Visit to a Small Planet

Grizz and I collaborate on the script.

NB: According to my granddaughter, Grizz is female.

The scriptures referred to are Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Romans 3:19-28.

CT: Well, we have a special visitor for Reformation Sunday: our interplanetary visitor...Uh, what's your name again?

G: Grzl'pltz.

CT: Ye-ah. I'm gonna call you Grizz. So the first time you visited us, back at St. Francis many years ago, you said you were studying earth.

G: I wanted to determine if earth was an asylum or a prison.

CT: An asylum or a prison. And that was because...?

G: You are cut off from all other intelligent lifeforms in the universe. I thought the reason was, while humans usually know what you should do, you don't do it.

CT: Oh, that's right. And if we willingly do what we shouldn't...

G: You are lawbreakers and this is a prison.

CT: But if we do what we shouldn't do unwillingly...

G: You are sick and this is an asylum.

CT: Is there no third option?

G: That you are all dumb.

CT: Hmm. I think I explained then that we are kinda all of them. Sometimes we ought to know better and we just don't think. But also it's hard for us to do what's right at certain times and so we deliberately take the easy way out and don't do what we should. On the other hand, because of our fallen human nature, it's impossible for us to do right all the time. We do things we know will harm others as well as ourselves and we don't know why. We're spiritually sick.

G: And you told me how God in Jesus came to save you.

CT: That's right and because of what he did, we just have to put our full trust in him to be saved. And then he starts the process of transforming us into the people he created us to be.

G: So what is this Reformation?

CT: It's really a return to that message, thanks to a man named Martin Luther.

G: Ah, yes. 20^th century minister and civil rights activist.

CT: No, that's Martin Luther King Jr. He was probably named after the original Martin Luther. As you saw at the beginning of our service, on All Hallows Eve in 1517, Luther nailed to the door of his church 95 thesis or propositions he wanted to debate about the doctrine of indulgences. That led to a major rethinking of Christianity.

G: But according to our records, at that point in Europe's history, most people were Christians.

CT: True, but the church had drifted from the gospel or good news of Jesus. It was a big bureaucracy, with a lot of money and power. And what Luther proposed was going to make huge changes in the way it operated.

G: He wanted to get rid of the church?

CT: No, he wanted to reform it. He did want it to get rid of some things, like paying for indulgences to get people out of purgatory.

G: (makes scanning sounds) I just scanned all 31,102 verses of the Bible. It doesn't say anything about indulgences or purgatory.

CT: Precisely. In the 1500 years since Jesus was on earth, things got added that weren't in the Bible, and some that couldn't even be deduced from it. So by that time selling indulgences, or time off of doing penance in purgatory, was a way the church raised money. Luther's archbishop was doing it, to pay for his new and third bishopric, and some of that money was going to the Pope to rebuild St. Peter's church in Rome.

G: If the church leaders were doing it, what's wrong with that?

CT: Like to see a list of 95 things wrong with that? But mainly it misrepresents our relationship with God. It says we have to earn God's favor or grace, that we have to work or pay to get right with him. It ignores God's love and willingness to forgive us.

G: But if you do something wrong, shouldn't you pay for it?

CT: If you take or damage something that belongs to something else, sure. But what if you can't pay the cost? What if everyday you say and do numerous things that are wrong, or neglect to do things you should? We lie; we cut corners; we break traffic laws when we can; we lust after people we shouldn't and covet things we shouldn't. We don't love God as we should or our neighbor, much less our enemy. How could we possibly pay for everything we have done wrong our entire life? As it says in Psalm 49, “...the ransom of a life is costly; no payment is ever enough....” (Psalm 49:8) Yet the church was saying that if you pay them money, you could get out of punishment for your sins.

G: When I scanned the Bible it said that Jesus paid for all our sins.

CT: Exactly. Luther himself used to worry about every little sin he had committed. He despaired of ever being righteous in God's eyes. And then, in the course of teaching the books of Romans and Galatians, he realized that Jesus had taken care of that and that all we have to do is trust in God's grace revealed in Christ. The idea that the church could monetize that or in any way decide who gets God's grace was wrong. As it says in Ephesians, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not as a result of works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

G: So Christians don't have to do good works?

