The Gift of Suffering

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 1, 2007; Palm/Passion Sunday, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

The Gospel is the Passion according to Luke -- printed at the end of the sermon

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Kevin Anderson is a psychologist. Several years ago he struggled with chronic pain that made it difficult for him to sleep or work. At about the same time, his father contracted a common skin disease from his dog, applied the recommended topical medicine, and "began a yearlong descent as his liver failed from the toxic effects of the medicine that was supposed to heal him." Kevin says that the combination of his father's strange illness and his own chronic pain "were darkness upon darkness, an experience of powerful powerlessness." (1)

He calls this period his dark night of the soul -- a personal hurricane. A friend who played an important part in his healing reminded him that his crisis "could be a painful transformation to a new and beautiful place." To symbolize that hope, she gave him a refrigerator magnet of a monarch butterfly. He says, "Though I couldn't see or believe it then, the image got through to me in a way that words could not."

The day arrived when Kevin's father told the doctors he no longer was willing to endure the five-times-daily dialysis that kept him alive. Outside the hospital room, Kevin wept, held in the embrace of his oldest brother Bob. "How can this suffering be?" Kevin asked. Bob's startling answer was, "It's a gift."

Something broke inside Kevin at that moment. He called it "a new awareness." He writes, "What felt to me like a singular tragedy -- losing my father -- in fact happens millions of times daily all over the world. Those who have suffered heartbreaking loss join the vast brotherhood and sisterhood of those who have been fired in the crucible of deep sorrow. We all get our chance to become intimately acquainted with grief. Suffering rips us open, and into that place flows compassion -- if we let it."

Fast forward several years to the Sunday before Labor Day, 2005. A physician friend called officials in Biloxi, Mississippi to ask how many medical teams were there five days after the storm. "None," was the answer. Kevin's friend quickly recruited some doctors and nurses, and when Kevin offered him some money to help support the trip, he said, "I have another idea -- come with us, we can use a psychologist." So, Kevin went along. And listening to his intuition, he packed a pocketful of butterfly stickers he found at a crafts store.

Arriving in Biloxi, he felt "like a soldier coming to a war zone." The doctor said, "It looks like a nuclear bomb went off down here. It looks ever worse than the tsunami." He had been there also.

Kevin felt somewhat intimidated by the enormity of it all. "Am I strong enough?" he asked himself as their plane prepared to touch down. He decided to approach the physical destruction of Biloxi "as an outward manifestation of the devastated place (he) had already visited in (his) own soul. Though he had never been in a disaster zone, it felt like familiar turf when he recalled his own dark night.

Kevin talked with hundreds of people in Biloxi. Most of them talked of their faith, and spoke of how people are more important than material things. Those who suffered the worst were "the ones for whom the storm had layered a new experience of darkness upon a life that was already in crisis because of drug or alcohol addiction, mental illness, divorce, or the recent death of a loved one. Kevin said, "I knew that turf too, and I remembered how the simple, compassionate presence of those willing to stand in the darkness with me had been so important to my healing."

For the first couple of days, the butterfly stickers in his pocket just seemed trite in the face of such suffering. But eventually he risked sharing one "with a woman who had lost her home in the storm just weeks after suffering a shattering personal tragedy." Life seemed "so dangerous and unpredictable" to her that she doubted she could ever experience normalcy. Kevin suggested to her that "her pre-Katrina caterpillar life would eventually transform itself into a winged life, but not without some time spent in the confusing darkness of the chrysalis, the only place where metamorphosis occurs." Weeks later she wrote him to let him know "she was hanging in, trying her best to be about the work of transformation."

Kevin says, "Whenever I used them, the butterfly images felt like tiny pebbles to fling at a Goliath of need, and I had no illusions that I was going to slay anything in a few days in Biloxi. But when, a few days later, I saw people I had spent time with and I asked them if they remembered what we had talked about, many smiled softly and said, "Yes -- the butterfly.

"My time in Biloxi helped me experience the truth of my brother's insight into the mystery of suffering. Because I had been ripped open by death and darkness and learned that suffering can be a chrysalis that precedes the gift of transformation, I was able to be serene and strong while being present to numerous human beings in acute hardship. As it turned out, then, I was strong enough to transform my own dark night into a drop of compassion for the ocean of suffering in Biloxi."

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On a hill outside Jerusalem two millennia ago, a young Jewish man hung in the chrysalis of suffering -- absorbing pain and evil and death into his deepest being -- responding only with compassion. "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." Hanging there so powerless, he looks a little like a tiny pebble flung at a Goliath of need. Today we stand before the anguish of this man's painful cross. Maybe we ask, "How can this suffering be?" Somewhere in the back of our minds we hear the words, "It's a gift."

That day outside their father's hospital room, when Kevin asked his brother, "How can this suffering be?" and he heard Bob's answer, "It's a gift," Kevin worked with those words, creating a poem called a nested meditation. A nested meditation takes a phrase and sits with it until it offers another line of conclusion. Then sits with that stanza until it opens to new insight.

Later that day Kevin wrote this nested meditation:

How can this suffering be?

How can this suffering be a gift?

How can this suffering be a gift?
Rip it open.

How can this suffering be a gift?
Rip it open,
and the heart floods with compassion.

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The cross of Jesus is God's simple, compassionate presence willing to stand with us in the darkness of our being. When Jesus gave us the gift of his suffering, his own heart ripped open to flood the world in compassion. May we walk the way of the cross, be transformed in the chrysalis of his tomb, and emerge into the butterfly life of resurrection, living in his love and sharing his compassion which will heal the world.

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(1) Quotes in this sermon are from Kevin Anderson, Katrina Meditations, published in Spirituality & Health, Sept/Oct 2006, p. 52-57.


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The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to Luke (23:1-49)

Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, "We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king." Then Pilate asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" He answered, "You say so." Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, "I find no basis for an accusation against this man." But they were insistent and said, "He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place."

When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. And when he learned that he was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him off to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign. He questioned him at some length, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then he put an elegant robe on him, and sent him back to Pilate. That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies.

Pilate then called together the chief priests, the leaders, and the people, and said to them, "You brought me this man as one who was perverting the people; and here I have examined him in your presence and have not found this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us. Indeed, he has done nothing to deserve death. I will therefore have him flogged and release him."

Then they all shouted out together, "Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!" (This was a man who had been put in prison for an insurrection that had taken place in the city, and for murder.) Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, "Crucify, crucify him!" A third time he said to them, "Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him." But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed. So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished.

As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.' Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; and to the hills, 'Cover us.' For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?"

Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews."

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, "Certainly this man was innocent." And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.
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