God Weeps With Us

Matthew 26:37-50

...“I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want...”

I will never forget a story shared to me by Bill Mallard, one of my theology professors at Emory. He recalled a story of visiting a friend whose husband had died way too early in a tragic situation. As the people were at the house grieving, a friend of the husband asked Mallard in the presence of the wife, “Bill, where is God in all this?” Bill Mallard shared how he looked back with tears in his eyes and he replied, “God is here. And he is weeping with us.”

That’s not always how we think of God. We get that God is with us, but the weeping part has never been a part of our understanding.

N.T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham and now Professor at the University of St. Andrews. When students would come to him and say, “I won’t be attending chapel, I don’t believe in God,” his reply was, “Which God is it you don’t believe in?” This would cause them a little hesitation, then they would begin to describe something like this, “I don’t believe in a God up in the sky looking down, a God who doesn’t care about humanity and suffering, a God who is removed from the world.” N.T. Wright’s response was, “I don’t believe in that God either!”

On this Palm Sunday and as we begin Holy Week, we are reminded of the last week of Jesus’ life. During this week, we see betrayal, suffering, and death. The death of Jesus at the hands of those in power. This was always God’s plan, but it doesn’t make it any easier for Jesus. You see, we seem to forget that Jesus was a man (yes, he was God in the flesh, but let us never forget that he was a man) – human flesh and blood just like us – and he suffered tremendously.

At this moment in the Garden of Gethsemene, Tom Long points out that "we see the collision of wills and desires at work". This happens to us all the time in our Moments in the Wilderness. The collision is between the divine will and the human will. There are times when we can clearly draw lines of distinction between divine and human wills, but when times are difficult and suffering and grief are present, the lines are not as clear. We’ve all dealt with this – when something has happened to us – a broken relationship, divorce, loss of a loved one, loss of a job, loss of anything of value or importance – we struggle with the why. That is normal and God doesn’t have a problem with that at all. The hard part is when we move beyond the grief work and try to figure out the why. When we struggle to answer the why of the conflict between the human and divine wills, we find confusion and a lack of clarity. This causes many of us to believe God is not with us, God doesn't care, or God somehow caused and we just have to accept it.

In the Garden of Gethsemene, we see Jesus grappling with the same thing. The tension between the divine will and the human will. Trust me; it's not easy to see God and believe and understand when you are in the midst of great suffering. Here we see Jesus struggling in his soul. He is profoundly anguished. Jesus knows his life is in peril. He knows what is coming and he doesn’t face it with stoic resolve. He is emotional, full of sorrow, and distressed. Like the Psalmist in Psalm 42 and 43, his “soul is cast down” and he is “deeply grieved even to the point of death.”

In this moment of trouble, we have been taught that Jesus says, “Alright God, I know what I’ve got to do, give me the strength.” In almost every church Sunday school or sanctuary stained glass is the image of Jesus kneeling in the garden with his back straight, his eyes toward heaven, and a light beaming down. Funny thing is that the passage in Matthew 26 says that Jesus "threw himself down on the ground and prayed." Jesus reveals deep pathos and humanity by asking God to provide a way out, an easier road that his life may be spared.

Jesus can relate to our grief and suffering. Not only because he has felt suffering and stared into it with the same questions we have, but because he also knows what if feels like to go through it alone. I think it is ironic that he asks his friends to stay up with him to pray. They cannot. This passage of waking them up and them falling back asleep communicates something we all know; we go through suffering alone. Jesus experienced this. Thomas Merton writes, "When a man [sic] suffers, he is most alone. Therefore, it is in suffering that we are most tested as persons. How can we face the awful interior questioning? What shall we answer when we come to be examined by pain? Without God, we are no longer persons. We lose our humanity and our dignity." We must suffer with faith, knowing God is with us - knowing God weeps with us.

Let us look deeper into the life of Christ and say, “The God I believe in is not some God living in the sky who doesn’t know me or my struggles.” No, we serve a God who is revealed through Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus who died for us -yes; but Jesus who has also suffered. Jesus is acquainted with our griefs and our sorrows when we are in our moments of wilderness.

Reflections on Suffering by Thomas Merton, Part 4

The staff at Wesley is continuing to struggle with the writings of Thomas Merton in our spiritual formation time. Wanted to share some of it with you.

