Rev. Tessie Mandeville
January 20, 2008
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, GA 30030

There are times in our lives when I believe we are forced to examine everything we’ve been taught about God. There are times when we must ask the difficult questions about God.

I believe it is the experience of suffering that makes us ask the difficult questions about God. If you’re like me then you grew up believing that as long as you lived a good life and did the right things, nothing bad would happen to you. As long as you loved God with all your heart, mind, body and soul then God would take care of you and protect you.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to believe this or to think this way. I would never want to take away any understanding of God that brings you peace. What I am saying is that this thinking can be problematic for us at times, especially during times of trial and suffering. If we truly believe that God always protects us because God loves us, then what are we left thinking when we experience suffering? What are we left thinking when we are heart-broken? I think often we are left thinking one of two things: Either we believe God has abandoned us or God is punishing us.

I don’t find either one of these concepts helpful. In fact, I think they have the potential of making our suffering even worse. I think it’s a sad state of affairs when people are suffering and we say or imply to them, “Something you did must have caused this.” That’s what Job’s friends told him. Job was a man written about in our Hebrew Scriptures who suffered physical, emotional and spiritual pain—he was sick, his children died, he lost everything—and his friends insisted that he must have deserved it because God doesn’t punish people for no reason.

And right here is where we begin to run into trouble. Thinking that God punishes us. That suffering is deserved and if we would just learn our lessons, then the suffering would go away. Thinking that suffering serves a higher purpose.

It’s not an accident that we think this way. The writers of our sacred Bible say some disturbing things about suffering. In Hebrews 5:8 it tells us that Jesus learned obedience through suffering. In the book of I Peter we read, “For what credit is it, if when you do wrong and are beaten for it you take it patiently? But if when you do right and suffer for it you take it patiently, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps…Rejoice in so far as you share in Christ’s suffering.1 Rejoice in suffering? Does that mean that we should feel joy that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust? Or that children die of starvation and preventable diseases everyday?

In Romans chapter five, Paul wrestles with the cross of Jesus. In his understanding, he says that we are so ungodly and such enemies of God that God can’t have anything to do with us unless innocent blood is shed. And because Jesus’ blood was shed, we are now reconciled with God and justified by his blood.

Paul implies that God had no other choice of reaching humanity than by offering Jesus as a sacrifice. There are times in our lives when we are forced to examine everything we’ve been taught about God. There are times when we must ask the difficult questions about God.

If this theology of the cross is true, what does that say about God as a parent who would willingly sacrifice, in fact, plan the suffering and sacrifice of God’s son for others?

The German theologian, Dorothee Soelle says, “…most Christian interpretations of suffering…lead to a justification of masochism. Suffering is there to break our pride, to demonstrate our powerlessness, to exploit our dependency. Affliction has the intention of bringing us back to a God who only becomes great when he makes us small. All that’s left as a last possible consolation and source of pleasure in this suffering is an unconditional submission. Submission as a source of pleasure—that is Christian masochism."2 And if we are the masochists and we follow Paul’s line of thinking to its end then we would have to conclude that God is sadistic, one who takes pleasure in causing pain and suffering.

But I want to offer us another image of God, and there are so many to choose from that bring life and healing. In the Jewish tradition, it is the concept of Shekinah, the visible manifestation of the divine presence. It is an understanding that God is not outside of us but within us. In other words, God is not far away from us, causing our suffering because we deserve it, but God is near to us, in our suffering. To apply this to a theology of the cross is to say that God is within Jesus and God is on that cross. God is not removed from suffering. God is not causing suffering. God is suffering.

But I don’t believe this means that suffering is necessary for salvation. I say to you today: No one should have to suffer to make God’s love known to us.

Those of us who identify as Christian stand in a tradition with the cross at its center. We must wrestle with our theology of the cross as we live our faith. An unexamined theology of the cross has been used to justify suffering and to sanction violence in our world for two millennia.

If we believe that suffering is God’s way of punishing us, then we won’t leave an abusive relationship because somehow we think we deserve to be treated this way. If we believe that sacrifice is the only way to get to God’s love, then we will see the most vulnerable people in this world—the elderly, the disabled, the poor, women and children—as expendable rather than as brothers and sisters in Christ deserving of dignity and respect. An unexamined theology of the cross leads people to suffer in silence thinking that it is Jesus himself who would have them do this.

But in my own reading of the Bible I see that Jesus harshly criticized those who make others suffer. And regarding making children suffer Jesus said, “It is better for a millstone to be hung around our necks and us to be thrown in the sea than for us to cause a child to suffer.”3

Suffering, in and of itself, is not redemptive. I’ve seen too much suffering in this world, and have experienced too much of my own suffering to believe this. But I do believe that moving from suffering to healing is redemptive and possible and it is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus met people in the reality of their suffering. He didn’t turn away from them. He wasn’t apathetic to human need nor was he resigned to suffering.

At our all church retreat in November we discussed a quote from the lesbian author, Adrienne Rich who said:

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those,
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.4

We know a lot has been destroyed; we know that people suffer; we know that we suffer in our own ways right here with mental illness, addictions, domestic violence. Adrienne’s poem shows us that understanding this moves us beyond remorse and passivity; it moves us to do something about it.

And this is where grace comes in. I titled this sermon “Suffering & Grace.” So what is grace about when it comes to suffering? Maybe grace around our suffering is that we can learn how to prevent our suffering. To act preventively. For instance, in a personal relationship we can say, “I’m prone to this type of behavior.” Grace becomes self-awareness. It’s learning how to understand our own patterns and to prevent it from happening again. Break the cycle; figure out what you’re getting from behaving a certain way. Our neurological receptors get used to certain emotional responses, even if it’s negative, it becomes a positive in some way, and we get addicted to certain emotions like fear or chaos.5 It takes courage to recognize this and to be honest about it, so that we can go down a different path, set something new in motion. That’s grace.

On a global scale, it is to work in coalition with others who perversely, with no extraordinary power reconstitute the world. “…employing the power one has, however limited one may believe it to be, to level the playing field of world society in search of a more just social order is an action of profound importance.”6

To borrow a phrase from a beloved seminary professor of mine, Dr. Mary Ann Tolbert—she calls this “acts of reconstitution.” Matthew 25 teaches that the highest form of love is not sacrifice but solidarity with those who suffer. It is engaging in acts of reconstitution. Feeding the hungry and clothing the naked are acts of reconstitution. On a global scale there are human inequities and greed, ignorance, oppression—God’s grace is that we have the capability of seeing the patterns and changing existing conditions.

Shekinah, the presence of God lives within us. When we suffer, God suffers with us, even on a cross. Jesus wasn’t the first person to die on a cross and he won’t be the last. Anywhere there is injustice and suffering, Christ is still on the cross. The reality of crosses in our world is precisely why we must enter into the struggle and stand in solidarity with those who suffer. Our act of reconstitution is the grace that the world is waiting to see. Blessed be and amen.

1. I Peter 2: 20-21, 4:13

2. Dorothee Soelle, Suffering, Fortress Press, 1975, p. 13, 19, 22.

3. Matthew 18:6

4. Adrienne Rich, “Natural Resources”.

5. For more on this see the movie, “What the Bleep Do We Know?”

6. Mary Ann Tolbert, “Christianity, Imperialism, and the Decentering of Privilege” found in Reading from this Place: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in Global Perspective. Volume 2. Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert, editors.

Copyright © 2008 by Rev. Tessie Mandeville. Permission granted for non- profit circulation with attribution of author and venue. Other rights reserved.