A slight disclaimer: What follows is the basic text (minus the occasional digressions) of a sermon that I preached at Comox United Church, Comox, B.C. on June 12, 2022. It is not an essay. It is written to be spoken and in a manner that reflects my preaching style, which I suspect might be described as “informal.” Nor does it have the full assortment of citations, acknowledgements, and footnotes normally (and quite reasonably) expected in a more formal work. Please forgive the grammatical peculiarities!
Blessings
Phil Spencer
"UNDER PRESSURE"
If you’ve been around Christian church’s for even a short period of time, or perhaps even during that occasional morning conversation with missionaries from another faith group on your front doorstep, you’ll eventually hear someone observe—and they’ll be quite correct—that there is no mention of the Trinity in the Bible. That’s 100% true—the word “Trinity” just isn’t in there, no matter how hard you look. Nor are the words “cell phone,” “Comox United Church,” “Canada,” or “Tesla,” but despite that, each of those things do exist.
Now, your mileage may vary, but I find it hard to read the Biblical story without encountering evidence of the Trinity that intimate relationship between—and for clarity I’ll use classical theological language here—between God the Father, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit, mysteriously and distinctly Three, and yet at the same time, One. Hence, over the past millennia, the Church has encouraged some special reflection on the notion the Trinity, and for us it’s annually on the 1st Sunday after Pentecost. We inevitably do this in some way on lots of other days of the Church year—I rattled on about it a few weeks back—but there’s some wisdom in doing so with intentionality now and then, just as we do with Easter and other important parts of our faith. This notion of the Trinitarian Godhead is something that surfaces with regularity, informing so much of Christian belief, and it’s undoubtedly also rather enigmatic. I find that the Trinity is something I glimpse, and never fully grasp, but then I’d also suggest that a God we could fully understand probably wouldn’t be much of a God.
The Apostle Paul is a rich source for exploring the concept of the Trinity. Years ago (I think it was during a lecture series by the brilliant and passionate New Testament scholar, Gordon Fee) I heard it suggested that when St. Paul refers to any one of the Three Persons of the Trinity, the other two members will typically appear not too far away, and I’ve found that to be a pretty reliable observation. It’s certainly true in our reading from the Letter to the Romans that Barb read a few moments ago, as each of the Godhead surface within the passage.
However, there’s also something else in the text that might bear some examination, something I found myself tripping over and it’s that perennial conundrum for people of faith: suffering. It’s in verses 3 and on: “but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us …” Not that my pausing at this line is that unusual, I suppose—lots of us get tripped up by suffering, don’t we? I mean, how don’t you? Pain has this habit of forcing its way in the centre stage in our lives, concentrating the mind, demanding our attention. Suffering’s this great human conundrum, eliciting the questions, “Why? Does this have purpose?” And of course, just where’s God in this suffering we all experience?
The people on the other end of Paul’s letter certainly knew something about suffering, were well-aware of conflict, and knew just a bit about persecution. The time of writing was in the mid-50’s in the first century—Paul being in Greece, likely in Corinth—when he sent this letter to the Church in Rome, a Church that was likely a number of small congregations meeting in homes in different parts of the city by this point. The Church in Rome had been founded by the Apostle Peter some years before, and while it wasn’t a part of the Church that was under Paul’s authority, under his leadership, at least from what I can tell, it seems that Paul was hoping to visit them, perhaps to use it as a base of operations for the mission trip that he was so-dearly-wanting to take to Spain. But even if he wasn’t a formal overseer of the Church, he certainly knew lots of its members. Just read the final chapter and you’ll see him offer greetings to some 26 friends and acquaintances, some of whom we see are his relatives, family [1]. The Roman recipients of the letter were a mixture of Jewish-Christians and Gentiles, or non-Jewish Christians, and to no one’s surprise, there’s all sorts of tension between those two groups, conflict we’ve also seen evident in the Book of Acts and other of Paul’s letters to different congregations elsewhere. It’s the familiar conflict we’ve talked about here before: about maintaining food laws, circumcision, keeping the Jewish Sabbath, and how much—if any—of these things the non-Jewish believers needed to observe. Or put another way: does our standing with God depend on what we “do” in the terms of keeping the law, or is it related to one’s faith in Christ? This is a concern that’s no less in play today as it was then.
To compound the problem, some years before Romans was written the Emperor Claudius had found it politically expedient in forcing all Jewish people, including the Christian ones, to leave Rome. Then, after Claudius’ death and the installation of Nero as Emperor, they were permitted to return and there was again a fresh clash between the two groups, who found themselves back together in the congregations. Into this situation Paul writes this letter in which he explains his understanding of the Good News of Jesus (what we call “the gospel”) and an element of that good news is that Jews and Gentiles are the one people of God together and this comes through the righteousness of God which is received through faith in Christ and as a work of the Holy Spirit. We heard some of that in the famous line at the beginning of our text:
“Therefore, since we are justified by faith [note: not by what we do, not by works, but by faith] we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand ….”
