The Reverend Mike Riggins

5/21/23

Hardship

Isaiah 45:1-7
I Peter 4:12-14

I can now add a new one to my list of unlikely movies from which I have gotten

sermon illustrations: Men in Black II. Will Smith's character is mocking Tommy Lee

Jones' character. Jones' wife has left him and he obsessively uses the vast

surveillance capabilities of the agency for which they work to watch her. Smith asks

him why she left, and did she ever remarry? Then he says, “You know what they say:

better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” Jones leans near to

him, and in that fabulous raspy voice of his, says, “Try it.” Losing loved ones hurts. It

is well to have loved, but when we lose them—however it happens—it hurts. All

suffering hurts. So when the Apostle Peter writes, “rejoice in so far as you share

Christ's sufferings,” we can be forgiven for wanting to lean in and say, “Try it.”

Peter writes to people who understand suffering. These Christians live in what

we now call northern Turkey. They have begun to experience persecution. Adherents

of the dominant religion in the area have noticed their growth in numbers, and that

they have separated themselves from communal life. Suspicious and threatened,

these neighbors have harmed the Christians both verbally and physically. In many

towns the Christians have been prohibited from holding positions of authority and the

informal, personal network that assists people in need has been taken away from
them. Peter writes to people feeling isolated, intimidated and fearful.

In this case, “Rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings,” may sound a bit

insensitive. At the beginning of the counseling training I received in seminary, like all

students I was required to sit in silently while a credentialed counselor met with a

hurting family. I did so through three or four sessions. Eventually the counselor asked

my opinion (privately, thank God, not in front of the family). I told her what I thought. I

thought they were whiners. I thought they could easily make different choices. I

thought the teen-aged daughter was running the whole show and she needed to be

put in her place. When I finished the counselor just stared at me. She finally said,

“We have a lot of work to do on you.” They did do that work, and now I have thirty-

eight years of experience. I will let those of you who have sought my counsel judge

how well I do it, but I want to emphasize I am happy to do my best for you should you

wish to come see me about any spiritual and/or emotional needs you have.

While Peter may seem as rough around the edges as young Mike was, he is

actually making a theological point. Christ had to suffer. In I Peter 1:3 we read, “By

his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of

Jesus Christ from the dead.” In order to resurrect, Jesus first had to die. In order to

die, he had to suffer. And the point of it all was to help those who believe in him to get

born anew. Peter continues with, “(and we have) an inheritance which is imperishable,

undefiled, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are guarded through faith for

salvation...” Suffering produces salvation. Peter believes it is well worth the cost.
 And Peter adds to this theological point about Christ's suffering for our sins a

word of encouragement: “If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are

blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.” The text does not

include the word holy before spirit, nor does it capitalize spirit. Nevertheless, we must

work fairly hard to deny Peter has the Holy Spirit in mind here. “The spirit of glory and

of God” can be no other. And we often perceive that spirit most clearly when we hurt

the most. Betty (her real name) played the piano at our Tuesday afternoon worship

services at a retirement community in Traverse City, MI. Another woman had brought

in a magazine article about people in the community who claimed to have seen

ghosts. The attendees discussed it before we started the service. Betty listened for a

while, as some said they believed these reports while others discounted them. Finally

she said, “Well I don't know about ghosts, but I have seen a spirit.”

Now Betty was a practical, no-nonsense character. So we all just stared at her.

We could tell she meant what she said. She went on to relate that her adult daughter

had died a few years before following a grueling, nasty battle with cancer. When she

died in her hospital bed Betty, sitting beside her, saw a wispy figure “come off” of her

daughter and “come onto” herself. She said she was not frightened, just terribly sad.

When this spirit settled on her she kept all the pain, but also immediately felt confident

she could bear it. She told us something like, “I have always felt it was my daughter's

spirit. It was telling me I could do this.”

Whatever we may believe about ghosts and spirits, this story really does not
stray very far from the New Testament teachings about God's Holy Spirit. Visible or

invisible, we believe it is God at work among us, here and now. It can offer us support

in grief, courage in the face of spiritual intimidation, healing of all kinds. When the

spirit of God rests upon us we can endure whatever suffering we may experience.

