Scripture - Psalm 22  

Why do we suffer?  Why do we as human beings experience suffering in our lives?  When I started to think about this “why series” of sermons, and more intentionally began to ask people about their own “why questions,” this one topped the list.  The subject of suffering in general is one that draws our thinking through an endless mire of questions. 

Last week I invited you to stick your “why questions” in the offering plate, and I’ll do the same today, so please feel free. After today we’ll have three more Sundays in October to wrestle with the question “Why?”  Here’s what I received last week…

• Why am I so lucky—so “blessed”—and others so unlucky or “unblessed”?
• Why do children die?
• If God is out there, why doesn’t he stop all the horrible things people have done over the centuries

Good questions.  Difficult questions—questions that are so real to life.  The world can be such a traumatic place, and we all inevitably encounter suffering of one kind or another.  And so we are bound to wonder why. 

Why do we suffer?  Why does suffering seem like it’s so unavoidable in life?  And why does suffering seem so unfair?  Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to… bad people…  Why?  Does God make us suffer?  Does God allow us to suffer?  Does God have any control at all over whether or not we suffer?  If God has the power to stop suffering but doesn’t, isn’t that the same as making us suffer? 

To press the point further, if God is good and God is great, then why do we suffer?  If God is good—if God loves us and cares for us and wants good things for us… and if God is great—if God is omniscient—all-powerful—able to do anything… then why does suffering exist?  Could it be that God isn’t really all that good?  Or is God not really great?

I want to say three things about suffering today.  The first is to simply remind you that when it comes to suffering, asking “why?” is a faithful, biblical thing to do—that it’s ok to question God when we suffer.  The second thing I’d like to do is to attack the notion that everything happens for a reason.  The third thing I’d like to do this morning is to offer some insight about God’s goodness and greatness when it comes to human suffering.  Ready?  What time does the Brewers game start?  3:00… ?  We might make it. 

Ok.  So first, a reminder that asking God why we suffer is a good and faithful thing to do.  I was at a funeral once where a woman was this close to asking “why?” but couldn’t.  She was the mother-in-law of the man who’d died, and she stood with family members greeting that long line of visitors and coworkers and acquaintances.  Her daughter, a widow now, was tearful, but seemed to greet each one with some ease and hospitality.  She was a wreck, of course, and would completely fall apart later, as she’d done many times since his death.  But for now she was running on adrenalin and that energy that sometimes visits a grief-stricken room.

Not so with the mother-in-law, who perhaps could not bear the sight of her daughter in so much pain.  She stood by her side through it all, but you could sense that there was something different.  She was angry.  Eyes glaring at the floor, shoulders tight, hands in fists…  Angry that he’d died, angry that her daughter was alone, angry about grandsons who wouldn’t know their father. 

I often feel like the best way to be at a funeral is honest.  If you’re sad, be sad.  If you’re going to cry, cry.  If you need to fall apart, for gosh sakes, fall apart completely!  And if you’re angry, it’s ok to be angry, too.  This woman was angry. 

When the service was over I approached her and said once again, “I’m very sorry for your loss.”  She thanked me and she seemed a little softer then.  So I said, “I’ve been thinking about you all so much.  The past few days have been so hard.  You all have been experiencing so much sadness… and even anger.” 

At the word “anger” she looked up and said, “Yes.  That’s it.  I’m angry.  I just keep asking God…”  She broke off and held back a wave of tears.  After a bit she said, “I mean I know I shouldn’t be questioning… but what’s the sense in all this?”

I think I know what happens to us in these situations. We experience a loss—a painful one, even—and in the days that follow the grief hits hard and we struggle and strive to support each other and get through.  And sometimes it feels like the one thing we have to keep us going is our faith.  And the thought of losing our faith on top of everything else is just too much to bear, and so we dare not question God about anything that’s happened!  Certain questions become off limits:  Why?  Why, God?  Why did it have to be my parent?  My child?  My spouse?  What reason could there possibly have been for this senseless loss?” 

We hold back from asking these questions in particular out of fear that they might destroy what little faith we have left.  And so I have an assignment for you.  I want each and every one of you to read and reread Psalm 22 this week.  Read it and remember it for the next time you’re with someone feeling forsaken—or for the next time you’re feeling forsaken yourself. 

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?  O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest… I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.  My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from helping me?

Friends, it is ok to ask God “Why?” and it doesn’t have to be pretty.  You can be angry with God, you can shake your fists at God, you can feel utterly forsaken and let God know—you can join Jesus himself and ask the same question he asked from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

It’s ok.  And not only is it ok, it’s faithful.

Now, what a lot of us attempt to do in the midst of suffering is to move very quickly from the question to the answer.  We wonder, “Why am I suffering?” and conclude, sometimes immediately, “There must be a reason!”  After all, everything happens for a reason, right?  Wrong. 

First off, I think I know why we want to believe that everything happens for a reason.  Life feels so out-of-control sometimes, and it’s comforting to feel like there’s meaning behind all the madness.  The economy goes south, you lose your job, you get sick, a tornado blows through your house, the dog dies, the cat runs away, the check gets lost in the mail, your car falls apart, you lose your keys, lose your wallet, lose your mind… wouldn’t it be nice to think it isn’t all for nothing?  That it’s all happening for a reason? 

Some of us invest a great deal of energy examining life for its reasons.  And that may not be entirely bad.  I often say that just because everything doesn’t happen for a reason doesn’t mean that meaning cannot be made out of anything that has happened.    

