Surprised by (Joy) Suffering Second Sunday After Christmas January 4, 2015 Matthew 2:13–23
Looking back on his conversion from atheism to Christianity C.S. Lewis spoke of being surprised by joy. When your world is devoid of God and you come to discover that God is the very heart of existence, it is a surprise to find true joy. But when you’re a Christian you often come to be surprised by something else. Suffering. If God brings us joy, why is there suffering? When we suffer we think it is not natural for an existence that has as its heart, God. In the Epistle reading Peter says, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the suffering you endure, as though something strange were happening to you.” Perhaps that is why some who are converted to Christianity end up falling away. They find out that suffering is part of being a Christian and they would rather just have the joy. Perhaps it’s why some lifelong Christians fall away. They weary of the fiery ordeal Peter speaks of. They long for the joy that is promised by God. We have it all wrong. We think joy is the absence of suffering. We think that once the suffering is done, then you rejoice. We think that when you enter into trial and tribulation you pray to be removed from it so that you can then have joy. Peter says the opposite, in that you suffer in the sufferings of Christ, you can rejoice right now. And when He reveals His ultimate glory on the Last Day you will just move right into the ultimate joy. But yes, it’s always a surprise when we suffer on account of Christ, isn’t it? When we have a share in Christ we’d like to go straight to the joy and skip the sharing in the sufferings of Christ. But that’s where we miss the point. We wonder why we have to suffer. We question God that suffering has to be a part of His giving us salvation and the living out of the Christian life. And we forget that Christ Himself suffered. We skip right over the part that God Himself endured the fiery ordeal Peter is talking about in the Epistle reading. Jesus was not surprised by the suffering He endured. He went straight into it. He chose it. He saw the suffering He would enter as His joy. It’s not that He was going into it thinking, “This is going to be great!” That’s not exactly the same thing as joy. What brought Him joy in enduring the fire of the cross was you and me and the world. Our salvation. Our being brought out of the fire of hell and into the eternal glory and joy of heaven. The suffering we endure here cannot compare to the suffering we deserve eternally because of our sin. Jesus’ joy was to deliver us from that fire of hell by enduring it Himself. This has enormous practical value. How many times are we at a loss for words when we are trying to comfort someone who is suffering? How many times are we searching for meaning in suffering when we ourselves are suffering? Knowing who Jesus is and what He endured places our suffering where we can see it for what it is. It is the purifying work of God. It strips away the dross of our own notions of worthiness. When you think you don’t deserve to suffer you have set your heart on yourself and not on God. God is bringing you into union with Jesus through the suffering you endure. If you think suffering shouldn’t be part of your life as a Christian, think about it from God’s perspective. God has the perfect existence. He’s God. He has no needs. He has no suffering. He has perfectly joyful existence. But His heart is toward us. He can’t sit idly by and watch us go down in flames through our own rebellion against Him. So what did He do? He sent His Son. We heard the story of how that came about, as we always do, on Christmas. He was in the womb of Mary and then was taken on a pretty long trip for a pregnant woman. Then the conditions she was in when she gave birth to Him were not exactly what you get in a hospital with the latest in medical technology, nurses to monitor how you’re doing, and a doctor who has delivered many babies. Joseph took Mary as his wife and her child as if He was his own. Things were looking really good when Magi showed up and surprised them with gifts that you wouldn’t normally expect at a baby shower. The gold, the frankincense, and the myrrh would come in handy. But then the bottom fell out. The angel had already told Joseph that his bride-to-be was pregnant of the Holy Spirit and that the child born to her would be the Savior. Now the angel tells Joseph that they have to get going again, this time down to Egypt. Here Joseph is thinking that his life is turning out really well. He has a lovely new bride, and a new son who God brought forth to be the Savior. And now the angel shows up again telling him that Herod is seeking to destroy the child. Now, you talk about suffering. Joseph was new at this father thing and now he has to deal with a maniacal king who wants to kill not only his new son but the one who is going to be the Savior. So he gets his family together in the middle of the night and they take off to Egypt. They stayed there until Herod kicked the bucket. What was going through Joseph’s mind each day they were down in Egypt? Why did you have to send us down here, God? How long is it going to be? What if something bad happens to us down here? God sent them down