Very few of us have ever experienced persecution for our faith in Jesus Christ. Almost

all of us have lost a loved one. Almost all of us have felt doubt about Christ's

resurrection creeping into our hearts and heads. Almost all of us have felt frustration

and anger with others in the church. We have the Spirit resting on us. It has “come

onto” us. When we hurt, turn to that Spirit in prayer and in fellowship with the church

and you will come to know you, too, can do this.

Though he wrote to Gentiles, Peter was himself a Jew. His people had known

more than their fair share of suffering. The anonymous prophet scholars call Second

Isaiah communicated the vision we read today to Peter's ancestors, to a people

enslaved far from the Promised Land. By the power of that same spirit of God,

Second Isaiah has foreseen that God intends to free his people and send them home.

And he plans to use a Gentile to do it. Cyrus, the emperor of the Persians, will release

the Jews. Cyrus is one of the greats of history. Under his enlightened and efficient

leadership, the Persians (now the Iranians) defeated not one, not two, but three

regional powers and dominated the largest territory known to history until the rise of

the Romans some five hundred years later. Under Cyrus, the Jews gained human

rights and many rose in the ranks of the imperial administration. These are the

circumstances in which the Book of Esther happens.

“messiah”. This is the only person called messiah in the whole of the Old Testament

who was different from the Messiah, who would come from the line of the Hebrew king

David. This oracle was written just before the Persians defeated the Babylonians, one

of those rival powers. The Jews languished in slavery in Babylon. This vision predicts

that Cyrus will defeat the Babylonians, and his armies did so within about twenty years

of its writing. The Jews, an insignificant people from the Persian perspective, will

petition for their freedom. Cyrus will grant it—and as the Book of Ezra tells us, he will

send them home with a sizable gift of money. Most of them will return to the Promised

Land, where they will race to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem before anybody else can

attack them. But many of them, now free people, will move instead to the Persian

capital city. For the record, Cyrus will order his troops to conduct a peaceful

occupation of Babylon, thus encouraging peace between conquerors and conquered.

And why does God decide to free his people? Because God wants to. Because

God can. The Jews have not earned their freedom through faithfulness to God's law.

(The prophets tell us they did earn their suffering through faithlessness.) Some of our

suffering results from bad choices we make. Some results from faithlessness. Much

of it just happens. Why did Betty's daughter get cancer? As I do not recall what kind

of cancer she had I cannot venture a guess about the potential roles played by

genetics, diet, healthy living, environmental factors and etc. The fact is she got it. And

it got her. But the spirit of God empowered Betty to endure her grief. Many of us know

somebody who engages in destructive behaviors. Perhaps we can find ways to

recovery requires. Or those whose faith is dying. Or whatever form of hardship they

must endure.

The early Christians faced challenges we almost cannot imagine. Would you

put your life on the line for your faith? Would I? Peter writes to people who are doing

it every day. If they can do it, maybe we can. Maybe our suffering rarely comes from

defending our faith. Yet we do suffer. The pandemic and social media overexposure

have slammed the accelerator down on a horrible trend that has been coming for

about twenty years. People from the ages of roughly seven to thirty-five years are

experiencing unbelievable rates of depression. Suicide ideation has skyrocketed.

Suicide has become the leading cause of death across this demographic. (The only

exception is young black men, for whom gunshot wounds “top” the charts.) As

Christians, we must respond with the power we know, that has come upon us: the

Spirit of God. We must pray for their healing, but thoughts and prayers alone will not

suffice. For this and every other form of suffering present in our culture we must find

the spiritual power to care enough to get involved, to listen, to express our love. They

are suffering. Let us do what we can to connect them with the power who told Second

Isaiah, “I form light and create darkness, I make health and create woe. I am the Lord,

and I do everything.” Let the source of all power bring power to bear on suffering:

yours, your loved ones, your brothers and sisters in the church, on all we know.

Suffering is no blessing, in and of itself. It is a heavy burden. But we have the

Comforter, the Spirit, who helps us bear it. And that is a blessing.