CT: Not to be saved. As we said, you can't do enough of them. But once we are saved, good works inevitably follow. As that quote from Ephesians continues: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (Ephesians 2:10) A doctor can't expect a person with a broken leg to walk. But once he fixes that leg, he expects the person to walk eventually. In fact, the doctor will write orders for the patient to do therapy so that he or she will walk again. Jesus fixes what's broken inside us with the expectation that we will walk with him.

G: So Luther explained this to the church leaders and they reformed the church.

CT: I wish. They called him to the Diet of Worms...

G: Diet of worms?

CT: I know what you're going to say.

G: Yummy!

CT: I did not know you were going to say that.

G: Can I have a diet of worms?

CT: It's a common mistake. In this context diet means an assembly and Worms was a town in Germany. They called Luther to meet with the Holy Roman Emperor and representatives of the Pope. He hoped they would listen to him. But they never let him debate what he had found in scripture. They just wanted him to take it back.

G: Did he?

CT: No. He couldn't in good conscience renounce the truth of the gospel. So they condemned him.

G: He died a martyr?

CT: He probably expected to. But his prince hid him from the authorities who might kill him. And while he was in hiding, he translated the Bible into German so all his fellow countrymen could read it for themselves and see if he was right.

G: So what got reformed?

CT: Ideas. Ideas about God and the church and the sacraments and the Bible and just about everything. And that led to new churches based on those ideas.

G: And he called those churches Lutheran.

CT: He didn't. He would rather the churches be called Evangelical because that means “gospel-based.” He wanted the church centered on Jesus and the good news about what God had done and is doing through Christ.

G: But the Roman Catholic church did not go away.

CT: No. And the disagreement got violent and even political. But eventually the Roman Catholic church did begin a counter-reformation and corrected some of the abuses Luther pointed out.

G: Did the Roman church ever accept the idea that we are saved by grace through faith?

CT: Actually it did. In 1999 a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was signed by the the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation. And in 2006 the World Methodist Council adopted it, as did the Anglican Consultative Council in 2016 and the World Communion of Reformed Churches in 2017, the 500^th anniversary of Luther posting the 95 theses.

G: So Luther's idea of the church being reformed is completed.

CT: Well, we still have differences to work out. Some of those differences are on important matters, such where authority lies in churches, and others. But on the essentials we are largely in agreement. We all agree that Jesus is God made man who died for us and rose again and that we are saved by God's grace, through trusting in him. We all believe God calls us to love him and love our neighbor in all we think, say and do.

G: So all is well and good?

CT: No. We still have problems to be dealt with. And part of this is because we focus a lot on reforming institutions and systems. But a good institution run by bad people can do bad things. People need to be reformed as well. When a potter sees that what he is making is not turning out right, he reshapes or reforms the clay into what he intended. God is the potter; we are the clay.

G: I find that image in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Romans. But how can people be reformed?

CT: By letting ourselves be changed by God, through prayer, through reading and absorbing his Word, through letting his Spirit work in our lives. The Bible says, “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17.)

G: Most religions I have scanned are about maintaining and blessing the status quo; but following Jesus is about changing people and the world for the better.

CT: Yes. And it starts with changes in yourself.

G: So if you aren't changing, if you are the same person that you were before becoming a Christian, if you aren't growing spiritually, if you aren't becoming more faithful, more hopeful, more loving, more Christlike, you need to ask yourself if you are really following Jesus.

CT: What an alien thought!

G: Thank you. Can I have the worms now?

Life and Death

This was originally published on July 31, 2016. When I recently changed a typo, Blogspot moved it here. There is no logical reason for that.

I don't remember the accident. It's odd because it only took a few seconds and it made a huge change in my life. In less time than this sentence will take, I broke both wrists, my left femur or thigh bone, the tibia and fibula in my right lower leg, my right heel, my sternum or breastbone, and 6 ribs, and I tore my diaphragm, my sigmoid colon, and my greater omentum and punctured my pancreas. That's for starters.

