The Unimaginable
There are moments that the words don’t reach,
There is suffering to terrible to name.
You hold your child as tight as you can.
And push away the unimaginable.
The moments when you’re in so deep
It feels easier to just swim down…
(Yes, I am going to stop there and not let the music resolve. You’ll just have to hum the ending.)
These are the opening stanzas of the ballad that paints a picture of Alexander & Eliza Hamilton’s grief after they lose their son in a duel sparked by an insult to the Hamilton family character in the Broadway hit musical Hamilton.
It is also for me the soundtrack of an unbelievably hard season with one of my own kids, a season of grief and fear when we were unsure that we would all make it through difficult circumstances.
As Lin Manuel Miranda penned “…we push away the unimaginable.”
Suffering is part of the human condition. Maybe you’ve been lucky enough to avoid it, but my guess is that most have not. In most of our lives, there has been at least one breathtaking moment of pain, loss, grief, suffering. Different degrees perhaps. But still…it is there. It becomes part of our flesh.
On our discipleship journey, we’re exploring this truth:
A disciple participates in God’s suffering and transformation in the world.
We explored last week the transformation that sometimes comes through hardship and tragedy and suffering, the ways God remolds and remakes us through life’s experiences.
And I quipped last week that I was tackling transformation first because it was easier.
I that is absolutely true.
But we have to acknowledge suffering as part of the journey.
But because it is real and true and lived.
Let’s begin with a breathtaking reality in the way the truth is written in our book about becoming a disciple.
The sentence is: A disciple participates in God’s suffering and transformation in the world.
God’s suffering.
Hear that.
God suffers.
Now if you’ve grown up with an image of an almighty, all-powerful and controlling God, that might be hard to swallow.
What kind of God cannot prevent God’s own suffering?
And…
What kind of God allows us to experience suffering?
A God who knows suffering. A God that is not moving the pieces on the chess board. A God who called us into being but isn’t a puppeteer. A God who because of God’s own experience of suffering can be around us in our suffering with wisdom, empathy, shared grief.
You know how much I roll my eyes at how the Holy Spirit shapes me while I am preparing to preach – and most notably she’s present in the hardest topics.
I have a colleague who is in his mid-thirties, and after serving in the Navy, he went to college and then to seminary. We traveled together to India in 2013. Shortly thereafter, he married an amazing woman with one son, and since then, they have had two more beautiful and bright boys.
This friend fought lymphoma before their wedding – and he prevailed to become cancer free. We all watched that breathtaking battle and prayed and cooked and donated. We watched his hair fall out. We watched him lose weight. We watched his then fiancé pour herself out caring for him. In the end, he was ok. They had a beautiful wedding…and began to grow their family.
Then, 380 days ago, about 3 months after the birth of their youngest son, my friend had a massive stroke while alone in his bathroom and went down hard. So in addition to the stroke, he suffered a secondary traumatic brain injury from the fall. He was near death in a coma for weeks. Then he woke up, but he woke up as a radically different person. For the past year, his wife has shared his journey with many…and while he walks and talks and has mastered self-care, while he has the book knowledge of his education, his personality is radically altered. He is not quite the same person…a disorienting and frustrating source of suffering for all who love him.
I spoke to him this week. His wife has set up daily zoom calls with friends who pray with him and talk about life with him so that he can practice vital skills – social skills, emotional regulation, executive function. I signed up for this timeslot weeks ago.
Brian is still a candidate for ministry in the UCC, and so we were “talking shop” if you will. I hesitated to mention the sermon I was working on.
But I did.
And his answer came from a place of deep hurt, of long suffering, of real experience.
To paraphrase, he said something like --- I struggle to believe that Jesus did all the things the gospels say – because our prayers stopped being answered some time ago…Suffering has no purpose.
Sometimes when all of our social cues are a little off, it is easier to speak the cold, hard truth out loud.
The silence hung between us. I took a breath.
There is no point in trying to debate the value of suffering and the likelihood of miracles with anyone knee-deep in a life radically altered by hard things. No point.
All I could do was cry with him. About what has been lost. About what will never be regained.
Yes, we prayed. And we believe prayer changes things.
But my friend and his family have suffered. A lot. And they continue to suffer. And they will continue to suffer. Maybe some day things will be different. But today there is an aching hole where what once-was is missing. And things will never be the same as they were before.
There are moments that the words can’t reach.
There is suffering too terrible to name.
When I thought then about what I could say, when I prayed about what this truth we’re addressing today on our discipleship journey really means, I realized that about all we can say is that suffering exists. It is real.
We could, like Job’s friends, try to find all the reasons someone might be responsible for their own suffering. Or we might try to explain all the ways God is working through that suffering to change something. But really…think about the suffering of those closest to you. Of your own suffering. Does “it’s God’s plan” really fly?
What kind of God is one who uses suffering to make a point or to change us somehow?
That’s not the God I know, the God I experience, the God who weeps and asks us to weep with them.
The God I know spoke through human lips – I come that they may have life and have it abundantly.
And those same lips cried out on a cross, My God, my God why have you forsaken me…words from the Psalms, words already deeply rooted in Jesus’ faith tradition.
God suffers.
And if God suffers, then God knows suffering.
And if God knows suffering, then I have to believe that God is with us in our suffering. And I believe God suffers as the world suffers. And we can be with God then, in God’s suffering for all the world.
God suffers because cells multiply and viruses multiply and we can’t always stop biology.
God suffers because sometimes our choices hurt others.
God suffers because immigrants are in cages.
God suffers because black men are incarcerated at a rate far higher than anyone else.
God suffers because people are hungry and homeless.
God suffers because we struggle to love one another.
Does suffering have a purpose, an intent? No.
Does suffering have an impact? Yes.
Let’s be clear:
Suffering is not God’s plan.
Suffering is not punishment.
Suffering is not something we seek so THAT we have the experience.
Suffering is not to be glorified.
Suffering IS part of the human condition.
Suffering just IS.
Suffering is real.
Through our own suffering, we might understand another’s suffering.
Maybe.
Maybe we can grasp the suffering of biology run amuck.
Maybe we can begin to grasp the suffering of immigrants in cages.
Maybe we can begin to understand the suffering of black men who are caught in our prison system.
Maybe we can begin to grasp the suffering of those with no roof over their heads and now food for their bellies.
Much like the music progression that didn’t resolve at the beginning of this sermon, this sermon doesn’t neatly resolve. It doesn’t have a quick and easy learn and go do lesson.
But here’s my prayer.
My prayer is that there is some comfort in knowing that God knows suffering.
My prayer is that there is some awareness that comes from understanding that suffering is real and true, and not imposed on us as punishment.
My prayer is that we are surrounded by people who love us well when we encounter suffering.
My prayer is that we see how hurt manifests in the world – sometimes of generations.
And we reach out with understanding.
May it be so.
Amen.
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