CHARACTER AND SUFFERING
2nd of a 4-parts series on Character: Christian Life Practice
Romans 5:1-5, Matthew 4:1-11
[Since spoken communication differs from written, some of the grammar and syntax of this transcript may seem awkward in written form. To keep integrity with the spirit of the original delivery, the transcript seeks to stay close to the exact words spoken.]
When I was in high school I ran cross-country, because it was the only sport in which I could gain any measure of success, owing to the fact that it required absolutely no coordination. It was the only way I could earn my letter jacket. And the coach of the cross country team was a guy who sported a crew cut, had the slightly psycho eyes of Rasputin, and whose politics were just one slight notch to the left of Attila the Hun. His name was Marshall Sellers, and the kids not on the cross country team used to call him "MS, the crippler of young adults." Every year he would invite us--that’s not quite the word to describe it, he pretty much required us--to visit his brother’s farm near Bristol, Indiana, for what was called "The Ironman Weekend." We would run the same loops every year through brambles and briars and nettles and thorns, all designed for maximum human mutilation. And at the end of the weekend, there was an award for the bloodiest legs. I won one year by running into a barbed wire fence. That was a ringer, that year.That gives you come flavor for that experience--what cross-country was like. And my coach, Coach Sellers, was trying, indeed, to instill character into his athletes. "Mind over pain" was the constant phrase we would hear every day in practice. "No pain, no gain."
Does suffering produce character? That’s the question that I put out there this morning for us to reflect upon…that we’re going to meander around and through this morning for this second of a four part series on character, which we’re calling "Character: Christian Life Practice." Does suffering produce character?
To begin, let’s hear what Paul has to say on the subject, and lift up, once again, a few of the words you just heard from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul writes, “As believers in Christ, we boast in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”
When I was in seminary we used to sort of make light of this passage from Romans, and I find myself still doing that, from time to time. We used to say things like, “If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger.” You know? Some little trivial suffering comes along, we would always joke that, “It builds character. It’s good for you.” And, seriously though, it was sort of theologically gauche, theologically unfashionable back then to take the words of St. Paul here seriously: to say that’s there’s anything at all good, in any way, about suffering. To say that suffering is anything but just suffering.
In terms of my experience in cross-country, there certainly were elements of that experience that were cruel. Such athletic cultures can often breed that type of mentality. There was not a lot of gentleness as part of that culture, to be sure.
Does suffering produce character? I think that’s a very very tricky proposition. Is it really possible for us to believe that suffering is in any way good for us? Isn’t that a very dangerous position to take? Doesn’t it risk trivializing suffering, or denying it, or perhaps worse yet, might it justify our inflicting it upon others? I think we have to come to terms with the fact that this Christian idea, or perversion of a Christian idea--the idea that suffering is good for us--has created so much justification through the centuries for the oppression of human beings, most notably women. The justification that they are suffering and it’s good that they are suffering, and it enables them to practice the virtue of humility. Could we seriously say that suffering is good for women? Is that not the most insidious perversion of the gospel of love? Can we really believe that God wants us to suffer? Can we imagine saying to a suffering person, “It’s good for you. Just wait, you’ll see.”
About a week and a half ago I was in Bible study with my clergy group--we meet Tuesday mornings--and we were examining this passage--the story that rolls around every year this time, the first Sunday of Lent: the story of Jesus in the Wilderness. And my colleague said, “I just can’t believe that God would put anybody up for suffering.” You know this idea that the Spirit drives Jesus into the Wilderness--he was challenging that. And it’s interesting, if you read that story in different versions among the three synoptic gospels, there’s a kind of ambiguity in the Greek text as to whether it’s the Spirit driving Jesus out into the Wilderness, or if it’s the Spirit accompanying Jesus in the Wilderness. There’s a kind of elegant ambiguity there. Is it possible that God would want to test us? As Matthew would have it here, Jesus is being tested before his ministry, out there in the wilderness.
