Where is God when it hurts? [Notes from a sermon]
Illness, accident, bereavement, sorrows.
Human Life is precarious.
And in our day where we expect to be in control of our environment
– feeling vulnerable is terribly difficult.
But it’s certainly not just a modern problem.
Book of Job (2,500 yrs ago)
The book is a puzzle
(The ending completely contradicts what the rest of the book says)
But scholars can see that the introduction and ending
were tagged on by someone else.
Without those bits, we find is a writer who fearlessly presents the
feeling we can have when we suffer:
the angers, frustrations, mood-swings, uncertainty and downright
fear.

And what Job’s comforters say
is very typical too
of what we can feel when we suffer.

The first argues that:
“God disciples those whom he loves.”
Suffering is there to teach us,
and test our faith in God.
And I for one, don’t believe that!
Does God really want us to suffer
simply to test how strong we are?
There’s no doubt that suffering does test us
and that good can come out of it

– we become wiser and perhaps
more compassionate when we suffer,
but that’s not the same as God hurting us
just to make us learn!
The holocaust did not kill all those innocent people just to test their
courage!
No, that argument will not do
– even if the OT uses it all the time.
The Bible can be wrong sometimes –
especially those Hebrew Scriptures
that came before Jesus put them right.
Well now we can see why
the first of Job’s Comforters
was no comfort at all.

The second of Job’s so-called comforters
offers another reason why we suffer.
This time, not to teach us
but simply: as God’s punishment.

And again, we get loads of this in the Bible.
(the OT Hebrew scriptures, that is)
Psalm 37 says:
“I have never seen a righteous person
abandoned
or his descendants begging for food.”

In other words,

“Only bad people suffer”
What utter nonsense!
It may be nonsense,
but still today, people ask me:
“What have I done to deserve this?”

To which I always answer:
“being good or bad
has nothing to do with it!”
And Job agrees:
and he tells his so-called comforters that these old answers
don’t come close.
Even if they’re in the Hebrew Bible, the OT.
And then,
having dispensed with those
traditional answers to suffering
Job is suddenly given his answer
– by God himself!
In chapter 36 God appears and speaks.
And it’s then that
Job experiences the overwhelming majesty,
power and wisdom of God’s presence.
And God says:
“Do you, Job, think
you will ever understand?
“Where were you when I made the world ?
Did you help by modelling the depths of the oceans or
sculpting the heights of heaven?

And it’s then that Job realises

that it’s conceited to think
we can ever understand
the mysteries of God.
For perhaps the most wonderful thing
about God is exactly that!
– his mystery!
We don’t know and we won’t know.
And having arrived at that revelation
it’s there that
the Old Testament leaves it.
* * * * * *

But the Christian Gospel has more to say!

Our Christian faith agrees
that suffering cannot be explained away
with ready-made facile answers
– like those comforters.

But we can look to the cross of Christ.
And on the cross we can look suffering in the eye.
When Jesus shouts:
‘my God why hast thou forsaken me?’
it’s like saying, in the words of our theme
“Where is God, when it hurts me?”
For pain and suffering makes us feel
deserted and on our own.
And isn’t that the worst thing
about suffering?

On the cross we look suffering in the eye

But on the cross we also see
God himself looking suffering in the eye.
As Jesus cries: “Why have you forsaken me?
Jesus is there with us in that feeling.
That’s the meaning of the name:
Emmanuel – God with us.

But on the cross,
we not only look suffering in the eye,
we are also looking Love in the eye.
Jesus is suffering because of his Love.

Love means giving ourselves away.
And that, always to some extent,
means suffering.
No longer having all our own way.
And Deep Love entails Suffering.

Suffering walks hand in hand with Love.
If we see someone suffering,
it elicits from us, our Love.
Love & Suffering, Suffering and Love.
The two seem joined at the hip.
What a mystery Suffering is!
What a mystery Love is!
And perhaps Suffering and Love
are both part of the same mystery.

A mystery at the very heart of God.

Love and Suffering.
And we will never quite understand
either of them.
But we do know that:
suffering with God is very different from suffering without
God

So: Where is God when it hurts?
God is right here in it with us.
In our loving, and in our suffering.
God with us.

Love as with Suffering are
all part of the Holy Mystery of God.

AMEN

Bishop Laurie Green
March 2023