See, I Am Making All Things New - Called to Continual Transformation: Suffering into Hope

“See, I Am Making All Things New - Called to Continual Transformation: Suffering into Hope” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on June 21, 2020. You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 37:33.

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Romans 5:1-8

1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

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Do you live your life by a mantra?

You know, a motto, a goal, a direction, a guide? The things we post in our homes or the things found on our bookmarks or the things we tattoo on our bodies?

Do you live your life by a mantra?

I want to hear some of yours. Will you take a moment? Will you share a mantra in the Facebook comments? One that you use in your own life. Will you share it with your friends here at FPC Allentown?

Examples: growing up, my family had the serenity prayer hanging on one of our walls: “God grant me the serenity; To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference.” That’s a good life mantra.

I know Gandhi’s famous quote is another good one: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

How about “Life is what you make it.” Or “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Practice makes perfect? Carpe diem? How about “No Regrets?” How about “Do or do not, there is no try.” Shout out to Yoda for that one.

What about “Laughter is the best medicine?” I like that one.

Even Scripture gives us good mantras to live by:

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” -Mark 12:31

“Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” -Joshua 1:9

“Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God.” – Micah 6:8

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” –Philippians 4:13

Or even just: “Jesus loves me. This is know.”

Do you live your life by a mantra? Did you share it with others?

I do; I live my life by a few. Small phrases that direct the way I want to live my life. I think of them as goals. Guiding practices that keep me on track to a life that I think God has destined for me. I even think they provide a sense of structure when everything else may be chaotic, like life so often is.

And I want to share one of mine with you. One that is odd and unique and maybe dark and possibly a little weird.

A mantra of mine is: “Some day this pain will be useful to you.” “Some day this pain will be useful to you.”

This mantra of mine actually comes from the title of a movie that I watched in 2012, which actually comes from a book with the same name: “Some day this pain will be useful to you.” Now the movie itself was subpar – we’re talking a 9% out of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes – and I haven’t read the book, so I don’t have much to say about either of those – but the title! The title is so good, and something that was revolutionary when I first heard it. You see, I’ve made mistakes and I’ve done my best to learn from them. And I’ve experienced hardships and traumas, and they have shaped me. Some of those hardships came from being an open member of the LGBTQ+ community. I also know that those specific hardships have made me simultaneously a stronger and more empathetic pastor and person.

That pain I once experienced; it has become useful for me today. Do you know what I am talking about? How some things, especially the difficult things, have helped us grow as people? Can you relate to any of this? I hope to actually hear from you. Write it in the comments. Send me an email.  Have you experienced a time of pain or suffering and has the experience, although hurtful at the time, somehow made you stronger, more compassionate, more empathetic, more motivated, more humble, more hopeful? More connected to other humans who also have experienced a similar pain?  Or even just more connected to any human who is currently experiencing any type of pain? 

Here’s why this is on my mind:

2020 marks the ten-year anniversary of me graduating from high school. And at the beginning of this year, a friend and I, to reflect and possibly celebrate this past decade, we decided to create an order of ranking for each year. From the worst year – 2012, same year that movie title came out and maybe why I attached to it so much – to the best year – for me, tied between 2017, 2018, and 2019. And we both said that 2020, above all the other years, was going to be the absolute best year; it was gonna be OUR year!

And it’s not. Out of the past decade, 2020 is not the best year. 2020 is not even at the top of the list. Honestly, 2020 falls towards the bottom. Do you agree? And honestly, not for any individual, personal reasons for me although that might not be true for you. 2020 is at the bottom of the list for all the corporate reasons.

Wildfires in Australia. Earthquakes and wars in the middle east. Locust swarms in East Africa. The worst and largest humanitarian crisis in the history and the war currently happening in Yemen. 

A global pandemic. A national emergency. Several months of stay at home orders. Over 100000 related deaths. The economy is taking a hit; small-business and their owners are definitely taking a hit. People are arguing about whether they need to wear their mask or not while other are cut off from their families and friends and loved ones. Some are dying alone in hospitals and nursing homes; some have died alone.

And of course, the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd which has lead to violent riots, more acts of assaults and arrests, more polarizing stigmas about people of color and police officers. Tensions are extremely high, and it feels like as a country we are being forced to choose one side over another instead of working together. Good individual police officers are being tore down because of their line of work, and even worse, people of color, are still being assaulted, lynched, and killed.

And last, this month of June, this Pride month and the anniversary of the Pulse massacre, the number of transgender women of color is disproportionally high and now all transgender people worry about their medical care. And I have to ask: when is gender a death sentence?

And for our church; Jack has been gone for three Sundays now and as a community of faith we are feeling angry or sad or confused or divided. And it’s sometimes difficult to see the problems of the world when it seems we have problems right here.

So yeah, I’m gonna say it. This year – 2020 – is toward the bottom of my decade list. This year is terrible. We need to say it for what it is. This year is full of pain and suffering. And I say this as a white, American, healthy, educated, cis-gender, Christian, privileged male. So, imagine how much pain and suffering is happening for everyone who is not any of those things. Because when I say I’m privileged, it’s not about what I have gone through in any other moment; privilege is about what a lot of us don’t have to go through or will ever have to go through, like a lot of things that have happened in 2020 alone.

But some day this pain will be useful to us, right?

