“How to suffer with purpose”: a sermon for the TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST (23 NOVEMBER 2025)

 

     Haters.  Does anyone hate you?  We all have “haters”, don’t we?  Have you ever been lied about?  Have people gossiped about you?  Have people accused you of things that you didn’t do?  It hurts when this happens, and it can scare us into being very careful and cautious in what we say and do.  It can be quite frightening to be hated, to know that people are saying mean things about you, most probably behind your back or perhaps on social media.  Of course, most haters don’t have the courage to directly confront those they are hating on.  If we don’t make an intentional decision to continue to be authentic, to be our genuine selves, fear can easily make us hide – perhaps literally – to hide who we are and what we believe.

     When we read the Gospel, we find that Jesus had many haters.  From early on in his ministry, there were people who despised him so much that they wanted to kill him.  Of course, we know the end of the story.  Jesus gets arrested, is put on trial, is falsely accused and then condemned to be crucified for crimes of which he was innocent.  It is a great mystery that Jesus – someone who loved everyone and had compassion on those who were suffering – was hated so much.  The fact that Jesus – perfect though he was – endured such hatred and violence reveals something dark and disturbing about human nature.  Unfortunately, we will always have to face hatred, judgment, misunderstanding and slander in this world.  It’s just part of life.  Admittedly, this is a dark theme, but, again, it’s a reality that we will all have to wrestle with at some point and to some degree.  It’s also a theme that is to be found throughout the Bible, especially when it comes to prophetic figures.

     Jeremiah & Jesus.  As we saw last time, it’s fascinating that besides (the recently beheaded) John the Baptist and Elijah, people associated Jesus with the prophet Jeremiah.  At first blush, Jesus may seem to have little to do with figures such as Elijah and Jeremiah.  Weren’t they just cranky old men haranguing people about repentance and idolatry and stuff?  Actually, when we read the Gospels closely, in conversation with, for example, the book of Jeremiah, we realize that Jesus was constantly calling the people of God to (yes!) repentance, inviting them to a radical, renewed faithfulness to Yahweh – through loving their enemies no less – and warning both the city of Jerusalem and the Temple of destruction “within one generation” (as well as the more “popular” things – healing and feeding people and gathering disciples).  If you’ve read the book of Jeremiah recently (!), this all sounds extremely familiar.  Jeremiah, in the 6^th century B.C.E., summoned his fellow Jerusalemites to surrender to the Babylonians and submit to them as God’s instrument of judgment, or else face the utter destruction of the Temple and the city.  Jeremiah dared to proclaim that resistance to Babylon was resistance to God and that submission to this pagan empire was submission to the will of Yahweh.  Almost as crazy as Jesus saying (some 600 years later),

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies (i.e. the Romans) and pray for those who persecute you…” (Matthew 5.43-44).

It takes courage to be a prophet.  It takes courage to boldly proclaim a message that sounds like treason.  It takes courage to be disliked.

     Jeremiah’s laments.  It remains the case that everyone has their breaking point.  Everyone is vulnerable to psychological distress and the experience of doubt regarding the goodness of God and even of life itself.  Jeremiah was indeed well acquainted with pain.  His language sometimes resembles that of Job (compare Jer. 20.13-18 with Job 3.1-7, 11-16).  I believe that the “painful” tone of much of Jeremiah’s writing is that of a tired preacher, an exhausted messenger.^[1]  Think about it – Jeremiah warned his contemporaries (in vain) of coming disaster for 40 years, after which time Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by the Babylonians.  Not only was he called to deliver a message that no one wanted to hear, but Jeremiah also had to face hostile (and potentially deadly) opposition, even from those closest to him.  As he endured this solitary suffering, Jeremiah recorded 6 “confessions/laments”^[2], i.e., six cries of distress to Yahweh, both expressing his anguish and requesting that God defend him and avenge him on his enemies.  These cries resemble those psalms in which a righteous, innocent person is unjustly persecuted by wicked people and pleads with God to take up their cause.  We read the first of these laments this morning.

     These prayers of lament use lots of lawcourt language.  In a sense, Jeremiah spent his entire adult life on trial.  His daily existence was a fraught one – embroiled in controversy and confrontation.  Indeed, nothing less than the fate of the nation was on the line – not to mention Jeremiah’s own life.  Anyone who has been through legal proceedings of any kind can begin to understand something of the stress, anxiety and self-doubt that accompany such experiences.

     In the OT, the lawcourt metaphor usually works as follows: Yahweh is the judge, and the plaintiffs present themselves before him, with one accusing the other of some injustice and seeking retribution or compensation.  This was much the same way that an Israelite king would render a legal ruling (e.g., 1 Kings 3.16-28; cf. Ex. 18.13-16).  When lawcourt language is used metaphorically – as it often is in the prophetic literature – Yahweh is the judge, and Israel is the plaintiff, accusing the pagan nations of persecuting her and demanding that Yahweh vindicate her; i.e., execute judgment against the pagans and thereby demonstrate that Israel is his people, and that he is the true God of the world (e.g., Is. 51.22; Ps. 35.23-27).  In this way, the world can see that justice has been done.  Indeed, it is Yahweh’s covenant obligation to defend Israel’s cause as his covenant-partner if ever she is under threat. 

