché like “no pain, no gain.” 

 

Rather Paul is simply being honest.  And doing so in a way that knowingly subverts the popular theology of both his day and of our own times.  Throughout history religious people have blamed people for their own suffering, as if it is deserved, a symptom of an evil disposition.  But we know even good people suffer; they do.  That is not a theological statement; that is just a true statement.  And while there are churches that perpetuate dangerous theological propaganda like health or wealth as evidence of God’s favor, the reality is that as long as there is greed, violence, and pride in this world there will also be suffering.  Living under the domination ethics of Empire, the churches to which Paul wrote, understood that suffering with an unwanted intimacy.  Paul, as a pastor, is not encouraging their suffering; he is acknowledging their suffering.

 

And he is reminding his church that suffering does not have to end in destruction or sorrow.  By the grace of God, it can, and does, form us into people of hope. 

 

Hope is admittedly a strange destination.  In a world that sometimes feels hopeless, hope can feel like a foolish endeavor, like daydreaming through a nightmare.  But a hopeless world is the world in which hope matters the most.  Desmond Tutu once said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”  Archbishop Tutu was well acquainted with darkness; like Paul, he knew too well that suffering is not optional.  And yet, he possessed enough hope to change his nation, the Church, and the world.

 

In this life suffering and hope exist on the same messy path; they co-author the chapters of our journey.  At times they even live together in very same moment.  And at the end of our life we will reflect back and find that both suffering and hope played a vital role in our creation story.

 

But it is not the human life alone in which suffering and hope collide.  Suffering and hope also both exist at the heart of our Triune God – and they have since the moment God met people.  In Creation, God pulled hope from Eden’s soil and became acquainted with suffering as the first seeds of rebellion grew up in that same soil.  In the incarnation, God experienced the suffering of Good Friday and then also embodied Easter Hope – all on the same weekend.  God’s long love affair with humankind has been a constant clash of suffering and hope: suffering through our failures and also holding out this stubborn hope that our future might be better than our history. 

 

Suffering is a burden that God shares with us; God understands suffering because God bears the fullness of the human condition.  But that suffering, as profound as it is, cannot dim the power of God’s hope.  God has seen the worst of us, the most terrible moments of our sorted history, and still God took on our human flesh, lived in our pain.  And still God dares to dream of a reign of peace on earth, still hopes for the kingdom come.

 

I would love to stand up here and promise you that you will never suffer, never cry yourself to sleep, never find yourself in the pit of despair.  I would love to be able to make that promise, but everybody hurts.  We all have days that feel impossible, times that just feel too heavy.  No one finishes this course without some scars.  But by the grace of God, the God who suffers with us, suffering does produce endurance, and endurance does produce character, and character does produce hope, and hope does not disappoint us.  In fact, hope is the Alleluia shouted into the tomb, the flame that sets the night on fire.  There is so much suffering in our world, and that is why your hard-earned hope matters so much.