It’s a triumphant and, I find, an uplifting passage, concluding with the affirmation that “we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God”, praising God at the tops of their voices. Then he adds that line: “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings ….” By the way, that word that Greek word translated as “boast,” can be as readily translated as “glory” or “rejoice” or—and I really like this—as “living with one’s head held high.” So, it would be, “And not only that, but we also hold our heads high in our sufferings ….” To be clear, he isn’t saying, “Oh, good we’re suffering!” but instead, “In the midst of our suffering, we’re going to hold our heads up.” It’s an act of will in a difficult time.
Here’s something else: the Greek word that gets translated as suffering—it’s the word thlipsis. It gets used throughout the New Testament, and it refers to “a pressing together”, a pressure. Thlipsis—a great word—try and slip it into conversation this week! Therefore, when we’re thlipsis, under pressure, we’re choosing to hold our heads up. Whether that pressure, that suffering, is the persecution that’s sometimes related to being a follower of Jesus or whether it’s the anguish or the distress that comes out of the range of experiences all human beings can face—sickness, loss, uncertainty, poverty, fear, loneliness, or more (you know the list!)—theologians have been working on this one for a while. Personally, I think it’s a both/and. Pressure, suffering comes to all human beings—it’s unavoidable—and it often has precisely no relation to anything we’ve done.
We, of course, insist on trying to find cause and effect but it’s not at all necessarily there. Some of you will surely be aware of that TED talk that the most engaging and insightful Church historian, Kate Bowler (a Canadian, to boot!) did on trying to come to terms with a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis at age 35. She—a believer and an expert on the subject of a wholly unorthodox theology that bubbles up in the church, that you can claim prosperity, that material blessings are there to be seized by the faithful, this odd, if not perverse, belief that good things will happen to good people—even she found herself trying to figure out what she did wrong in getting cancer! But there’s just isn’t necessarily a correlation between what we get and what we deserve, not always a reason for why we experience suffering, experience pressure. Bowler went on to write a book whose title explains the issue: Everything Happens For a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved. If you can, do give her TED talk a watch—it’s good.[2] She doesn’t boast or brag about her suffering, but she sure does hold her head high, and I heard her as hopeful.
And there—I’ve said it: hopeful. That really is the fundamental Christian predisposition, isn’t it? We are a most hopeful people. St. Paul describes this process leading to hope: suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. I like the sounds of that (of hope, that is), though the journey there sounds a little rocky, sounds a bit painful to my ear. One of the things I’ve learned in developing as a cyclist over the years is that growing in endurance is a challenging process—it just hurts. I’ve been a long-time cyclist, but about a decade ago I decided to get serious (a high blood pressure diagnosis does concentrate the mind) … and I remember the first couple of months on my bike. I’d go out and ride for ¾ of an hour and then come home and sleep for another hour and a half! And I had some pains in places we’re not going to talk about here. But over the months and years the journeys got longer—and while to this day there are discomforts, if not pain—I’ve discovered I can endure significantly greater time and distances cycling. And character? Well, I have a hunch that those pains are making me into a bit of a different person, one I’m hoping is a more mature one, maybe even a better one. I guess we’ll see.
But that’s just cycling, and it’s something I choose to do—it’s not thrust upon me. As you all know—some of you much, much better than I do—there are far more difficult experiences of suffering we’ll encounter, some profoundly demanding and tough and they’re not things any of us would ever choose or especially deserve. It’s not “cause and effect;” they just … happen. And there’s something that I’ve noticed over the years of observing and being with people dealing with the sufferings that come to every one of us in life. It’s hidden there in the Bible reading we heard from Romans today. “We are justified” … “we have obtained access” … “we boast in our hope” … “we also boast in our sufferings” … “and hope does not disappoint us” … “God’s love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.” There’s not an “I” or a “me” or a “you” in there—it’s all plural.
So, here’s the observation, my only point in this one-point sermon: suffering’s not something that’s best done on our own. Yes, I know, a disturbing diagnosis—be it a physical issue or a mental health issue—it’s a most individual thing, and perhaps some element may be a private issue. And the loss of someone you love is a very personal thing. But—from what I’ve seen—suffering on one’s own makes moving into hope far, far more difficult. Isolation’s a killer. When God said, “It’s not good that the human should be alone …” which is what we read right at the beginning of the Biblical story in Genesis chapter 2, when we read that I think we’re being directed into the importance of relationships writ-large.[3] As the thoughtful pastor and author, Michael Lindvall’s written:
I know from experience that hope rises strongest in those who do not suffer in isolation. We are created for life together. Joys are sweeter when we revel in them together; pain shared will more likely make our broken places strong.[4]
There’s something about being with a friend who knows you’re suffering and who knows about suffering. In fact, there’s something about being with a God who knows about suffering. There are a variety of reasons that churches will often have the truly unsettling image of the Cross in the front of the church. One of them is the reminder to us that our God knows suffering. And I’d suggest, yes, therein lies our hope. Amen.
[1] Romans 16:7,11
[3] Genesis 2:18