Sermon — September 3, 2023
The Rev. Greg Johnston
In a 2012 book, the writer Anne Lamott described what she calls “The Three Essential Prayers”: “Help,” “Thanks,” and “Wow.” I’ve always loved that. It captures the essence of prayer. Most of our prayers, from the incoherent ones we say while lying awake in the middle of the night to the highly-polished ones we say in church on Sunday mornings, fall into one of those three categories: asking for God’s help when we need it, or someone else does; giving thanks for the good things in our lives; or simply expressing the awe and wonder of existence in this universe.
But I can’t help but think that Anne Lamott missed a fourth, one-word prayer, one that’s often left out, a kind of prayer that many people aren’t even sure they’re really allowed to pray: “Why?” As in, “Why God, why? Why is this happening? Why is it happening to me? Why now?” Just “why?”
Listen to some of Jeremiah’s words in this morning’s reading, taken from a couple different translations. Listen, and think for a minute: Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever prayed this kind of prayer?
“Lord, you know how I suffer. Take thought of me and care for me…” (Jer. 15:15 NET) “Why am I always in pain? Why is my wound incurable, so far beyond healing?” (15:18a CEB) “Will you let me down when I need you like a brook one goes to for water, but that cannot be relied on?” (15:18b NET)
Have you ever prayed this kind of prayer? Have you ever asked God, “Why?” Have you ever been angry at God for letting you down? Have you ever felt like saying, “God, you know I’m suffering,” do something?
Sometimes this form of prayer, this “why, God, why?” is the only one that feels authentic. But people often feel like it’s not a prayer they can say. For some, it’s because they’ve been taught that they’re not allowed to. They’re not supposed to question God’s plans. Their attitude has to be “thy will be done,” no back-talk allowed. They’re supposed to “take up their cross” and bear it without complaint. For others, the kinds of situations that lead to this question drive them away from God. Surely no loving God would allow such situations to occur, and so it’s not worth bringing them to God in prayer. Either they’re too angry with God to be on speaking terms, or they just don’t believe that there’s anyone listening. Still others, I think, have trouble with this kind of prayer because they can’t find the right thing to say. There are no words to express the depth of confusion, or pain, or sorrow. And so they can’t.
But this is the kind of prayer that we find, again and again, throughout the Bible. The Psalms are full of cries to God, demands that God finally act to make things right. The Book of Jonah turns the question into a short story, with Jonah shaking his fist at God’s unfairness; the Book of Job sets it in poetic verse, as Job demands repeatedly and at length that God explain how any of this is okay. And here, we see the prophet Jeremiah’s prayer, the prayer of a man called by God to prophesy unpleasant things to his people, and to bear the brunt of their anger in response. Jeremiah blames God: You did this to me! “Your words were found, and I ate them, and they were my joy…” (Jer. 15:16) But look what’s happened now. Jeremiah looks at his life, in which he’s done everything God has asked, and he asks in response, “Why, God? Why? How is this fair?”
When we ask these questions of one another, we human beings tend to reach for answers that make the senseless make sense. “Everything happens for a reason,” we might say. “God never gives us more than we can handle.” These words can sometimes be comforting—although often not. But in a sense they always minimize. In the face of the many tragic situations in life, the things that simply don’t make sense, they try to make them make sense; and usually fail.
God’s answer to these prayers is different. God doesn’t offer a rationalization. God doesn’t try to make it make sense. God reveals compassion; and God offers hope.
“Compassion” is at the heart of what the life of Jesus reveals about God; com–passion, in its original sense: con- meaning “with,” and passion meaning “suffering,” as in “the Passion of the Christ.” God is a God of compassion, because God has suffered with us. When we cry out to God asking why, God isn’t angry that we’re asking the question. God just answers, “I know it hurts.” I’ve been there too. This is why Jesus tells the disciples that he “must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering.” It’s not an accident. It’s part of the plan. And it’s part of the plan because Jesus is God incarnate, the God who hears our prayers walking on the face of the earth, and to say that Jesus suffers is to say that one of the Trinity suffers, that God suffers; that God knows what it is to be betrayed and to grieve, to suffer pain and to die, not just in the abstract sense that God “knows” everything but because God has experienced it all. Whatever you are going through, whatever you have gone through, whatever you will go through in this life, God knows. God has been there before, and God is with you now. And for what it’s worth, this is why the Christian belief in Jesus’ divinity is so important: if Jesus is not God, then God remains aloof from all our pain and all our suffering; the human experience remains, at best, an academic pursuit.
This is also why Jesus’ response to Peter’s rebuke is so harsh. This is the “stumbling block”: that Peter’s tempting Jesus to stay aloof, to avoid sharing in our pain. And Jesus could choose to do that. He’s a miracle worker, for goodness’ sake. He’s God. He can walk on water, walk through walls. He could simply walk away and live a pleasant life by the sea, multiplying loaves and fishes and turning water into wine. But instead he chooses to walk in the way of the cross, and to transform it into the way of life.
And he invites the disciples to do the same. If they want to follow him, he says, they should follow him; follow him in the way of the cross. They shouldn’t try to insulate themselves, or stay aloof from the suffering of the world; it’s going to come, one way or another. But the way of the cross is the way of life, because the way of love inevitably brings up closer to suffering. When he says that “those who want to save their life will lose it,” but “those who lose their life for my sake will find it,” (Matt. 16:25) the word he uses here for “life” is psyche. It’s a word we often translate as “soul.” If you want to do as Peter suggests—if you want protect yourself from pain and spare yourself from any kind of suffering—you can only do it by risking your own soul, by giving up on love, by shutting off the compassion you feel for the people around you or by pretending that no one else is worth thinking about. We ask “why is this happening?” and God almost never answers the question. God listens with compassion, and God invites us to treat one another with compassion.
But that’s never the end of the story. God isn’t just there to comfort us in the face of suffering. God promises something more. God promises salvation: new hope, new life, a better future world, an actual solution to the problems that face us. Jeremiah asks God why, and God doesn’t only answer, “I am with you,” but “I will deliver you,” “I will redeem you.” (Jer. 15:21) Likewise, after Jesus tells his disciples that if they’re going to follow him, they’re going to need to take up their crosses, he offers them hope: those who are willing to be vulnerable, those who are willing to risk compassion and love, will be redeemed. “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels,” Jesus says, “and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.” (Matt. 16:26) And it’s this same hope for God’s future that animates Paul’s exhortation to the Romans: they can be patient now, because God’s justice is coming.
Again and again in life, we ask God “why?” And I’m sorry to say, there is no easy answer. But an answer isn’t really what we need. We need compassion. We need comfort. And we need hope: the hope that the story doesn’t end here, that there is a future in which all the wounds of this world will be healed.
So “let love be genuine,” Paul says. “Hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection… Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:9-10, 12, 21) “For I am with you,” God says to Jeremiah, “I am with you to save you and deliver you.” (Jeremiah 15:20)
Amen.