Scripture: Romans 5:1-8
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
With everything we’ve faced over the last few months, it would be understandable if you admitted that you were running on empty, that just maybe, perhaps, your internal fire has burned down to its very embers, and even those coals are barely glowing, and about to extinguish.
And why not? 2020 has not been a kind year, even as Scripture tells us explicitly, “Look carefully how you walk, for the days are evil.” We’ve endured months of sheltering in place amidst stay-at-home orders and adapted to working at home virtually and having groceries delivered and trying to decide whether or not a late-night craving for ice cream is really an essential reason to go to the store. 114,000 deaths from COVID-19. Then we all watched as George Floyd was murdered in broad daylight, and we mourned and grieved, and then saw a glimpse of perhaps justice being born as protesters took to streets to demand it, and then we used our energy to argue whether black lives matter or blue lives matter or all lives matter (sidenote: if you’re arguing about this, you missed the point, go check your thinking), and complain about NASCAR removing the Confederate flag from venues and watched everyday to see which corporations issued half-hearted statements and whether or not they were sincere and working towards change.
And it’s only June, folks. We’ve got six more months to go!
Why wouldn’t we be running on empty? Why wouldn’t our fires be burned down to embers, smoldering, as we attempt to regroup, refocus, gain perspective on ourselves and learn how to reconcile and work towards justice for our brothers and sisters of color, all while navigating whether or not to wear masks in public in 90 degree weather?
But—we have hope.
Getting to hope isn’t an easy road. The Apostle Paul tells as much here in our text today.
We start with some excellent points of clarification: first, we are justified by our faith in Jesus that we have peace with God. A wonderful commentary I read reminds us of this- We have peace with God, not peace with the world, not peace with Satan, but peace WITH God. This means God is on our side. Our fight is with evil and injustice and racism and bigotry and poverty and corrupted systems- the world, Satan. Our hope here is the truth that we fight oppression created from the very systems we created out of sin and we fight that fight with the God of All Creation on our side.
And then Paul here tells us something contrary to human experience. He says, “We rejoice in our sufferings.”
Really? We’re supposed to rejoice in the midst of suffering?
But Paul makes an excellent argument here. Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, so simple arithmetic says suffering ends with hope.
Suffering in and of itself is not joy-inducing. No one wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Boy oh boy, what kind of wonderful suffering am I going to endure today? What joy there will be in misery!” And yet, our communities of color have suffered for centuries- black people, brown people, the same sins of the past continue today wrapped in different packages: slavery and genocide have been replaced with over policing, generational poverty, and well, genocide hasn’t changed so much. We’re still killing people of color indiscriminately, and those we haven’t killed yet, we’ve rounded up and delegated to border containment centers, the industrial prison complex, and reservations. That’s right now in 2020. If any of this makes you uncomfortable to hear or think about, guess what? You’re not the one suffering from it.
But that’s not to say this is the only suffering alive and about in the world. Poverty affects everyone from the bottom to the top. Socioeconomic status research shows that people in poverty are most concerned with relationships, because through relationships, people can endure together. If that’s not the Gospel for you, something Jesus said about loving your neighbor, well, I’m not sure what is. Middle class folks, research says, are more concerned with things, with stuff, “Keeping up with the Joneses,” and Upper class folks are more concerned with maintaining wealth. Middle and upper class people suffer, too, to be sure, but they don’t suffer with decisions like whether to pay the light bill or the phone bill because both are two months late and we still need something to eat this week.
Let’s not forget, too, those people who are suffering with physical illnesses, prolonged battles with cancer, that terrible dragon which prowls and destroys at will, or autoimmune diseases (like my mother and sister in law who have lupus and fibromyalgia, and my wife, who has Hashimoto’s, who look ‘normal’ and are wrecked with pain nearly all the time), or any number of other protracted diseases which can be managed but never cured, like diabetes, or COPD, and let’s not even get started on the suffering from Alzheimer’s, which destroys the patient and the caretaker, slowly, bit by bit.
And Paul tells us, “We rejoice in our suffering.” This is because in our suffering, in our extended battles with the suffering we experience daily, we are made stronger by it. We find endurance to maintain ourselves in whatever conditions we face.
