St. Andrew’s – First Church, Hoy Thursday, April 13, 2006

 

Pain & Suffering; a response

 

Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

 

Anyone listening to the news lately would hear a lot about pain and suffering:

-the killings in the Iraqi war,

-Canadian Private Robert Costall being killed in Afghanistan,

-the McMynn family in the gut wrenching saga of getting their son Graham back home after being kidnapped last week,

-the Moussaoui trial where we are hearing horrific, heart rendering tapes released of people about to die in the 911 attack,

-teenager Ghyslain Raza of Trois Rivieres, Quebec winning the first case of what he called “unbearable” cyber bullying; he received $351,000.

-the story of a 6 year old boy calling 911 to try to get help from his mother and getting told off by the operator and waiting for two hours until help came; his dead mother beside him.

 

Pain and suffering all over the place.

 

How many of us know, are, or are related to someone suffering with cancer?

 

The overwhelming evidence is that pain and suffering is a part of life.

 

In spite of all of this evidence to the contrary, we seem to see the pain of life as an exception, an interruption to an on-going life where days are a series of calm, uninterrupted, peaceful, sunny and uneventful where we just go through our routines, until one day we gently slip into eternity as we slumber in our beds.

 

In spite of the evidence, parents do not say to the children, “I am going to promise you with certainty, that there will be pain and suffering in your life. Nobody is exempt, good bad, rich and poor, we all have to deal with pain and suffering in our lives. We have faith in God to help us to deal with pain and suffering. Even our Saviour Jesus Christ, was not exempt and had to go through his share too. Our faith is what gives us the coping tools to deal with the life we have to live. Love is what gets us through it all.”

 

In spite of evidence to the contrary, parents and the education system, shield the children from the realities of life, like there is no pain or suffering, no cost for bad behaviour or poor choices, and then if they are wrong and tragedy strikes, grief counselors are called in from somewhere to try to help the children who are shell shocked when life hits them where they are of course, unprepared.

 

But, much to the contrary of systems of denial and pretense, there are different responses to pain and suffering:

-a cousin of mine has a 5 year old daughter who last year was dealing with a tumour on her arm that would not respond to treatment and amputation was the only option. After showing her other children who had amputations, her mother cautiously asked if it was OK to proceed with the amputation. The five year old’s only response was to ask if she could still play with her friends.

-I was visiting one of our parishioners last evening at the hospital. Mae Brown gave me permission to quote her. Last week, she had a seizure, fell out of bed, and was hurt and went to hospital. She probably went home today. Her comment was “It could have been worse.”

-Louise Russo, the woman who recently was part of a plea bargain arrangement receiving two million dollars for a botched robbery and is now confined to a wheel chair, said that she thanks God every day that it was her and not her daughter who was injured.

 

So we differ from each other in how we deal with pain and suffering.

 

Today both of our readings are surrounded with issues of pain and suffering:

-the people of God living in slavery in Egypt, surrounded on the first Passover event by the slaughter of the Egyptian first born,

-and secondly: Jesus and his followers surrounded by the events of Christ’s passion: abandonment, false arrest, beating, humiliation, injustice leading to a brutal death.

 

You will notice that the pain and suffering in these two texts are not ignored, minimized, or sidetracked. Pain and suffering has not been “downsized” in the Biblical text. We might even say that pain and suffering has been couched in sacrament: the Passover in one case, and the Sacrament of Holy Communion in the other.

 

Please understand that while the text might seem to embrace pain and suffering it does not “wallow” in it.

 

There is a word that describes how the text addresses pain and suffering. There is a word that addresses my cousin’s little girl, Madeleine’s response, the response of Louise Russo in her wheelchair who thanks God her daughter was spared, that describes the Jewish people when they observe Passover, a word that describes Christians like you and I who gather to commemorate Holy Communion this evening and why we gather to commemorate Christ’s crucifixion on what we call, “Good” Friday.

 

That word is “honour.”

 

We need to honour pain and suffering when we meet it as part of our life’s journey:

-not ignore it, not sensationalize it, not deny or wallow in it, but we need to honour the reality of grief in the world.

 

God in his gift of Jesus Christ, who died on a cross, honoured the grief of humanity to the whole world.

 

Jesus used the poignancy of his last supper (his last day of freedom, his last teaching lesson on the planet) to honour his teaching of service to each other forever in our consciousness by washing his disciple’s feet. We can’t ignore the fact that “the top guy” according to today’s standard’s stripped down, humbled himself, stooped, and washed the feet of those who served him, to show us all that that greatest thing we could ever do is to serve one another.

 

Jesus honoured the grief of what he had to face and called it glory:

“Now has the Son of man been glorified…”

 

Jesus honoured the grief of what he had to face to institute a new commandment:

“I give you a new commandment that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you should love one another.”

 

Jesus honoured the grief of what he had to face to give us as Christians, an identity:

“By this (by how we love one another) everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

 

Jesus Christ honoured the pain and suffering of the world as a means of instituting a powerful love and service of us all: for each other.

 

Each of us has gifts as human beings: we have the ability to care and share with humanity, we have the ability to love, to cherish, to forgive and dispense mercy.

 

By our lives let us honour those gifts we have been honoured to receive.

 

We are going to celebrate and commemorate the gifts of bread and wine prepared for us.

 

By the living of our lives, let us honour the sacrament we receive.

 

AMEN                   Rev. Alan Stewart