Beatitudes: Those Who Suffer

Matthew 5:10-11

Romans 8:18-28

August 31, 2003

¹⁰Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹¹Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

¹⁸ I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 

¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;

²⁰ for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope

²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now;

²³ and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

²⁴ for in hope we were saved.  Now hope that is seen is not hope.  For who hopes for what is seen?

²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

²⁶ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

²⁷ And God who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

²⁸ We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

Just before a major downturn in the stock market, one guy tried to diversify his holdings.  He invested in paper towels and revolving doors.  His strategy didn’t work.  After he too lost a huge part of his holdings, a friend asked him how things were going in paper towels and revolving doors. He said, “I got wiped out before I could get turned around.”[1]

A little girl who was always getting into fights with her little brother and running to her parents in tears over what he had done, was riding along on her bike, when she bumped her head on the low hanging branch of a tree.  She ran into the house, yelling at the top of her lungs, “Mom! Mom!  Joey hurt me!”

Mom looked up from what she was doing and said, “Janey, your brother didn’t hurt you.  Joey’s not even here.  He went to the store with your daddy.”

The little girl suddenly got a startled look on her face.  Then in a bewildered sort of voice she said, “That means stuff like this can happen any time, any place and its not even Joey’s fault.  That’s stinks!”[2]

Trouble, trials, pain and suffering.  So often folks will ask why.  “Why me?!” someone may ask after an awful tragedy befalls them.  “Why that person?!” comes to mind when some good person suffers some terrible mishap.

“How could God let this happen?!” asks a troubled world when horrible things happen again and again and again.

Frankly, I don’t know why God allows such things.  I do know that we must ask why, its one of the things that separates us from other species of animals, that question why, especially when it is asked in the situations where it cannot be answered. 

No, I don’t know why God allows such things.  Yet I know that so often through even the most awful and terrible circumstances the suffering and the despair are not the last words in the story.

Thomas Andrew Dorsey was a black jazz musician from Atlanta who gained a certain amount of notoriety as a composer of popular jazz tunes.  In 1926, Dorsey gave up the fame and income of that industry and decided to concentrate exclusively on spiritual music.

In 1932, times were hard for Dorsey.  Just trying to survive the depression years as a working musician meant rough going.  On top of that, his new music was not accepted by many people.  Some said it was much to worldly, perhaps worrying too much about his past as a popular musician.  Years later he would say, “I got kicked out of some of the best churches in the land.” 

His life’s worst moment came perhaps one night in St. Louis when he received a telegram informing him that his young wife had died suddenly.

Dorsey was so filled with grief that his faith was shaken to its roots.  Soon however, he turned to the discipline he knew best – music.  In the midst of agony, he wrote the following lyrics:

“Precious Lord, take my hand, Lead me on, let me stand.

I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.

Through the storm, through the night,

Lead me on, to the light.

Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.  [3]

Like Easter after Good Friday, and resurrection after crucifixion, God never leaves suffering and pain unchallenged.

In the Beatitudes, we hear from the mouth of Jesus that those who endure suffering will be rewarded. 

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

At the very least, those who are persecuted will be recipients of the blessings of the heavenly kingdom. 

However, there is even more depth to the redemption of suffering and the restoration of life after adversity and pain than the promise to eternal life, which is itself quite a merciful gift.

Do you know how cranberries are harvested?  When the fruit is ripe the cranberry bog is flooded with water.  As the water covers the bush, the red berries separate from the bush and float to the surface where they are gathered and distributed to cranberry lovers everywhere.[4]

Flood waters bring disaster for most fruits and vegetables, not to mention what it means for foundations of homes, streets, bridges and other constructions made with human hands.  For cranberries, flood waters – what would otherwise be called disaster, release the fruit and make the harvest possible.

This brings to mind the passage of scripture from 1 Corinthians 15,

What  you sow does not come to life unless it dies…You…sow…a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or some other grain.  But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. [5]

Another analogy from the agricultural world comes to us from a great artist of Armenian Heritage.  Yousuf Karsh, a renowned celebrity portrait photographer, who was known for capturing striking images of people like Winston Churchill and Catherine Hepburn, once received a comment from one of his celebrity subjects, “It has been a terrible tragedy, what the Armenian people and even you and your family endured in 1915.”

Karsh replied quietly, “When even the most beautiful of rose bushes is pruned, it comes back stronger and richer and more beautiful.”

