Next week, we’ll meet a blind man, and the first question asked is, “ Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” In both cases the people think the men obviously sinned against God in some way, or else all these bad things wouldn’t be happening. In the book of Job, Job’s friends ask what he’s done wrong. We especially don’t want to rejoice if we think that God is somehow behind what’s happening to us. All of the above can be classified as suffering and none of them really give us cause to rejoice do they? Not at all! All of these are rotten things to go through, and not one of them makes us happy.
Surely Paul doesn’t mean that Christians, whose churches and houses have been burned down by Muslims, should rejoice? He can’t mean that we should rejoice when diagnosed with cancer, does he? Suffering can mean many things to different people, but no matter what makes life hard for us is suffering depression, disillusionment with life, divorce, loneliness, split families, back pain, hip pain, loss of vision, the loss of our driver’s license. How in the world can he tell us to rejoice? This the exact opposite of what we want to do when confronted by problems, trials, and suffering. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings”. Instead he did the opposite, “ Through we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Three times I was shipwrecked a night and a day I was adrift at sea…in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.” Not exactly the life we would imagine for a man of God, is it? Where was the comfy home he deserved? Where was the divine protection he needed? It wasn’t there, was it? Paul was the perfect picture of a man suffering for his faith, yet he never complained. He writes in II Corinthians, “ Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. When the Apostle Paul wrote about suffering, he wasn’t speaking as if he was in some ivory tower, he knew suffering. But it’s true! As Christians, we rejoice in our sufferings. Rejoice in our sufferings? Why are we to rejoice in our sufferings? This can be a little hard to swallow because it just doesn’t make sense.
Today’s text is a perfect example of that where Saint Paul says that we are to rejoice in our sufferings. Sometimes though we come across things in Scripture that are harder to take on faith. We know that He will one day return to judge the living and the dead. We know Jesus died and rose again from the dead. We know Jesus was the Son of God who walked on water and fed the five thousand. We know God created the world in just six days.
The text that I have chosen for this morning’s sermon is the Epistle, which was read a few minutes ago.Īs Christians we can be certain of any number of things that we read in the Bible. Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
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