Lec # 146- 29th
Sun of OT- Oct 18, 2015- Fr. Bresowar
“Can you drink the Cup that I am going to
drink?” “Are you willing to do what I have to do?”
This is what our Lord asks James and John, sons
of Zebedee, in the Gospel today.
They wanted the glory, but they didn’t
understand how glory came to be.
Everyone wants the joy of Easter Sunday, but no
one wants the suffering of Good Friday.
Our Lord is asking us to suffer with Him in
order to enter into His glory; he is not simply inviting us to do so. It’s a
request of His. Would you suffer for the sake of Love? Would you suffer with
Jesus?
Many people suffer; in fact, if you live long
enough, all people suffer. Some suffer to greater degrees than others, but all
suffer.
When we look for a reason as to why we suffer,
or why those we care about suffer, we are often times left standing with our
hands up in the air and no answer.
In
trying to understand why we suffer, and when we are unable to find an answer,
we will generally look to a higher power.
“Why
God, do you allow us to suffer?” And so often we do not receive the answer that
satisfies us. This causes many people to make incorrect assertions about God,
for example, “God doesn’t care about us.” Or, “God is cruel.” Or, “God must not
exist because a loving God wouldn’t allow His people to suffer.”
These
assertions are made because suffering is hard and difficult, and seems
meaningless, and we can’t understand why God would allow something so hard and
difficult and meaningless for those he loves.
But
just because we do not understand it, doesn’t mean there is no God, or that is
doesn’t care, or that He is cruel.
Instead
we need to understand why suffering exist, and what God did and is doing about
it.
In
the beginning, before Adam and Eve sinned, there was no suffering in the world.
They were perfectly happy, perfectly content. But they were tempted to become
more than that, tempted to be like God, and then they sinned. Suffering was a
result of a rebellion against God.
By
sinning, death came into the world. Death is confusion and darkness. It is the
opposite of Love and Light. It is darkness, emptiness, pain, physical and
spiritual, and it doesn’t make sense. That’s why we try to avoid it most of the
time. Suffering was a sign that pointed to death.
In
the Old Testament, suffering was seen as a punishment for sin. So if people
suffered, it meant they must have done something wrong, or their ancestors did
something wrong. And God would often times allow much suffering as a
consequence to his people for rejecting Him. But we can also see in the Old
Testament, in the book of Job, that God allows suffering to test us, to see if
we will remain faithful.
In
the New Testament, we see God brings forth the solution to death and suffering
by taking it on Himself in Jesus Christ, who is true God, and true Man. For
only God could be the solution to the problem of evil and suffering in the
world. Man could not atone for his rebellion; he needed God to pay the debt,
for only God can close the infinite gap that was caused by the infinite offense
of sin.
So
in his Loving plan, God enters into the weak and broken human condition, and
elevates it to Himself. From the moment we fell into sin through our first
parents, Adam and Eve, God already had a plan to save us from death and to
transform us into his Love. And this transformation would come by taking the
meaningless, confusing, horribleness of human suffering, and using it to defeat
death. He didn’t take it away, he enters into it to destroy it, and asks us to
do the same with Him.
Would
we be willing to suffer for the sake of Love?
In
many ways we suffer for those we care about by making little sacrifices of
love. Would we be willing to do the same with Jesus when we suffer? Can we
offer our sufferings up as little sacrifices of love as He did for us?
Suffering
is no longer meaningless, it is transformative. The Holy Spirit uses it to
transform us into the Love between the Father and the Son.
When
we say Yes, we are willing to drink that Cup of Suffering, we are saying to our
Lord, “We will suffer with you, if it pleases you. If you would let us share in
your redemption.” IN this we understand suffering no longer as something to run
away from, but rather something to embrace.
