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Sermon of the Month Sermon preached by Fr. Spencer on Sunday, August 28 Last week we heard Paul’s admonition, “Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed in your minds,” and we spent some time reflecting on the ways in which we should and should not be influenced by the culture around us. This morning I want to continue this reflection, prompted by two sayings of Jesus in our Gospel lesson. The world tells us, and most of us would agree, that we are to avoid pain and suffering on the one hand, and that we are to pursue our own self-fulfillment on the other. I would never say that we should seek out suffering, nor that we should not seek fulfillment, but I want to suggest that the world manages to distort and to deceive us with its understanding of these goals. Let’s look at poor Peter. He is so human. Jesus tells him that he, Jesus, must undergo suffering and death, and Peter, being so human, wants to deny the necessity of suffering. He assumes that with God on our side, so to speak, that normal human suffering can be avoided. And certainly for the Son of Man; certainly for him there can be no suffering. But Jesus tells him that this kind of thinking is of a human sort and not divine. Apparently suffering is very much a part of God’s plan for us. We don’t like this message. We are as human as Peter and we wish to deny the necessity of suffering. For Jesus, for him to accomplish what he needed to do, it was necessary for him to suffer. And for us, for us to do what we need to do will often necessarily involve suffering. We do better when we think of suffering abstractly. Which is another way of saying we do better when we are not involved in the suffering. I have known several people whose faith in God has been undermined by their own losses and suffering. These same people, of course, have known that millions of other people undergo suffering, that people around the world are suffering and dying in wars, famines, natural disasters, and normal diseases. And that suffering has not threatened their faith. But when they know suffering, everything is different. It’s suddenly, “How could God allow this to happen?” I have some ideas about why it is that God seems willing to allow so much suffering. I think that he is much more interested in our growing spiritually and morally than he is in our comfort level. And indeed, which would we choose for ourselves and our children? That they lead comfortable lives or that they be strong, moral, spiritually mature persons. The purpose of life is not to avoid suffering; it is to do what is necessary to be the kinds of people we need to be. We do what is necessary. That’s about avoidance of what we don’t want. Something that we are supposed to want is self-fulfillment. We all want to be fulfilled. But there is a paradox here. Normally if we want something, we pursue it. But fulfillment is not like that. We cannot attain fulfillment by seeking it. It must always involve seeking something else. Because we are fulfilled when we satisfy, when we attain some other goal. The goal may be trivial or profound or any place in between. It may be watching your team win a football game, running a marathon, taking part in a great musical concert, curing cancer, whatever. But it is only when we give ourselves up to some goal or cause that we can be fulfilled when it is accomplished. It necessary involves some goal beyond fulfillment. In a recent op-ed column in the New York Times, David Brooks wrote about how so many college graduates are given really bad advice. Over and over again, they are told to follow your own passion, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find your true self. This is good old American individualism at its worst. This is to make the self the center of life; it makes everything about you. It says that everything is possible. But the tasks of a real life are about limiting possibilities—making commitments to a partner, a job, a community, a calling, to various causes. It is about finding serious things to tie yourself to, finding things that matter. If you seek to find your life in yourself and your own self-expresssion, you will lose it. It is in losing yourself to these various causes that you find yourself. The purpose of life is not to avoid suffering it is to do what is necessary. The purpose of life is not to find your life, it is to lose it. br /> Fr. Spencer |
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