Sermon Archive
Love, Joy and Suffering
Sermon preached by John Burdett at Matins on 27 July 2008
Jesus gave his famous summary of the Law during the course of his public ministry: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.” Those two commandments applied to everybody – the Pharisees already knew them. You can find them in the Old Testament, though Jesus may have been the first person to link them.
But during his final talk to his disciples, on the night before he died, he gave them a third rule. He said: “I give you a new commandment – love each other as I have loved you.” That doesn’t supersede the second commandment – love your neighbour as yourself. That’s a general rule covering our relationship with everyone. Now he’s talking about the special bond of love which must unite us with all our fellow Christians. This new commandment has a narrower range and a more intense quality. It’s this third commandment that Peter takes up in this morning’s second lesson. “Above all, love each other deeply.”
But this is where we run into a difficulty – a linguistic difficulty. The English language, being derived from a number of different sources, is extraordinarily rich compared with languages which are, for example, purely Nordic or purely Latin in origin. We can use different words to express shades meaning where other languages have only one word available. But where love is concerned we’re very badly off. We use the same word for a wide range of concepts, from casual lust to the relationship between the members of the Holy Trinity.
Jesus was talking about Agape, which is the Greek word used to describe God’s love. It’s an expression of the essential nature of God. It’s got nothing to do with affection or emotion; it isn’t always in line with the natural inclinations of the person who expresses the love. It’s the love shown by God in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us, and on a humbler level it’s the love shown by a woman in caring for a cantankerous old neighbour whom she dislikes and who takes all her care for granted and gives nothing in return.
I sometimes feel that people get muddled over this whole business of Christian love. Jesus told us to love one another. He didn’t tell us to like each other. You can’t like everybody, not even all your fellow Christians. I suppose you can see Christian love in action more clearly where people don’t like each other, or don’t even know each other, than where affection and mutual sympathy make caring, cherishing or serving something we enjoy.
Joy is an emotion which is sadly lacking in everyday life today. Wherever you look, either nationally or internationally, there seems to be little or no cause for joy. With the plunge of the stock market, troubles in the banking industry, inflation, and the threat of terrorism at home, and famine, persecution and war abroad, what is there to be joyful about? And yet, think of Jesus on the night before he died. He knew very well what he was in for – that he’d be betrayed, deserted and very probably executed – and he was scared. He wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t been scared. Yet his final instructions to his disciples are full of references to joy. Almost the last thing he said to them was: “I have spoken thus to you so that my joy may be in you and your joy complete.” It was that joy which is above and beyond suffering that kept him going through all the grief and agony that were to come. And I think it’s important to remember his joy, to remember that we can share in it, when we come think about suffering.
As Peter said: “Don’t be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” And we do need to think about suffering sometimes. If suffering comes – and if it does come we can’t avoid it – how are we to cope with it? How are we going to make sure we’re not overcome by it? When you start asking questions like that, you can’t do better than to study the teaching of someone who suffered more than we ever will, and who put his own teaching into practice.
If you look at the Beatitudes, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, you’ll see that each one contains the idea of a reward. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.” Joy in suffering has always been one of the distinctive marks of Christianity and of its saints and martyrs; and I’m sure thousands of people have been helped by their memory of the Beatitudes.
But you can hear the nonChristian saying, can’t you?: “Why spoil it all by introducing the idea of a reward? Ought not the true Christian to believe in virtue for virtue’s sake? Talk of a reward, either in this life or hereafter, suggests a ‘quid pro quo’ morality.” It’s shown up perhaps at its worst in Bishop Wordsworth’s hymn: “O Lord of Heaven and Earth and Sea”. Most of it’s a fine hymn, but it contains the classic verse: “Whatever, Lord, we lend to thee repaid a thousandfold will be. Then gladly will we give to thee.” At 100,000% profit we’d be fools not to, wouldn’t we?
But that doesn’t mean that we should completely reject the idea of a reward. Our Lord’s doctrine doesn’t make the Christian life in any way mercenary. The reward he offers to the righteous is simply the inevitable result of goodness in a world ruled over by a God who is good. Jesus doesn’t say: “Do this and you’ll gain a reward”, but rather: “A certain disposition, a certain attitude to life will bring you happiness.” In fact in the parable of the sheep and the goats, the people who were considered worthy of eternal life were amazed, because they were completely unaware of having done anything to deserve it. But what really makes it clear that the reward for the Christian life, and for whatever suffering that may involve, isn’t in any way mercenary is that the reward that Jesus offers is the same for everyone – the Kingdom of Heaven. In the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, the men who’d only worked for one hour were paid the same amount as the men who’d worked all day. But the important thing for us to remember is that none of us earns our reward. It’s a gift of God’s grace.
But if our reward is unearned, couldn’t a lot of people say the same of their suffering? We’re tempted to say, aren’t we?: “How could a loving God allow such suffering?” Perhaps what we’re really looking for is a God who’s prepared to say: “What does it matter so long as they’re contented?” What we want, as C S Lewis suggested, is not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven – a senile benevolence who likes see young people enjoying themselves. It would be very nice to live in a universe like that, but since we don’t, and since we believe that God is love, it looks as if our concept of love needs correction.
Of course, any attempt to illustrate God’s love is bound to be hopelessly inadequate, but one way looking at it is to think of a great artist painting what he knows is his finest work. He’ll take endless trouble with it, and thereby give endless trouble to the picture, if only it could think. One can imagine a thinking picture, after being rubbed and scraped and started again for the umpteenth time, wishing it were only a rough sketch that the artist wasn’t bothered about. But if we start wishing that God would give us a less arduous life, we’re wishing not for more love but for less.
Thinking like that doesn’t make grief and suffering any less painful when they come. It doesn’t help to answer the question: “Why?” But perhaps it does help to remind us that suffering is not incompatible with the concept of a loving God. We weren’t created primarily so that we may love God, though we were made for that. We were created primarily so that God may love us, and to ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are, besides being obviously ridiculous, is to ask that he should cease be God. We may not understand the reason for our suffering or how we can possibly benefit from it, any more than a child can see the point of discipline, but if we persevere there will be a reward, because God is love and we are his children.
But it was to his disciples, his friends, that Jesus gave this third rule: “Love each other as I have loved you.” And he went on: “By this love you have for one another everyone will know that you are my disciples.” Does it apply to us? How can we dare to claim to be his disciples, his friends? We can dare because he himself said: “You are my friends if you do what I command.” He’s given us this awe-inspiring duty and responsibility – to love God with everything we’ve got, to put our heart and soul into it, and to love our neighbours as ourselves, whether we know them or not, whether we like them or not; and in addition to love each other as he’s loved us. He’s told us that this love for each other is to be the hallmark of the Church that must carry on the work he started. Perhaps that’s something that the bishops who have boycotted the Lambeth Conference should have borne in mind.
When the Church keeps that new commandment perhaps the world will learn to keep the old ones.
Worship >> Sermons >> Sermons