THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING LOVE
a sermon based on Romans 5:1-5
by Rev. Rick Thompson
When I’m not reading theology, one
of the things I enjoy doing is picking up a good mystery. I have some
favorite mystery writers, and I snap their books up as soon as they’re
available in paperback. (I’m too cheap to buy them in hardcover!)
There’s something engaging, sometimes exhilarating, about getting caught
up in a “whodunit” story!
And I think I’m not alone. Millions of Americans have read
Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code. That book has several reasons for
being so popular, including its spiritual themes—but the main reason
people keep reading it is that it’s a good story, one they can’t put
down. People can’t put the book down because they want to solve the
mystery. They want to know how the story ends!
How many of you love a good mystery?
If you do, the church has one for you today, on this Festival of
the Holy Trinity!
Can you explain the Holy Trinity? Can you explain how God can be
three-in-one and one-in-three, how God can be Father, Son & Holy Spirit,
and yet be only one God?
Talk about a mystery!
It is a mystery worth talking about! The reality of God, and the
reality of how God relates to us is certainly worth talking
about!
But that doesn’t mean it’s easy, does it!
The greatest minds the church has produced have struggled for
centuries to explain the mystery of the Trinity. Much of their work is
expressed in the three creeds of the church—including the Athanasian
Creed. (Check that one out sometime in our worship book.) They have
been able to help us understand much, but they have not been able to
fully penetrate the mystery.
That is why theologians have finally come down to saying things
like this:
·
Martin Luther once said, “To try to deny the Trinity endangers
one’s salvation; to try to comprehend the Trinity endangers one’s
sanity!
·
John Wesley, founder of the Methodist
Church, said, “Bring me a worm that can comprehend a human being, and
then I will show you a human being who can comprehend the Triune God!”
·
Dorothy Sayers, British author and theologian in the middle of the 20th
century, once put these words in the mouth of a character in a play.
They parody the Athanasian Creed: “The Father is incomprehensible. The
Son is incomprehensible. The Holy Spirit is incomprehensible. The
whole thing is incomprehensible!”
·
And Frederick Houk Borsch, a more contemporary theologian, writes that
“Believers came to insist…that God had to be recognized as being in
different forms of relationship with the creation, in ways at least like
different persons, and that all these ways were of God. Yet there could
not be three gods..God had to be one God. This complex and
profound faith was then handed over the theologians to try and make more
intelligible. They have been trying ever since.”
So, if some of the church’s greatest minds have concluded that we
can’t fully explain or comprehend the Trinity, why are we trying
to figure it out today?
Or are we trying to figure it out?
Maybe our purpose is not to figure it out, but to believe, and
worship, and celebrate the mystery of the Holy Trinity!!
We’ve agreed earlier, after all, that many of us like a good
mystery!
The only challenge about this mystery is that the story
won’t end soon enough! God—God who is three-in-one and one-in
three—won’t be fully revealed until we see God face-to-face in heaven.
And we’re used to having the mystery solved SOONER than that!
But can’t we celebrate even that? Can’t we celebrate the truth
that we have a God who can’t be completely comprehended? Isn’t
there something intriguing about a God who is so mysterious that we’ll
never know God fully in this life? Isn’t that one of the things, for
example, that keeps us attracted to people we are intimate with—that we
can’t ever know them fully, and we want to keep knowing them more and
more?
So why can’t it be that way with God?
Why can’t we allow God to be mysterious?
Just think about it. Think about the mystery of the Trinity.
Think about a being—God—who is so overflowing with love that God’s love
cannot be contained. Think about how, even within God’s own being, that
love is shared among the persons of the Trinity. And think about how
even that’s not enough for God. No! God is so overflowing with love
that it must spill out! God’s love is not complete until it pours out
of the divine being and into creation! That love is poured out and
poured out until there is a creation! And, when that creation turns
against God, love keeps spilling out, calling creation back to God and,
finally, sending the Son of God to die out of unconditional, suffering
love. And, to keep us united with Christ, God’s love spills out even
more in the power of the Holy Spirit. What a mystery—the mystery of a
love that cannot be contained and cannot be stopped—even if that
means God’s own Son must die so that we can live!
This is the mystery—the mystery of God’s suffering love—that St. Paul
writes about in the words we heard today: “God’s love, made most real in
Jesus Christ, has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
that has been given to us.”
Isn’t that the real mystery about God—that God would love us
so much that God keeps repeating and repeating and repeating that
love for creation until, finally, God’s own, dear, precious Son even has
to die!
Now that’s a mystery, a real mystery—a mystery worth
celebrating!
In the ancient classics of Homer, we encounter the beautiful Helen
of Troy. In Homer’s story, Helen is captured and carried away, and
becomes a victim of amnesia. She can’t remember who she is. She can’t
remember her homeland. She didn’t know her royal roots. Instead, Helen
became a prostitute.
An old friend went looking for her, and never lost faith he would
find her alive.
One day, in his wanderings, he came across a wretched woman in
tattered clothes, her face deeply wrinkled. Believing he recognized
her, he approached her and asked, “What is your name?” She gave a name
that meant nothing to him. “May I see your hands?” he asked next. She
held her hands in front of his face. They were the hands he remembered
from years before.
“Helen!” he called out. “I’ve found you! You’re Helen!”
At the sound of that name, Helen’s memory began to return. She
recognized the name, and she sensed something familiar in the hero’s
face and manner. She believed him when he told her who she really was.
She fell into her friends arms, weeping in thanksgiving. She was
transformed, and once again became the queen she was meant to be!
Isn’t that a little bit like the mystery of God’s suffering love?
God comes searching for us, relentlessly, sparing no cost—even the blood
of God’s own Son. God comes relentlessly searching, and calls us by
name. “You are my child!” God says. And we are transformed by that
promise, and cling to God in gratitude, and grow into the mature and
magnificent children of God we are meant to be!
It takes the Holy Trinity to make that happen!
And that’s the mystery we celebrate today—a God who is willing to
go to any length to claim us as God’s own. A God willing to create a
world and put us in charge, a God willing to call us back when we
wonder, a God willing to suffer and die to claim us as God’s own for
eternity, a God willing to keep pouring the diving life into us so that
we can belong to God for ever.
What a God! And what a mystery it is—the mystery of God’s
suffering love!
Now, Paul also reminds us that, when we are captured by that love, we
will suffer, too. But our suffering—when done in the name of
Christ—will not be pointless! In fact, this kind of
suffering—the sacrifices we make without expecting anything in return,
the forgiveness we grant to someone who has hurt us deeply, the love we
share unconditionally with someone who doesn’t deserve it—this kind of
suffering is a good thing because it keeps us joined to God.
When we live in and share God’s suffering love, Paul sings—
“…we know that suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character,
and character produces hope,
and hope does not disappoint us.”
And how can this be, that even when we suffer for the sake of
Christ we can hold onto hope? Paul tells us the answer: “It’s because
God’s love has been poured into our hearts.”
That’s the greatest mystery about God—that God should love
us so much!
That’s a mystery not so much to puzzle over.
That’s a mystery to celebrate, and a mystery
to live by!
May God keep granting us the faith to do just that!
AMEN