Yes, it is a difficult question, “Why must there be suffering?”  Yet we can be certain.  God does not allow suffering to be left alone, unmet by grace with the sufferers unblessed.

Several weeks ago, when we first began speaking about the Beatitudes, I mentioned that some people count eight Beatitudes and others count nine.  The discrepancy, I said, was because of the two blessings we just read, from verse ten and eleven of Matthew five. 

Some scholars read the two verses and say they’re talking about the same thing, they don’t make a distinction between the two and insist that verses ten and eleven refer to the same thing in different words.  They say, “Suffering for righteousness sake” is the same thing in this context as being “reviled”  and “persecuted” and having “all kinds of evil uttered against [one] falsely on [Jesus’] account,”  and so one must say there are eight Beatitudes.

Others would argue that verses ten and eleven constitute two independent Beatitudes.  These people insist that When in verse ten the word righteousness comes up, it is a code word for the standards of righteousness that Jesus had already imposed on the Pharisees and Sadducees.  That this Beatitude is referring to conflicts that have already past and that were endured within the church and synagogue, by the chosen people of God. They’d also say that the eleventh verse actually refers to what was to the hearers of Jesus’ words a “present possibility” of suffering and the looming likelihood of persecutions and torture that they would suffer under Roman Emperors like Domitian.  [6]

Regardless of whether you believe there are eight Beatitudes or nine, or whether you think five angels can dance on the head of a pin or 525 it is clear that there are many different types of suffering. 

We see this as well by looking at the two different portions of the New Testament out of which we’ve read this morning.  The Beatitudes are speaking about persecution because of one’s faith and theological stance, whether within the church (as in the eighth Beatitude) or persecution of the church and Christians by society at large (as in the proposed ninth Beatitude). 

The words of the Apostle Paul from Romans however, speak of the suffering of the “entire creation,” as a result of “futility” and from a “bondage to decay.”

In the Beatitudes, Jesus says that some people choose to attempt to be righteous and work in an alliance with the Son of God and are persecuted and subject to suffering because of it.

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul says that because righteousness is not possible, because the creation, and even those who are in Christ are not yet perfected, because we are all subject to failure and falling short and are caught in the “bondage to decay,” we will all suffer and know pain and know failure and sorrow.

Both Jesus and the Apostle Paul however insist that this experience of pain and suffering is not the end.  We’ve already discussed some of Jesus’ teaching. 

The Apostle Paul says, the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. That somehow through the “revealing of the children of God,” the entire creation, including the children of God will be adopted, will be redeemed from their suffering and will saved.  In the meanwhile, our fate is suffering, pain and sorrow: “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³ and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly”

Yet even as we wait, God gives us grace.

Once the great theologian who gave birth to the entire Methodist movement, John Wesley, was walking with a friend whose troubles were just up to his eyeballs.  He told them all to Wesley and said sadly, “I can’t understand it all.  If God is Love, why have all these things come upon me?  (There’s that question “why” again!)  It’s all too much for me.  I can’t see through it all.” 

They were walking in the country, and Wesley noticed a cow looking over a stone wall.  He pointed to it and said: “Why does a cow look over a wall?”  His friend was surprised, and with a smile, he said, “Because it can’t see through it.”  “Precisely,” said Wesley, “and if you can’t see through your troubles, try looking over them!”[7]

Don’t you wish it were that easy.  It isn’t is it.

Yet there is something to the idea of lifting up and over our trouble.  The blessing that Jesus speaks of and the groaning, yearning, hoping and anticipation that the Apostle Paul speaks of are mirrored in the words of Isaiah, [8]

“I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.” says the prophet Isaiah.  He also says,

“Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;  but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

The promise of the Word of God, both Old Testament and New, is that despite suffering, even with adversity and anguish which really are inevitable in the life of all the creation, God hears the cries and responds with loving nurture and care.

This is the last point of the Beatitudes, the Constitution and basic principles of our faith.

Humility, gentleness and meekness, hunger and thirst for righteousness and for purity in heart, merciful peacemaking and enduring pain and suffering until grace emerges, these are all marks of the Kingdom of Heaven, impossible pipe-dreams to those who don’t care to know or follow Christ.  Yet possible and promised as gifts of grace to those who seek them.

I pray that we might each have the courage to live in this grace and accept the blessings of the Beatitudes, knowing God’s own mercy and love and allowing it to change our lives.

Amen.