2 Corinthians 12:1-10
It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. 2I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. 3And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows— 4was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. 5On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. 6But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, 7even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. 8Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, 9but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

From Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 5: The Word of the Cross: On Suffering (Part 4)
• When is suffering useless? When it only turns us in upon ourselves, when it makes us only sorry for ourselves, when it changes love into hatred, when it reduces all things to fear. Useless suffering cannot be consecrated to God because it is fruitless and rooted in sin. Sin and useless suffering increase together.
• But the grace of Christ is constantly working to turn useless suffering into something fruitful after all. How? By suddenly stanching the wound of sin. As soon as our life stops bleeding out of us in sin, suffering begins to have creative possibilities.
• The great duty of the religious soul is to suffer in silence. Too many people think they can become holy by talking about their trials. The awful fuss we sometimes make over the little unavoidable tribulations of life robs them of their fruitfulness. It turns them into occasions for self-pity or self-display, and consequently makes them useless. Be careful of talking about what you suffer, for fear that you may sin. Job’s friends sinned by the pious explanations they gave of suffering: and they sinned in giving Job a superficial explanation. The only decent thing is silence – and the sacraments.
• In order to face suffering in peace: Suffer without imposing on others a theory of suffering, without weaving a new philosophy of life from your own material pain, without proclaiming yourself a martyr, without counting out the price of your courage, without disdaining sympathy and without seeking too much of it. We must be sincere in our sufferings as we are in anything else. We must at once recognize our weakness and our pain, but we do not need to advertise them.
• We cannot suffer well unless we see Christ everywhere – both in suffering and in the charity of those who come to the aid of our affliction.

On Suffering, Part 3: From Thomas Merton

2 Corinthians 4:8-11
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

Each Tuesday, our Wesley UMC staff engages in time of spiritual formation. We have been journeying through Thomas Merton's, No Man is an Island. I'm posting the excerpts from Merton as we discuss suffering, which has always been difficult for me to process and understand. Maybe, as Merton points out, I'm too selfish.

Excerpts from Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 5: The Word of the Cross: On Suffering (Part 3)
• Heroism alone in the face of suffering is useless, unless it is born of God. Divine strength is not usually given us until we are fully aware of our own weakness and know that the strength we receive is indeed received: and that is a gift. The fortitude that comes is from God. It is God’s strength, which is beyond comparison and not complicated by pride.
• To know the Cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ; to know the love of Christ who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. To know God’s love is not merely to know the story of His love, but to experience in our spirit that we are loved by Him, and that in His love the Father manifests His own love for us, through the Holy Spirit.
• The effect of suffering upon us depends on what we love. If we love ourselves selfishly, suffering is merely hateful. It must be avoided at all costs. It brings out the evil that is in us. The person who loves only themselves will commit any sin and inflict any evil on others merely in order to avoid suffering himself/herself. Worse, if one cannot avoid suffering, they may even take perverse pleasure in suffering itself – showing that they love and hate themselves all at the same time. If we love ourselves selfishly, suffering brings out selfishness. Then after making known what we are, suffering drives us to make ourselves worse than we are.
• If we love others and suffer for them without the love of God, we may gain a certain nobility and goodness. It may bring out something fine in us and even give glory to God, but in the end a natural unselfishness cannot prevent suffering from destroying us along with all we love.
• But, if we love God and love others in Him, we will be glad to let suffering destroy anything in us that God is pleased to let it destroy, because we know that all it destroys is unimportant. If we love God, suffering does not matter. Christ in us, His love, His Passion in us: that is what we care about. Pain does not cease to be pain, but we can be glad of it because it enables Christ to suffer in us and give glory to His Father by being greater, in our hearts, than suffering would ever be.

Thomas Merton on Suffering

I Corinthians 1:18-25
18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19For it is written;
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
20Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. 22For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

From Thomas Merton's No Man Is An Island, Chapter 5: The Word of the Cross
• The Christian must not only accept suffering: he/she must make it holy. Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering. Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration. True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude. We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial.
• Suffering is consecrated to God by faith – not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God.
• Suffering has no power and no value of its own. It is only valuable as a test of faith. To believe in suffering is pride; but to suffer, believing in God, is humility.
• Pride tells us we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good. Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is inside of us. But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek Him in suffering, and that by His grace we can overcome evil with good. Suffering, then, becomes good by accident, by the good that it enables us to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God. It does not make us good by itself, but it enables us to make ourselves better than we are. Thus, what we consecrate to God in suffering is not our suffering, but our selves.
• The Cross of Christ says nothing of the power of suffering or of death. It speaks only of the power of Him Who overcame both suffering and death by rising from the grave.
• What after all is more personal than suffering? The awful futility of our attempts to convey the reality of our sufferings to other people, and the tragic inadequacy of human sympathy, both prove how incommunicable a thing suffering really is. When a man/woman suffers, they are most alone. Therefore, it is in suffering that we are tested. How can we face it? What shall we answer in the pain? Without God, we lose our humanity.
• When suffering asks, “Who are you?” we must be able to answer distinctly, and give our own name. By that, I mean we must express the very depths of what we are, what we have desired to be, and what we have become. All these things are sifted out of us by pain, and they are too often found to be in contradiction with one another. But when we live in Christ, our name and our work and our personality will fit the pattern stamped on our souls by the sacramental character we wear. We get our name in baptism. Our souls are stamped with an eternal identification. Our baptism, which drowns us in the death of Christ, summons upon us all the sufferings of our life.
• Suffering should call out our own name and the name of Christ.