So we’ve perhaps agreed that this is a dangerous proposition: that suffering produces character. But now that we’ve explored that danger, can we really say an unequivocal no to that question? Can we say that whatever good and comfortable and lovely things in life that come to us, that those are from God, and the cold and prickly stuff, well, that’s just something else--God has nothing to do with bringing those things into our lives.
That experience in cross-country, I have to say, despite all the more negative elements of it, did produce character in me. The self-discipline it engendered in me was significant…being oriented toward a goal. Many of the kids on that team, I think, probably would have ended up, certainly not succeeding in high school--some of them might have even ended up in jail, absent the discipline that experience provided them. You couldn’t say that the suffering we endured wasn’t in some sense a good thing.
If we are to say that suffering is an aberration in the human experience--that human beings are not meant to experience suffering, that that’s not what God intended…if that is indeed the case, we could ask the question: would human beings really be human beings in the absence of suffering?
A couple of years ago I did a study of the great ancient Greek epic poem The Iliad, supposedly written by Homer. A friend of mine who loves that poem calls it, "Give War a Chance." It’s about a great hero of the Trojan War, and in many ways it glorifies war. It’s kind of a long meditation on human mortality and the meaning of human life. And the hero of the epic, Achilles, in the end finds the virtue and value of human compassion toward his enemies--it’s really quite a lovely ending. But the professor who taught this course made a point that the narrative of the Iliad portrays the gods as kind of jerks. They’re sort of capricious, and jealous, and often they’re cruel. And it’s as if Homer is trying to say that the only beings capable of virtue, of a virtue like courage, are mortals. Because gods have nothing to lose--I mean, you’re immortal, after all, you’re going to get up the next morning no matter what. You have nothing to risk. It’s only a being that’s capable of suffering and dying that has anything to risk, and is capable of virtue, of a virtue like courage. Ironically, it’s the fact that we are mortals, our very identity, mortal, means "one who dies"…it’s that identity that makes life precious, and meaningful, and worth living.
Consider that many traditional cultures, most notably native American cultures, intentionally send their children out into the wilderness to undergo an ordeal that gives them a vision for their life, and a meaning and vocation. It’s called a "Vision Quest," and it’s pretty much what Jesus is doing, out there in the Wilderness. The Spirit drives him out into the Wilderness where he receives a vision that clarifies his own character and identity, and that informs his practice of ministry later on--that testing in the Wilderness.
Now here’s an honest question--I really don’t know what I think about this. The question is: have we lost touch with that experience? I hear a lot these days talk about so-called "failure-to-launch" kids, who’ve been so protected in their lives that often they’re ill equipped to deal with the challenge of the world when they leave the nest. Do we perhaps do a disservice to our children if we don’t allow them to experience some of the hardships and challenges that life will throw at them before they are launched into life? I’d like to know what you think--here’s a plug for the blog that we have set up for this sermon series. Tune in and give your own opinion--I’d love to hear it. (blog address: http://pclawrenceville.blogspot.com/)
But back to Paul--one last point. I think we really need to understand what Paul is saying on this point. Because Paul understands that Christian character--he might call it "the new human"…it means living a counter-intuitive lifestyle. Paul proclaims a strange new moral universe that’s been revealed by Christ. Paul speaks about the past age, the old age, as an age in which people boasted in how successful they are. Look at how great I’m doing--look at what God has done to bless my life. I’ve got a great house, and spouse, and life. And Paul says that Christ has turned that whole equation on its head. He says as believers in Christ we don’t brag about how comfortable and successful our life is, we boast in our suffering. We boast in…how God has helped me through an ugly divorce. God, through the people of God, has helped me deal with the loss of a child. Look at how God has helped me with the crushing defeat of joblessness. Look at what God has done in the crucible of suffering, to help me understand who Christ is, and who I am. How strange!
We know human redemption not through the muscular power of a superhero, but a suffering savior on a cross. That’s how we know hope: the hope we see as we gaze upon the cross. Hope that “creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates.” And I can think of no better foundation on which to base one’s life and character than that--hope. Amen.
February 10, 2008
First Sunday in LentThe Reverend Jeffrey A. Vamos
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