Now, to say that everything happens for a reason may sound logical at first, and even faithful.  But if we really believe that everything happens for a reason, and by that, we mean that everything is somehow a part of God’s plan, then what we’re really saying is “God has planned your cause for suffering.  God wrote into your life story this tragedy, your sadness, your pain…”

But let’s think this through a bit more carefully.  When a person is murdered, is that really the will of God?  And if it is—if God wished for this to happen—then did God also cause the murderer to commit that terrible crime? 

Close to 30,000 people die every single day from diseases related to starvation and malnutrition.  Is this God’s will?  Is there a divine reason for this?  And, is it part of God’s will that those of us who have the resources to make that number smaller fail to do so?  When we say, “Everything happens for a reason,” aren’t we really saying that we need not work to help anyone—after all, tragedy, disease, war, famine—it’s all happening for a reason…? 

Granted, we live in a world of cause and effect.  Actions have consequences, so in a way many things do happen for a reason.  But let’s not confuse that with the will of God.  God does not will everything that happens.  God did not will the holocaust to happen—there was no grand reason there.  God does not will prostitution or drug addiction or AIDS. 

Sometimes I think we say that “everything happens for a reason” because we can’t bear the thought of God not being in control.  We get laid off from work or have a miscarriage or we’re diagnosed with cancer, and somehow we want to believe that our loving God wouldn’t just let those things happen.  And we feel like we have two choices.  Either we say that God’s making things happen for a reason, or we say that God’s… Well, what do we say?  Or what are we afraid of saying?  That God doesn’t care?  That God’s not there?  In a moment I want to offer another way to understand those suffering experiences.  [1]

So far today I’ve reminded you that it’s ok to ask God “Why?” when you’re suffering.  And hopefully I’ve given you reason to believe that not everything that happens for a reason.  Still, though, we have the question before us, “Why suffering?”

What I’d like to examine with you here is the fact that most of the time, when we wonder about God’s will and human suffering, we begin with some assumptions about God’s nature.  “God is good and God is great.”  God is good—God loves us and wants good things for us.  God is all-loving.  And God is great—all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful.  God is almighty, omniscient! 

And so naturally we ask, “Why would an all-loving, all-powerful God allow for the presence of suffering in the world? Cancer?  Earthquakes?  Tsunamis?  Does God not love us enough to do anything about those things?  Or is God not powerful enough to stop them?  Diabetes?  Sudden infant death syndrome?  Mental illness?  Why would a good and great God let these things happen?”

Here’s the answer, sort of.  Are you ready?  Jesus Christ.  Ok, I admit it.  That doesn’t sound like an answer that fits exactly.  So let me say a little more.  In fact, let me ask one more question.  Why is it that whenever we question human suffering, we conjure up this image of an all-powerful God making things happen, letting things happen—this image of an almighty God using power to either create suffering or allow suffering or stop suffering—when the best sense we have of God’s identity is in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom God emptied himself of power and took on the form of a servant?

Let me put that another way.  When we wonder about why we suffer and why God doesn’t do something about suffering, the image we have in mind might be of God doing this.  (Folded arms, stroking beard, looking down on creation, trying to make up my mind…) 

God is in heaven, looking down, making decisions about who suffers and who doesn’t.  God directing traffic, essentially—a hurricane here, a famine there, Parkinson’s here, benign tumor there…  God in God’s power, moving the world in such a way that some of us suffer more, some less, and we all wonder why. 

Another image to consider when we think of human suffering is this.  (Point to the cross.)  In Jesus Christ we have our very best image of who God is.  And in Jesus Christ God emptied God’s very self and took on the form of a human servant.  And here’s the key.  In Christ, God felt pain, felt anguish, felt misery, felt hunger and hurt.  God felt suffering in the life and death of Jesus.  God in Jesus was one of us—truly God With Us! 

The problem isn’t that we’re asking “Why would an all-powerful God let us suffer?”  The problem is that most of the time we don’t consider the nature of God’s power. 

With this in mind I need to boldly and frankly say that I’m not really sure why we suffer most of the time.  But I do know something of God’s place in the midst of suffering.  It’s not “up there,” making it happen or making it not happen, but it’s here, with us.  And this relates to something I’ve shared with you before here—that Jesus’ death on the cross was not just something that happened—it was a proclamation of truth.  What happened on the cross was not merely a point in time but rather a pronouncement of God’s place in the world—with us, suffering with us, refusing to leave us.  In the cross of Christ, God says to the world, “This is how I am with you.”  God is with us in our suffering, and no matter how bad it gets—no matter how painful life becomes, God’s presence with us is unflinching and constant.

And this is, by the way, how we are called to be with and for one another.  It’s how we embody God’s presence in the midst of suffering—by refusing to abandon each other, by saying to one another, essentially, “You will not hang on your cross alone.  I will be with you.” 

Why do we suffer?  Some of that remains a mystery.  But one thing is clear.  We do not suffer alone, for God is with us in and through the person of Jesus Christ.  And as we commit ourselves to Christ’s way, we make manifest something of God’s presence with and for one another.  Amen.

1.  When I started this “why series,” a member of First Presbyterian let my borrow a book, Adam Hamilton’s Why?  Making Sense of God’s Will.  I found Hamilton’s little section titled “Does Everything Happen for a Reason” to be a helpful articulation as I crafted this part of the sermon.