I do remember the aftermath. I woke to a first responder asking my name, what year it was and who was president. As I looked around dazed and noted that my airbags were deflated, I realized I must have had an accident and the nursing part of my brain recognized the questions and realized there were trying to assess my orientation to person, place and time. My legs felt as if they were dangling from strings rather like a marionette's. Apparently the engine of my car pushed the firewall back into my legs. When a deputy put his hands around my neck and cradled my head, my nurse's training told me they were about to put a cervical collar on me. Someone in a passing car snapped a picture and sent it to my wife's boss, who sent it to Julie, so that very moment has been captured. I remember it from my point of view and can see what it looked like from the outside. Weird.

I remember being cut out of the car and being pulled out and laid on a backboard. It was during my extraction from the vehicle that the pain finally kicked in. As they carried me to the emergency vehicle I remember saying “Ow” or “Oh, God” with every jolt. I remember being loaded on the helicopter but nothing further. That's when my right lung collapsed. They had to do an emergency thoracotomy me and insert a chest tube to reinflate my lung before they could take off and fly me to the trauma center in Miami.

I have one other memory of that day. It is an audio memory. I couldn't open my eyes and I had been intubated so I couldn't speak. But Julie confirms that it happened. She was sitting by me in the emergency room. Because she works for 911, she knew all the deputies, EMTs and first responders who had worked on me. And she was saying that she would have to make a lot of cookies to thank them. And then I heard the soft British voice of my brand new bishop say, “You don't happen to have any in the car, do you?” It was Bishop Peter Eaton's way of keeping things light. I remember nothing else. I was taken into the OR for the first of my 5 surgeries and was kept in a chemically induced coma for the better part of a week.

“You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.”

That's the climax of the parable Jesus tells in today's passage from Luke 12. After a guy in the crowd asks Christ to tell his brother to divide the family inheritance with him, Jesus asks who appointed him as the arbitrator over his estate. Then he tells the story of a rich man who ends up with a bumper crop. He plans to tear down his existing barns and build bigger ones so he can store all the excess. Then the man decides to kick back and enjoy himself because he's got it made. That's when God pulls him up short and tells him that he won't get the benefit of his labor. Jesus is re-enforcing the point made in Ecclesiastes 2. He who dies with the most toys does not win. Someone else will get to play with those toys. Our lives do not consist of having lots of possessions. When death comes, they prove to be useless. Jesus concludes, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

That's an odd phrase: “rich toward God.” But the sentence structure implies it is the opposite of storing up treasures for oneself. It could mean the rich guy should have given some of his wealth to God by contributing to the temple. But I think Jesus may be referring to Proverbs 19:17, “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.” Just 2 chapters later in Luke, Jesus says, “...when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (Luke 14:13,14) After all, the excess the man had was grain—food. Rather than build new silos, he could have helped out a lot of hungry people. But he was just going to sit on it and sell it off a bit at a time while he would just, in his own words, “relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Wrong! His last act could have been one of generosity and charity. Instead he was thinking only of himself when death came.

Such sayings by Jesus and in the rest of the Bible make us uneasy. We like having stuff. I think it goes back to childhood when we had a favorite doll or toy or blanket that we took everywhere. It was tangible and it made us feel we had a grip on this world, something to hang onto if the rug was pulled from under us. But it wouldn't help.

Any of those memories could have been my last. Or none of them. One moment I was driving home from a beautiful service at the cathedral, listening to a podcast, crossing over the last bridge to Big Pine, 2 miles from home. The next moment my car was careening across the highway and I was unconscious, my internal organs being shredded like paper, the bones of my body being snapped like so many twigs. And that could have been it. I may never have awakened in this world.

A lot of people don't. Just this last Monday 2 people were killed less than 10 miles from where I crashed. Julie witnessed the accident. She took her first aid kit to one vehicle. But it was too late for them. And the other car was a white Altima, like mine. The next day she discovered she knew one of the people who died. She took a day off.

Death is the fairest thing there is: one per customer. But we never know exactly when it will come. It may be an the end of a long illness; it may be a sudden accident or stroke or heart attack. It may be as the result of violence. We really don't like to think about our death. But it is coming. The question is not “will we die” nor “how?” It is “how will we live?”

