Romans 8:12-25
I asked, “Did you forget that labor hurts? Because I sure didn’t.”
Like it or not, the memory of pain stays with us and it shapes us.
And the ways it shapes us are revealed in the ways we choose to
live our lives.
I overheard a mother once give dating
advice to her teenager: “Always break up with him before he has a chance to
break up with you.” Because if you can beat him to the punch, no one will ever
have a chance to break your heart. There it is: the lie that pain is not
necessary. But what happens when we try so hard to avoid pain?
Some friends, Carrie and David, once
told me about a time when they tried to be friends with some people who didn’t
want that. Carrie and David had just moved to town, and they met a couple they
enjoyed being with. They had struck up a conversation somewhere, and realized
they had a lot in common. But when Carrie and David invited this couple to
dinner, they said no, thank you, we don’t want to make any new friendships.
That sounded pretty weird, but they had
an explanation. In the kind of work they were in, they said, people come and
go, they move on to other jobs in other cities. They decided that they did not
want the pain of having to say goodbye to friends when they moved away. Their
solution was to not make any more friends.
What happens when we try to avoid pain? When we try to avoid pain,
we end up avoiding life.
Still, we keep trying. I know a man, Roger, who said when his
daughter was born that he was going to put her in a bubble and keep her there
until she grew up and was ready to get married because he didn’t want her to
ever suffer any pain. And Roger didn’t want to experience the pain of watching
her in pain. He was joking, but only sort of.
If there really was a foolproof method of avoiding any and all
pain and suffering; if there was a pill, with no side effects, that would
guarantee a pain-free life; I wonder how many of us would take it.
There was a woman I knew who was in recovery for substance abuse.
The journey of recovery is very long and there are no shortcuts. She was in and
out of rehab programs, tried and failed to stay sober many times – until she
finally got the help she needed. Rehab, again, followed by a halfway house
program, and a real commitment to her journey of recovery. She celebrates every
year the day she entered rehab for the last time.
In one conversation, I heard her say something I will always
remember, something that revealed an important truth about addiction, and about
life: that since she has been learning how to live drug-free, she has felt more
fully alive. She has laughed and actually felt
it; she has cried and actually felt it. She has grown and succeeded, and also
at times she has failed, and was able to feel all of it.
Addiction tells you, “You don’t have to
feel any pain.” But it is a lie.
It’s a lie that many of us are drawn to,
including non-addicts, because we are always looking for ways to avoid pain. We
have ways of distracting ourselves, anesthetizing ourselves, protecting
ourselves from the pain and suffering of life.
If there was a foolproof way of avoiding pain, I suspect that many
of us would take it. I think the Apostle Paul also might have taken it.
By the time he wrote this letter to the Romans, Paul had
experienced a lot of pain. He wrote in his letter to the Philippians that over
the years he had learned the secret of being well-fed and of
going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. Everywhere he went he
had submitted to being fully dependent on the mercy of God, trusting in God’s
grace and the hospitality of strangers. Doing that thing that we talk about a
lot but find very hard to actually put into practice: letting go and letting
God.
But you know, he had not always been that way. We know a few
things about the man Paul from the stories written about him in the book of
Acts. At one time in his life, Paul was a man who intentionally inflicted pain
on others. Why? So that he would not ever have to experience his own pain of
uncertainty or doubt.
Back then, Paul was called Saul. He was a man of conviction,
a man full of certainty, and when he encountered the apostles of Jesus Christ,
he made it his mission to eradicate them from the face of the earth because
they carried a message that would turn his steadfast, long-held beliefs upside
down and inside out. This was more pain than he could bear.
Saul was there when one of these apostles, Stephen, found
himself surrounded by an angry mob – a mob who, I imagine, had the same kinds
of fears that Saul did. But Stephen didn’t run, he wasn’t silenced. At the risk
of his own life, Stephen spoke his truth. Then, under the watchful eye of Saul,
the mob dragged Stephen out of the city to stone him to death. Saul stood and
watched over the brutal stoning of Stephen. He watched, and he approved.
After that, Saul journeyed on to Damascus, because he had
heard there were more like Stephen there. He was eager to arrest them and bring
them back to Jerusalem for trial. The story in Acts says that he was breathing
threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. So fearful was Saul of
uncertainty, so fearful was he of anything that would threaten the beliefs he
had committed himself to. So fearful, he was willing to kill to avoid that
pain.
It was on this journey, though, when everything changed. For
the first time, on the Damascus road, he heard the voice of Jesus, saying to
him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He was knocked to the ground,
helpless. For three days, Saul was stricken with a kind of blindness so that he
could learn to see in a new way.
After this he was a new man, with a new name and a new
mission. Paul was no longer afraid. From this point on, he lived his life for
the sake of Jesus Christ and his love for the world.
From this point on, Paul knew that he was more than willing
to suffer for the sake of the gospel, because he now had something new,
something more powerful than that certainty he had carried for so long: hope.
Hope might not sound like much. It sets its sights on things
unseen, unknown. As Paul says, something is hoped for if it is not yet. And I
am sure that when we are tallying up our assets, we don’t count hope among
them.
But we are talking here about the hope that is born of faith,
and that is a peculiar thing. This hope is not a mere desire; it is not
desperation. This hope is a gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift that gives us the
ability to see and to know the possibility of a world beyond what now exists.
To see, ever so slightly, through the eyes of God.
Hope is the thing that moves us forward. None of the prophets
would have been able to carry their message out into the world without hope. Dr.
Martin Luther King would not have been able to get up again and again and tell
about his dream if not for hope; no one who has devoted their lives to fighting
for justice could do it without hope. None of us would be able to do so many of
the things we do, large and small, if not for hope.
It gets us up in the morning. It brings us here to join our
hope with the hope of others. Hope brings us out to plan a vacation Bible
school, to pack up food in weekend backpacks for schoolchildren in need, to
cook meals for the hungry, to gather essential supplies for the homeless. It
makes us pick up the phone and call someone who just lost a loved one, or
someone who has just lost their home.
Hope is the reason we go to the meeting, so we can be there
for someone who is just starting down this road of recovery and desperately
needs us to hold their hand as they begin this journey.
The mother who has hope can lend her strength to her teenager
who is getting their heart broken for the first time. The father who has hope
can walk beside his child who is experiencing the inevitable pains of growing
up. Hope is the strength we all need to walk through the hardships of life and
never lose sight of the truth. It allows us to see visions and dream dreams, to
stand up and, in our words or our actions, proclaim our bold belief in a world
that is waiting to be born.
Knowing that the pain and sufferings of this time are not
worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed.
Hope is the thing that makes us better.
Hope in the midst of pain, like a woman in the throes of
childbirth, knows there is something beyond what can be seen. And hope is what
will get us there.
Photo by Alicia Petresc on Unsplash
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