     That sounds pretty straightforward; however, a problem can arise if ever Israel proves herself unworthy of Yahweh honouring his covenant obligations.  Indeed, Yahweh’s behaviour towards Israel – as senior covenant partner – depends on Israel being faithful to her end of the covenant.  If Israel is faithful, Yahweh will defend her and bestow the covenant blessings upon her; if the opposite proves to be the case however, Yahweh will execute the covenant curses against his people.

     In Jeremiah, there a few twists given to the standard judicial scenario.  First of all, when Jeremiah complains/laments, he puts himself in the plaintiff’s position and he accuses the rest of the people of God as his persecutors (the defendant)!  Jeremiah always insists on his innocence, righteousness and faithfulness to his prophetic vocation, agonizingly difficult though it proved to be most of the time.  Yahweh is obliged to come to his aid (or is he…?)!  A second twist that we see on the lawcourt theme are the times when Yahweh adopts the plaintiff’s role and accuses his people of being unfaithful to him (cf. Jer. 2.4—4.4).  In that case, the judge’s seat appears to be empty…

     The circumstances which gave rise to the first lament is a plot against Jeremiah’s life by his neighbours in Anathoth, the village where he had grown up.^[3]  Jer. 11.18-23 contains the three elements of the conventional structure of lament prayer^[4]: complaint (vv. 18-19), petition (v. 20) and divine response (vv. 21-23).^[5]  The language of “evil/right” and the summons to Yahweh to “judge and test” is court language.  The petition addressed to Yahweh seeks positively for acquittal and negatively for a countersuit against the offender.  When the juridical language is recognized, the plea for “vengeance” is not a request for blind capricious retaliation^[6], but for the implementation of a just legal claim and the implementation of Yahweh’s justice on which the speaker (i.e., Jeremiah) has every right to count.  This is the court petition of one unjustly treated, addressed to a reliable judge against unjust perpetrators.^[7]

     Jeremiah was nothing if not perseverant.  In spite of the fact that he sometimes despaired of existence, nothing and no one could kill this prophet (and not for lack of trying).  At the end of his admittedly tragic life, he must have looked back and realized that Yahweh had indeed kept his promise to “be with him and to deliver him” (cf. Jer. 1.18-19).  Though Yahweh often spared Jeremiah’s life, he did not spare him an ample share in his suffering – the pathos of a spurned lover, a betrayed spouse, an abandoned covenant-partner who must judge justly, if not enthusiastically.  Jeremiah had to endure, not only the loneliness of the single life (cf. 16.1), but also the rejection (and often, violence) of almost everyone around him, even his neighbours and family (cf. 11.18ff). 

     Jeremiah is an example of hard-nosed faithfulness, or – in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche made popular in Christian circles by author Eugene Peterson – “a long obedience in the same direction”.^[8]  Jeremiah’s 40-year-long obedience consisted of his embodiment of the stubborn (foolish?) love of Yahweh, who warned his people time and time again, against hope, to return to him and thus avoid disaster.  Even after the disaster struck, Yahweh did not abandon his people, but promised her a future on the far side of exile (cf. Jer. Chapters 30—33).

     What do we do with our pain?  What to do when we face the pain of hostility, the anguish of hateful slander?  First of all, pain is a reality that, despite the many pressures from our society, we must not seek to ignore, “fix”, avoid or despise.  A life of faith is a life lived fully, i.e. by embracing both the inevitable as well as the “catastrophic” suffering that one will undoubtedly encounter throughout one’s journey.  A temptation for those in the “helping professions” is to rush to “help” the one who is suffering, rather than to simply “be” with that person and honour their pain by their empathetic presence (cf. Job 2.11-13).  Accompanying someone in their pain is to acknowledge our helplessness in the fact of the suffering, all the while refusing to despair or ignore the pained person.  Rather, to truly “bear with” the sufferer, one should seek rather to direct their attention to God and his purposes in the midst of their pain-filled situation.  Indeed, suffering can be redemptive if embraced in faith and if understood as a participation in the divine pain (cf. Phil. 3.10-11).  Pain is a tool, deployed by the Creator to fashion his children into his likeness (cf. C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory). 

     A biblical strategy for dealing with pain, as we have seen, is lament.  The Psalms frequently give free expression to the pain of the psalmist.  However, this is no mere cursing of God (cf. Job 2.9), no childish shaking of the fist towards the heavens.  Lament is “grieving in the presence of God” – it is a mourning within earshot of the One who has answers that have so far been withheld from the sufferer.  Lament is also an acknowledgment that God is not unaware of our suffering and ultimately can give meaning to our pain.  As long as we suffer within a cosmos fashioned by a loving Creator, we can suffer with the knowledge that our pain is not absurd, but can be enfolded within the mysterious designs of the maker of heaven and earth (cf. Job 38—41).