Every day we get is a gift and grace from God. Every second is a second chance to start living our lives differently. If we look at things that way, if we are grateful for what we have been given—the people in our lives, our talents, the opportunities, the challenges, and all the things in life that cost nothing—we will have a better life than if we invest in mere physical stuff. Scientists have even found that people are happier when they spend their money on experiences rather than possessions. And they have verified that Jesus was on the nose when he said it is more blessed to give than to receive. Science concurs: doing things for others makes us happier than doing things just for ourselves.

And that makes sense. If God is love and we are created in the image of God, we are more true to ourselves, to our real natures, when we love and do things out of love for others. When I awoke from my coma, it was to find Julie holding my right hand and my daughter Beth holding my left. When I could do nothing for myself, I was supported by many many others. Besides the nurses and doctors and therapists, there was my family, my parishioners, the officers and inmates at the jail, people from other churches to whom I was just a name on a prayer list. People prayed for me and had faith that I would be healed and cheered me along every step of the way. You carried me like the 4 friends who carried the paralytic on a mat, and tore up somebody's roof and lowered the man through the hole to Jesus. My call from God and my love for these people lit a fire under me and motivated me to do what had to be done no matter how difficult and painful. I did so to the astonishment of doctors and nurses and therapists, who called me the miracle man, in part because people this broken usually give up. This call and this love is motivating me right now to make my way tomorrow to Miami and get from the doctor a note that will allow me to do here from a chair what I did in the nursing home from a wheelchair every week since Holy Week: lead worship of the God who healed me.

Our life is required of us every day. Jesus gave his life for us. Which means our lives are not our own. They come from God and were redeemed—bought back—by Jesus. And when the day of resurrection comes, we will be like him, embodiments of God's love. As Paul put it, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Mission

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 53:4-12, and Mark 10:35-45.

Brandon Gamble met his future wife in 6^th grade. That love story ended in the early hours of February 1, 2018. That's when his wife Tyeisha smelled smoke in their house. When Brandon opened the bedroom door, the hallway was ablaze. Brandon broke the bedroom window and told Tyeisha to get out of the house. Then he ran through the fire to find their 5 children. He broke the window in their bedroom and started picking them up. A neighbor who was awakened by all the breaking glass took the children, ages 6 through 13, from Brandon as he handed them out of the window. Tyeisha was treated for smoke inhalation, the children had cuts from the glass, but they all survived. Brandon didn't. He died saving his family.

It is amazing when a stranger runs into a burning building to save people he doesn't know. We admire that person but we wonder why they would do that. However, we don't ask that question when a person does it for someone they love. Instead we secretly ask ourselves if we were in the same situation, would we act just as heroically? We hope so.

Brandon Gamble gave his life out of love. He ran into the burning hallway on a mission to save his family. Having a mission, an overriding purpose, can make people do extraordinary things. When the Nazis occupied Poland, the Jews were all herded into the ghetto. And that's when Irena Sendler found her mission. Sendler was a social worker in Warsaw. She obtained a fake ID that said she was a nurse. This allowed her to go into the ghetto and bring food, clothes and medicine. When she found out that the Nazis were planning to exterminate the Jews, she joined the Polish underground and recruited 10 friends to help her. This group, which eventually grew to 24 women and one man, began to smuggle out Jewish children in boxes, suitcases, burlap bags and even coffins. Most of the children were taken to Roman Catholic orphanages, convents and homes but Sendler recorded their names so they could be reunited with their families. The scraps of paper with the names were put in jars and buried in a friend's garden. When she was captured by the Nazis and tortured, she did not give up her friends in the underground nor the location of the jars. During one session her interrogators broke her feet and legs. She escaped with the help of a Gestapo officer who had been bribed by the resistance. She went into hiding. After the war, she unearthed the jars and tried to reunite the children with their families. Sadly, it turned out that many of the families had been gassed by the Nazis. Then Sendler would get the children adopted by Polish families or by Jewish families in Israel. It is estimated that Irena Sendler saved the lives of about 3000 children.