to Egypt because, as Matthew says in the Gospel reading, “this was in order to fulfill what the prophets said, ‘Out of Egypt I have called My Son.’” Joseph was suffering on account of the child he had been called upon by God to care for as His earthly father. He probably didn’t realize that he was being incorporated into the sufferings of this child, the Savior. Just as God had called His people out of the crucible of slavery in Egypt and brought them into the Promised Land, so God was now calling His only-begotten Son out of that very same land of Egypt. Being delivered out of slavery in Egypt was not enough to keep His own people from continuing to long for other gods, to stray back to their old ways. So God called His own Son out of Egypt to deliver His people once and for all from every sin and all their guilt. But Matthew tells us of more suffering, jumping back to Bethlehem for a moment. Back to Herod who was enraged by the Magi who were supposed to come back to Herod and let him know where this new child king was. He had told the Magi that he too wanted to worship this newborn king, but he had planned all along to murder Him. When he found out that he was deceived by the Magi he went into a rage and slaughtered the baby boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding area who were two years old and younger. This brought about some of the saddest suffering there is in this life, the loss of your new child. Matthew quotes from Jeremiah about this horrific action of Herod: “A voice crying in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she refused to be comforted because they were no more.” It is in suffering like this that it is most difficult to see the kind of statement we have from Peter that we ought not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that overtakes us. How do you receive comfort when your new child has been brutally taken from you like that? The answer is that Christ Himself shares in this suffering. He not only shares in it, He takes it all on Himself. The cry of the mourning parents who refuse to be comforted are heard by the Heavenly Father who was deaf to the cry of His beloved Son, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The Father refused to relent, forsaking His own dear Son. This is the suffering we must look to to see why God allows us to endure suffering. Apart from the suffering of Christ there is no true joy. When in the midst of suffering it’s nearly impossible to see the true joy. But knowing that you are being brought into the sufferings of Christ helps you see that you are being brought into Christ Himself with His eternal salvation and joy. After Herod died the angel came to Joseph again and said, “Those seeking the Child’s life are dead. You can go back to Judea now.” And so he did, but when he found out Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, Joseph was afraid. Will the trials for Joseph ever come to an end? Is there no rest for the weary? The angel came again and directed him to a little place up in the territory of Galilee, the town of Nazareth. This is a remarkable string of events. And through it all Jesus was being carried around by His mother and by His step-father, guiding Him each step of the way to safety. And while they finally found a home, what kind of a home was it? It was probably just what Joseph wanted, a little backwater town where he could live in safety and raise his family in a mundane setting. That is certainly a blessing from God, especially after all that he had been through. But the closing statement of Matthew about ending up in Nazareth is not about Joseph but about Jesus. Matthew says that this happened in order to fulfill what the prophets said, that He would be called a Nazarene. Now, it’s not necessarily a fiery ordeal to be raised in a backwater town. But God is showing us here how He works through suffering. The angel had told Joseph that his child he would adopt would be the Savior. Does it make any sense for this Savior of the world, the Lord of all, to be raised in a no-name place? Does it make any sense that when He would make known who He was that He would be reviled as someone who is a noobdy and from a nowhere place? Does it make sense that God Himself should be subjected to this kind of derision? Well, from God’s point of view, yes, it does. Because this here at the beginning of His life shows what God the Father intends for Him as He enters His ministry thirty years later. It shows what Jesus Himself will willingly endure when His three year ministry ends in arrest, mocking, beating, and finally crucifixion. But ultimately, the sufferings of Christ mean nothing apart from that most painful cry of dereliction of Jesus as He was being crucified, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me.” Is it surprising? Yes, it’s surprising that God would love us so much that He would give over His own Son so that we may have eternal joy. It’s surprising that Jesus would Himself freely give Himself over so that we may be given to God eternally. But really, when you see Jesus in His suffering, it’s not surprising at all. His eternal and limitless love is what brought Him to suffer for us and for our salvation. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