     Suffering like Jesus.  The apostle Paul offers us a brilliant example of a “minister” who strove to inculcate his “gospel-children” with holiness, by offering himself as an example of what a faithful Christian looks like and how they ought to respond to life and the often-painful consequences of following a crucified-and-risen Lord.  Paul made it his life’s goal to “become like Jesus” (cf. Phil. 3.8, 10, 12, 14).  In Philippians 2, Paul shared the hymn which described Jesus’ self-emptying and humiliation through his incarnation and death on the cross (2.6-11).  In chapter 3, as he warns the Christians of Philippi against Judaizers (who insisted that circumcision was necessary in order to become a Christian), Paul describes the “confidence in the flesh” that he had previously had as a Pharisee (3.4-6).  Paul tells the Philippians that he has gone through an emptying process similar to that of Jesus – indeed, he “has lost all things on Christ’s account” (3.8).  Moreover, he considers all the things that had previously given him confidence and status to be “excrement” and a liability.  He has found the “pearl of great price” (cf. Mt. 13.45-46).  Paul turned his back on each and every prerogative that his religious pedigree had given him.  Paul has done this because he had discovered, in Jesus, the path to true glory.  The way up is the way down.  Just as Christ descended to the lowest depth of shame and pain, only to be exalted to the highest place (Phil. 2.9), so Paul is “striving towards the mark for the prize of God’s call upward” (3.14).  For Paul, Jesus is the standard of perfection, the one member of the human race who has been exalted to share in the very glory of God (cf. Rom. 3.23; 2 Cor. 4.6).  The way to glory, i.e. resurrection (Phil. 3.20-21), is the way of the cross (Phil. 3.8-11; cf. Gal. 6.14; Mk. 10.35-45).

     Paul’s single-minded goal was to become like Jesus, and he called upon the Philippians to imitate him (3.17; cf. 1 Cor. 11.1).  As their apostle/pastor, Paul was “Jesus” for the Philippians, and he calls them to be “Jesus” for each other (2.1-5).  Christians are called to “carry the cross” in both their communal life and in their public witness, all in the hope of experiencing resurrection glory when Christ returns to establish God’s new world (cf. Rom. 8.18-25).  This is the pattern of reality – indeed, all attempts to experience “glory” in the Present Age are doomed to end in disaster (Phil. 3.18-19).  The only way to salvation is the way of voluntary suffering now, i.e. participation in the work of Jesus (cf. Col. 1.24, 27), in the hope of everlasting glory in the Age to Come.  The cross comes before the crown. 

     To embrace this “way” is to (painfully?) realize that your life is not about you.  In his book The Strangest Way: Walking the Christian Path, theologian Robert Barron encourages his readers to embrace the “theo-drama” of which their lives are a part.  It is by living in light of one’s God-given purpose – itself a part of the divine plan, a plan that is not particularly concerned with one’s private “happiness” (the “ego-drama”) – that one can experience true joy and freedom.^[9]  Barron puts his readers at the foot of the cross, and invites them to contemplate the one hanging there.  As Jesus dies on Calvary, we witness the love of the triune God in action, (literally) embodied.  Jesus invites us to participate in that divine and dangerous love, detaching ourselves from the chains of self.  True “detachment” was experienced by him who was himself fixed to the cross, in utter abandonment to the Father’s will.  This is the mystery of life as Jesus has revealed it to us – “whoever loses his life…will save it”.^[10]  Let us dare to face our pain, and allow it to form us into effective signs of the power of the cross.  Let us not waste our suffering; rather, let us suffer with purpose.  Amen.

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[1] Cf. Brueggemann, Walter, A Commentary on Jeremiah, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, p. 185.

[2] “They seem to be the most direct, candid, and intimate prayers that we know about in the OT”: Brueggemann, Walter, A Commentary on Jeremiah, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, p. 114.

[3] Cf. Clements, R.E. Jeremiah, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988, p. 82 who suggests that the hostility might stem from Jeremiah’s perceived lack of patriotism following Jehoiakim’s withdrawing of his allegiance to Babylon, at which time Jeremiah began to encourage submission to the Babylonian yoke (cf. Jer. 27).

[4] Cf. Pss. 7.14; 10.2; 35.4; 36.4; 41.7; 140.2.

[5] Brueggemann, Walter, A Commentary on Jeremiah, p. 115.

[6] Cf. Miller, Patrick D. “The Book of Jeremiah” in The New Interpreter’s Bible: Vol. VI, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001, p. 675.

[7] Brueggemann, Walter, A Commentary on Jeremiah, p. 116.

[8] Downers Grove: IVP, 2021 [1980].

[9] Barron, Robert, The Strangest Way: Walking the Christian Path, Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002, pp. 113—162.

[10] Ibid, pp. 163-68.