Scientific evidence shows that a key part of both mental and physical health is having a purpose in life. In a recent study adults who had a sense of purpose scored better in memory, cognitive function and executive function tests than those who didn't, regardless of their education level. Teens who had a purpose in life had a more positive self-image, less delinquency, and were better at transitioning to adulthood. Another study found that those with a greater sense of purpose had a 58% reduced risk of death. And even when they adjusted for wealth, physical activity and smoking, the risk of death was still 30% lower than people who saw little or no purpose in life. In yet another study those with a sense of purpose had “lower levels of inflammatory gene expression and higher levels of antibody and antiviral genes.” Having a purpose in life can boost your immune system.

Having a purpose is also a key component of happiness. In fact, studies show that pursuing happiness is a great way to be miserable. It is more important to seek to be useful and to find meaning in your life and work. As psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl observed, “happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.” It comes from finding and pursuing a purpose in life. Your purpose will in turn give meaning to your life, even the painful episodes. For instance, let's say your purpose involves doing medical research into an obscure disease. That can be a long and painstaking task. Finding funding for a rare disease can be frustrating. Hitting dead ends in your research can be discouraging. But as you make progress you will be able to look back and see those obstacles are just part of fulfilling your purpose. It's the same when people are pursuing a career in sports or entertainment or law or ministry or anything worthwhile. I tell the inmates at the jail that their incarceration at least gives them time to find a goal, a purpose, a better life and to start working out the steps they can take to achieve that goal. I pray with them that someday they will be able to look back on their experience and say, “That period of my life sucked, but now I know what I needed to learn or how I had to change as a person. Now I know why I had to go through that difficult time.” Often God's plan for you can only been seen in retrospect. Only by looking back can you see how things came together to bring you to this point, though at the time those events may not have looked as if they were part of any plan.

You know what enlisted people say is the hardest thing about adjusting to civilian life after having been in a theatre of war? Not having a mission. We might think it'd be great to sleep in and spend time with the family and not have to worry about having your legs blown off by an IED, and they do too. But they miss having a mission. “Today we are marching to point X and looking for Y.” “Your job is to monitor radio traffic or scan satellite images for evidence of enemy activity.” “Our mission today is to set up a pump system so this village can have clean reliable water.” Everyday, they were given a mission, all laid out, precisely and step by step, with measurable goals. And when they get back to the States, they miss having a clearly defined mission.

When we look at passages such as our reading from Isaiah 53 we tend to concentrate on Jesus' sufferings. But just as prominent is his mission: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” Jesus didn't suffer for no reason any more than Irena Sendler did. He didn't die randomly any more than Brandon Gamble did. He suffered and died to rescue us, those he loves, from the things that enslave and destroy us.

Jesus states his mission in our passage from Mark: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” He did not come to be treated like an oriental potentate and be fawned over and have his every whim fulfilled. He came to heal and to teach and to die to save others. And if we are his followers we must take part in his mission: to serve others self-sacrificially and to tell them what he has done.

When a soldier is sent on a mission, he is given whatever he needs to complete it. If he needs it and asks for it, he gets it. Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you.” (Matthew 7:7) He is not talking about asking for a million dollars or your heart's desire but about what you need. “Is there anyone among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish will give him a snake? If you then, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11) God will give us what we need to carry out our mission.

What we need can be our talents, or skills, or training. Because your mission is not necessarily the same as someone else's. Bach and Handel were musicians. Their mission was to help people praise God through music and song. The missions of El Greco and Michaelangelo were to glorify God through painting and sculpture. Giotto and Sir Christopher Wren carried out their mission through architecture. Giotto was a painter as well and Wren was an anatomist, astronomer, geometer and mathematician/physicist and so he made multiple contributions to the common good. Many doctors and nurses and other medical personnel feel called to use their skills and training to help people. And there are less heralded and less glamorous but nevertheless vital activities, like keeping the books and maintaining and repairing equipment and cooking and getting information out and driving patients to appointments and so much more, that may be certain folk's missions for God.