We have heard many medical leaders tell us about our current pandemic, “This is a marathon, not a sprint,” (It feels like we’ve been sprinting for the past few months, though, doesn’t it?) and suffering is the very same. Suffering is a marathon, and endurance for us is that ability to keep on walking when you can’t run anymore, when your muscles are screaming out and cramping, when your entire body is weak with dehydration, when your feet are bloody and you feel like there’s just not another step in you. That’s endurance. Winston Churchill, for better or worse, said, “If you’re going through Hell, keep going.” That’s endurance. Seeing no certain end to the suffering you’ve endured and saying, “I can’t stop now. We’re not there yet. We’re not done.” That’s endurance.
Endurance, Paul tells us, produces character. Suffering without endurance or character is misery and pain. Suffering with endurance grants character, the ability to engage our endurance. Character is our ability to see that hope ahead of us, because we’ve seen the past, we’ve seen how bad things have been in our suffering, and we are assured through the character which is developed of hope. Character produced through the crucible of suffering and enduring that suffering leads us ultimately to hope.
Character is the endurance gained in the suffering which allows voices to gather in the streets and cry out for justice. Character is the endurance gained through the suffering which rises and burns and says we will study war no more. Character is the endurance gained in the middle of suffering which leads us all to stand together and say we oppose racism- we desire and will build something greater from the ashes of oppression- something called love.
Character leads us to that great hope- maybe our suffering doesn’t get better. Maybe we lose the fight, ultimately. Maybe God looks down and says, “All right, my good and faithful servant, you’ve finished the course, you’ve run the race, and now it is time to come home and receive your just reward in Paradise with me.” Character produces that hope that even if we have to endure suffering all our lives, that hope that says once life on earth is over, we will be perfected and live our lives wholly and completely in the light and love of God Almighty.
Paul tells us suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope.
Now, I don’t want you to miss this: the hope we have, produced through our suffering does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit living within us.
Remember we talked about our fires earlier? About where we were with our strength and our energy and our own endurance these days? About how maybe, just maybe, our fires which had been hopefully been burning bright (or at least brighter) before, our fires were burned down to embers?
It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, and Paul tells us here it’s nothing to have shame over. I want you to see this in a palpable way. The Hebrew word for ‘Spirit’ is ‘ruach’ which means “breath” or “wind.” This is the Holy Spirit living inside of us.
So instead of having fear of our burning out, of our embers ever being extinguished by the suffering so ever-present in the world today, we have the Holy Spirit, God’s own breath breathing life, breathing wind into those embers, reigniting them, causing those smoldering coals to burst forth within us, to roar back to life into consuming flames of God’s love. God breathes God’s own breath into us when our own breath is taken, when we can’t breathe, and that Holy fire burning within us is the very same which steels us against the suffering that we might endure, or barring thus, is that Holy flame which carries us to Heaven.
Our great hope is the hope of Jesus. Through His blood, through His death and resurrection we have been purchased. Our debt of sin has been paid in full, and we are made whole, but even Jesus never promised us following Him would be easy or painless or free from suffering- no, Jesus said, “Take up your cross daily, and follow me.”
When we can no longer depend on our own strength and endurance and character to endure the suffering, we have our Lord God Almighty on our side, propping us up, carrying us with love and breath and fire through the danger ahead. We have God’s own hope living within us, that someday soon, we will be reunited with our Maker, that we will look on God’s own face, that our tears might be wiped away forever, and we are greeted with open arms and a full banquet table, Jesus Himself saying, “Welcome home, my good and faithful servant.”
In closing here, Paul also said this about hope- “These three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” In our faith, we are justified through Christ Jesus. In our hope, we are guided and supported by the Holy Spirit, ever stoking our fires to keep us burning, to ignite us for action. And our faith and our hope both lead us to love, which is why God created us and is all God asks of us, to love God with everything we are, even when our fires burn low, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, particularly when their suffering looks and feels different than our own.
This is endurance, this is character, this is hope- that we know when all is said and done and we’ve committed our level best to love God and love neighbor, that the Kingdom of God awaits us, one day.
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