One last area of pain and suffering; in the lives of our young people. 2020 was supposed to be their year. Especially for our graduates, college and high school alike. They experienced their last day of school without knowing it was their last. Along with it they missed the last year of spring sports, musicals, award ceremonies, senior prom, and baccalaureate including walking the stage, flipping the tassel, tossing the cap, and the endless graduation parties.

Sure, they took pictures at home in their caps and gowns and some received yard signs. They celebrated together virtually through ZOOM parties and streaming ceremonies. Some received future employment and others were accepted into the next phase of their educational plans. And that’s all very exciting and great, but it’s not the same. For those of us who experienced all of these moments in person, we know it’s not the same. Our young people know it too.

So yeah, our young people are experiencing their own pain and suffering along on top of the pain and suffering of the world. And we should be empathetic to what this year has done to them. And! And we should be following with what their doing with their pain and suffering. Because they’re not sitting in it; I can tell you that much.

This summer we been preaching a series called, “See, I Am Making All Things New - Called to Continual Transformation.” And so far, this sermon has been all about pain and suffering. I’ve been naming it, maybe to some of our dismay, but I think we have to name it. So let’s name it. Let’s admit it as a reality. Let’s agree that it’s present. Let’s agree that to some extent, we all feel it. And let’s agree that there are definitely others out there who are feeling this pain and suffering a lot worse than we are. Are we in agreement? I still want to hear from you. Are we in agreement? Use those comments.

Now let’s talk about what we do with that pain, and how we let it be transformed.

When Paul writes about suffering in Romans, he actually frames it in the context of hope. And here, the hope that Paul writes about is not about wishful thinking. It’s not like saying “I hope it doesn’t rain today.” The hope in which this passage is framed is actually the absolute certainty about the future and God’s role in it. So instead, it is saying “My hope is in God and I know that God is with me, whether it rains or not.” But to get to that absolutely certainty of biblical hope which is the goal, Paul writes that is it suffering that acts as the catalyst. And it’s a step-by-step process from there.

So step one, the catalyst – we must acknowledge the suffering of humanity and our own suffering within it. And God doesn’t point the blame when recognizing this suffering. Rather Paul writes that suffering comes from all of humankind being out of sync with God, acting as sinners as part of a broken system. Which means for us to find hope in a better system, we must first acknowledge the broken system. And that’s going to hurt because when we acknowledge the broken system and see our part in it, we do actually shift some of the responsibility of the brokenness onto ourselves. Step one is by far the most difficult because we no longer sweep suffering under the rug but we embrace it head on. We name the pain, and we take more of it.

For privileged people like me, an example of this is acknowledging that people of color have more systemic struggles than us because of a broken system and then willing to take on some of the struggle to repair the broken system. For those of you who have been fighting the broken, unjust system, you know that to do so is an additional struggle, and yet you also know that struggle you have taken on does not compare to the struggle people of color experience because of the broken system we are all trying to fix.

Also, so far, this entire sermon has been all about taking the plunge into step one and embracing the suffering. It’s a difficult step, and if you’ve been uncomfortable at all so far by this message, then you get just how difficult this step is.

But immediately, step two and three and four move into the positives. Step two moves the suffering into endurance. We start finding our footing. We find our voice and our strength, and we start to learn when and how to use them… and when and how not to. We’re willing to take on more of the struggle, because we have learned that we can. And that because we can, we should. While taking on that suffering is a difficult step, finding the endurance to continue in that suffering becomes easier, because we know that God is with us in this fight, and we know that this fight matters; that this suffering matters.

Once again, as privileged people, we see that if people of marginalized communities have endured a worse struggle a lot longer than we have and survived, then we can do it too, even at a fraction of their pain. And so we commit to it, we endure the struggle because we know we can survive it, because people of God’s good creation have already modeled it for us, even if they were forced to endure it. And we know that maybe if we intentionally commit to some of this endurance, others won’t be so terribly forced into it. 

So step three moves that endurance into character, which means this is now a part of us. Part of our identity. This step is the most humbling, because in many ways, we are now giving our suffering and endurance over to God, and we are making the claim we are a part of God’s creation. And when we let our endurance move into character, we realize that we are no longer the central part of God’s creation but rather an equal part.

And as privileged people, rooted in our bones and our spirit, we understand that injustice against any of God’s creation, especially the oppressed, is actually a full injustice against God. And although the injustice may not be against us directly – most likely for many of us it’s not against us – it is against God. And when it’s against God and God’s creation, then yes, we have a responsibility rooted in our identity in Christ to fix it. Producing character means we not only acknowledge this responsibility but also fulfill it, even if it brings us back to step one and causes us more suffering.

But then we move into hope. The end goal. And as I said, this is not wishful thinking. This is absolute certainty in God’s faithfulness. Which means that justice and love and equality for all of God’s children can and will happen, with certainty IF – IF! – we as individuals of a broken system are willing to go through the steps. Suffer with others. Endure the pain because we can. Fully fulfilling the responsibility of fixing acts of injustice. And then finally, we boast in our hope by sharing the glory of God as true equals the way that God intended.

So back to our young people. I have served alongside youth programs in three churches in New Jersey, in Indiana, and now here. Through social media I still see what all of these young people are up to. When our young people see suffering in this world, they do their part to end it. The pain they’ve experienced? They’re using it now.  So today we celebrate our graduates but not just for graduating, but for being the ones who are changing the world. For working alongside God in transforming this world.

For a time such as this: maybe our mantra can be this: suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.

My hope – my absolute certainty – is what God is doing through our young people. And if they are doing it, so should we. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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