What we need for our mission can be our personality or demeanor. Sometimes the right person for the job is someone whose personality or attitude invites others to join or puts people at ease or who communicates on a level other than mere words. George Burns was a wannabe comic, who would do anything to be on stage. If a vaudeville show needed a dog act he would get one from the pound. He would say he was a singer, or a dancer, just to get before an audience and tell jokes. He was getting nowhere. Then he found Gracie Allen. He took her on to feed him lines. But then he realized that she was funnier than he. So he became the straight man and let her get all the laughs.

Which leads me to this: what you need to do your mission can be another person. Maybe they can do the part of the job you can't. For instance, there are also people whose personality is not suited to being the public face of an enterprise but they can get the work done. I've worked with doctors who were great at their specialties but had a terrible bedside manner. It even happens in show business. You may never have heard of Gummo Marx. He was the Marx brother who didn't like being on stage. He left the act very early and became a theatrical agent who represented his brother Groucho and other entertainers. He knew where his talents did and did not lie. Ask anyone who's ever been in a show. Those "behind the scenes" people are invaluable.

Sometimes the biggest obstacle to our getting what we need is our reluctance to ask someone to help. We have a vision of what we want to do but we need someone practical to organize it. We need someone to finance it. We need someone to supervise it. We need someone to recruit others or to motivate them. When I was in rehab I learned that walking involves 11 muscle groups, more than I realized. Too often Christians think we are to be the Lone Ranger, doing God's will all by ourselves. But even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. We are the body of Christ. We have each other to help us do what God calls us to do. We can use their input as well as their talents in carrying out our mission.

What is your mission? What did God put you here to do? Some clues are: what things are you good at? What are the things you love? What does the world around you need? Where those things overlap you will usually find your purpose.

One of the reasons that churches die is they lose their sense of mission. They think their mission is just to exist. They forget that they are here to do what Jesus commissioned us to do. And he never said, "Go build beautiful buildings and shut yourself up in them, separated from the world." He told us to go out into all the world. He told us to make disciples of all nations. He told us to baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. He told us to teach them to observe all that he has commanded us. And what did he command us to do? To love God with all we are and all we have, to love our neighbors as ourselves and to love one another as he loves us. How you do those things, how you use what he's given you and who he's put in your life, is your mission. It's what God called you to do. It's what he created you for. It's what the world needs. And it is what you need to be fulfilled and happy and to give meaning to your life in Christ.

Pain

The scriptures referred to are Job 23:1-9, 16-17, Psalm 22:1-15, Hebrews 4:12-16, and Mark 10:17-31.

There are people who do not feel pain. Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, or CIP, is not, however, a superpower but an extremely dangerous condition. It is common for such people to die in childhood because they sustain injuries and contract illnesses that they don't notice and which go untreated. The ability to feel pain is essential for survival.

Pain can be an important symptom. As a nurse I was taught to ask patients to describe their pain. Was it sharp or dull, acute or an ache, burning or stabbing? Where did you feel the pain? Did it radiate or was it localized? Did something trigger it? Was there something that made it better or worse? How long did it last? And, of course, how would you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being almost nothing and 10 excruciating? Pain can tell a person in the healing arts a lot about what's wrong with you.

That said, nobody really likes pain. We want it to go away. And if there is an underlying cause we want that fixed or cured. But sometimes you can't make it go away. Especially if the pain is emotional or psychological. Like, say, if you lost something or someone important to you. Such as Job. He loses his children, his livestock, his servants, his wealth and his health. Last Sunday we read about how he broke out in some painful running sores. Today's reading is midway through this drama in verse and while not cursing God, Job is mad at him. He wants to talk with him. In the last 4 chapters God does speak to Job though he doesn't give him reasons for his suffering. Instead God asks Job questions he can't answer, questions about creation. The implied answer is “If you can't understand how these things work, there is no way I can explain why bad things happen to good people.” But Job is satisfied that God speaks to him. And God is more pleased with Job and his questions than with the 3 men who are certain that God is permitting these things to happen because Job must have sinned to deserve it. God doesn't want people lying or misrepresenting the facts in an effort to vindicate him or justify his actions. In fact, God tells the 3 “comforters” to make up with Job if they want God to forgive them.

It's odd that one of the ways that militant atheists attack theism is by pointing out that there is suffering in the world, as if the Bible did not mention that aspect of reality. In fact, scripture meets the objection head on. Yes, bad stuff can happen to people who don't deserve it. This happens despite the fact that, generally speaking, those who obey God tend to do better in life than those who don't, the way a person who obeys human laws does better than the one who breaks them. But not all suffering is self-inflicted. Sometimes there are area-wide disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis, and sometimes people get buffeted by personal disasters, like accidents, diseases and deaths. The Bible not only acknowledges this but wrestles with it. Numerous psalms, like today's, are pleas from an innocent person undergoing great suffering. Small wonder that from the cross Jesus utters the same words as the opening verse of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And the psalm eerily describes sufferings so much like Jesus' that we read it on Passion Sunday and Good Friday. The psalmist feels that God is distant and unresponsive. Those around him mock and despise him. Meanwhile his body is racked with pain and thirst. Yet he looks to God's faithfulness in the past and, though our lectionary reading cuts off at verse 15, the psalm eventually ends on a note of hope. Things may be bad at present but they will not stay that way. The psalmist looks forward to God's rescue which he will declare to the nation. “For he did not despise or detest the suffering of the oppressed; he did not ignore him; when he cried out to him, he responded.” (Psalm 22:24) Every gospel ends not with the death of Jesus but with the announcement that he is risen. And as we said, even Job eventually gets a response from God and everything he lost is replaced.

But nowhere does the Bible give a simple formula as to why people suffer things they did not bring on themselves. As we said, at the end of the book of Job God doesn't give an answer. He just multiplies the imponderables with questions of how the world works. It's as if God is saying there is no answer that humans can understand. Even with all our scientific knowledge we still don't understand why some people who don't smoke or drink or abuse drugs or eat too much get cancer or heart disease or dementia. Maybe we will someday, though cognitive scientists point out that our brains may never be able to comprehend everything we uncover. Our brains were designed to help us survive; the fact that we know as much as we do about quarks and quasars and quantum foam is remarkable for creatures who only finally embraced the germ theory of disease in the 1890s. But it is no guarantee that we will not come up against parts of reality that will ultimately prove to be indecipherable to the 3 pound organ that resides between our ears. So why do we assume that we will be able to unravel all spiritual truths?

Perhaps the answer is not one that can be put into words. Blue is apparently the last color most cultures come up with a word for. And scientists have shown very primitive tribes without a name for blue an array of color swatches on that end of the spectrum and those tribes cannot even see the difference between green and blue. Deaf people in Nicaragua who grew up in little rural villages and who had to create their own gestures to communicate with their families were only recently sent to schools for the deaf to learn sign language. And when asked, they could not explain the way they thought before they had language with which to express their thought processes. If you don't have the proper language for something, you can't think clearly about it. I wonder if people like Ezekiel or the John who wrote Revelation were trying to convey in words things that were indescribable. Language has its limits.

And when it comes to suffering, would it really comfort you to have a cold, precise, logically provable reason why your loved one had to die or that your cancer was inevitable? Plate tectonics goes a long way towards explaining earthquakes and tsunamis but does that take away the pain of the lives lost? Explanations can only go so far in giving comfort. They don't do much to give suffering meaning.

There is a kernel of comfort in shared suffering. It is good to know you are not alone, that there are others facing the same pain and bewilderment and grief and rage and questions you are. As our passage in Hebrews points out, “...we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” Every spring we try to imagine the suffering Jesus underwent. But few of us have been flogged until our backs were ribbons of flesh. Few have been marched through crowds of jeering onlookers or stripped naked in a public place or had 9-inch nails driven through our wrists and ankles or were hoisted up on rough wood to hang in the sun until we die of shock and suffocation. But that does mean that Jesus understands not only physical pain but the other kinds of suffering we undergo. Like humiliation, embarrassment, and harassment. Like betrayal, abandonment by friends and social isolation. Like anxiety, depression and the horror of facing your own death. In the old translation of the Apostles Creed, it said of Jesus “he descended into hell.” If hell is the worst torment, both physical and emotional, which you can experience, then, yeah, Jesus was in hell. And he knows intimately whatever hell you are going through.

Say what you will about his allowing us to suffer, but in Jesus we see that God is willing to take his own medicine. He asks of us nothing that he has not subjected himself to. The rich man in our gospel cannot give up his wealth to save himself but Jesus gave up infinitely more to save us. We are like children who will not give up our germ-ridden toys to get better, not realizing that the Great Physician has given up everything to come up with a cure for us.

In the Princess Bride, the Dread Pirate Roberts says, “Life is pain....Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.” I will not go that far but pain is an inescapable part of life. And sometimes it is an inescapable part of getting better. Dressing changes can be painful. As a candystriper I remember how everyday I had to help remove the dressings and clean off the ointments that covered the body of a young man with burns over most of his torso and arms. We then stuck him in a whirlpool bath that would remove what we couldn't including dead skin, leaving him pink and tender. It was excruciating for him but it had to be done to protect him from infection. There were days when the work I did in rehab after my accident had me in tears. But I did what I had to. As a nurse, I had seen too many patients refuse to do the painful physical therapy that would put them back on their feet. I was not going to be one of them. If pain was the gateway to health I was willing to go through it.

It helps if our pain has meaning. Parents who lose their children will often get involved in or even start groups or organizations to help other parents in the same situation or to spare them from the same loss. Most of the programs that help newly released inmates adjust to life outside and avoid going back to jail and prison were created by people who have been incarcerated in the past. Alcoholics Anonymous was begun by two alcoholics and is maintained by alcoholics. If you ask me the reason we have such horrible healthcare in this country is that the vast majority of the people we elect to government are relatively healthy and have good healthcare and are unable to empathize with those who don't. Any time a government official takes a special interest in a disease or disorder it is because they or someone they love has that problem. The same is true of celebrities and philanthropists. They rarely help those who suffer if they don't know suffering themselves.

God knows our suffering. He knows our pain. He used the horrific suffering of Jesus to save us from locking ourselves into neverending suffering. We are often our own worst enemies. We may not be able to avoid disasters from without but we can avoid trapping ourselves in disasters from within. Jesus can save us from hells of our own making.

But that requires change and change can hurt. Change can mean loss. We may have to give up the ways we used to live and the ways we thought of ourselves. To become a new person means leaving the old one behind. Just this week the 55 year old science fiction show Doctor Who underwent a tremendous change. The Doctor is an alien time traveler who, when mortally wounded, has the ability to regenerate a new body and new personality. Thus the role can be played by any actor and the Doctor can be grumpy or goofy or a straightforward hero. But until now the actors could only be white males. Now, for the first time, the Doctor has become a woman. Many fans were upset or even outraged although the fact that this was a possibility was broached back in the 1980s. And last Sunday we saw a new Doctor, just as smart and wise and just and compassionate as her predecessors, explain to her bewildered human companions what this radical change is like. When asked if it hurts, she says, “You have no idea!...There's this moment, when you're sure you're about to die, and then...you're born. It's terrifying. Right now, I'm a stranger to myself. There's echoes of who I was and a sort of call towards who I am. And I have to hold my nerve and trust all these new instincts and shape myself towards them.” And with this in mind, when she faces the villain of the episode, an alien who hunts and kills humans, unlike most heroes, she doesn't want to destroy him. Instead she graciously offers him a new start if only he will take it. Because, she says, “we're all capable of the most incredible change. We can evolve while still staying true to who we are. We can honor who we've been and choose who we want to be next.”

Paul said, “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation, the old has passed away and the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) As Jesus died, so our old self must die so that we can have new life, his life. (Colossians 3:3-4) As Paul put it, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)

We all have to die. We can die alone or as part of something bigger. We can die without hope of ever existing again or we can die “with hope of Easter joy.” We can suffer for no reason or we can give meaning to our suffering by helping others. In a world where the rich and powerful whine about how unfair their life is, we can show how a truly unfair situation can be transcended through the help and power of a person who gave up the advantages of divinity to live and die as one of us and who in so doing changed his status from victim to victor over evil and death.

Pain tells you that something is wrong. It tells you that you need healing. Jesus is our doctor. He makes people better. He doesn't promise us that the process will be painless, however; only that it will be worth it. And that we will not have to go through it alone.