The Suffering Shepherd

Today in worship we gave out 270 beads for people to be in prayer for those kidnapped Nigerian girls.  

April 11, 2014

1 Peter 2:19-25

¹⁹For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. ²⁰If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. ²¹For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. 
²²   “He committed no sin, 
and no deceit was found in his mouth.” 
²³When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. ²⁴He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. ²⁵For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

Sermon: The Suffering Shepherd

Close your eyes for a moment (really).  Now, don’t fall asleep!  I want you, with your eyes closed, to picture God.  What does he or she look like to you?

When I picture God, I see the same thing I’ve seen since I was little.  I see a tree.  A big sprawling oak in the middle of a calm field, whose leafy branches dapple your skin with golden, filtered sunlight as you nap beneath it in safety.  Anytime I doubt the presence of God, trees root me in that comforting reality once more.  Yes, there is a God.  And yes, to me, God looks an awful lot like a tree.

We all have our comforting ways of picturing God.  You might see God as a wise, kind-hearted grandfather, or as a patient, loving mother, or as a joyful, vibrant child, or as the good shepherd like we hear about in Psalm 23.

But, I wonder, do any of us think of God as suffering?  Do we picture God’s face and see the nameless face of a Nigerian girl stolen from school to be sold into slavery?  That image of God is not comfortable.  It makes us want to look away, to go back to old comforts of thinking about God as a tree or mother or shepherd. 

But our text from 1 Peter this morning makes it clear: in Jesus Christ, God’s face is one of suffering.  We hear that Christ suffered for us, when he was abused he did not return abuse, when he suffered he did not threaten, and by his wounds we are healed.

A shepherd who heals through wounds?  No, I don’t really like this at all.  We are all so wounded, and it’s painful to think about such things.  The wounds of those little girls being stolen and abused, sold to men for about $20 as “wives.”  The wounds of their mothers and fathers whose sorrow we can’t even begin to comprehend.

The wounds of many would-be mothers today, on this day that brings joy to some, but sorrow to those who have lost children or mothers, and to those who never got to be the mothers they wanted to be.  This world is so very wounded.  If I had you close your eyes once more, and picture your own wounds, your own places of sorrow, I bet they might come to you even more quickly than picturing God. 

We carry our wounds and the wounds of this world with us all the time.  There are some communities of faith that say true faith means being freed from all of these wounds, that if we really trust God, God will deliver us from our pain completely, and bring prosperity and success, to boot.  We are a different sort of community of faith.  We say that true faith means freely sharing our wounds with God and each other, to find healing.  Healing and deliverance are different things, you see.

This text in 1 Peter doesn’t say by the wounds of Jesus, we are delivered, removed from sorrow and suffering.  It says by his wounds we are healed.  Ask a person whose been through a lengthy illness, or someone whose family has been estranged and come together once more or someone who was without work for a long time and found a job finally, if they’ve forgotten the struggle toward healing and wholeness.  I promise you, they haven’t.  And they won’t.  Healing doesn’t erase suffering, it leaves scars.  When those little Nigerian girls come home again – as we desperately pray that they do – there will be many scars in their process of healing. 

And so as comforting as God as a sprawling oak tree is, that’s not the sort of God this world needs.  We need a God with scars – a Shepherd who suffers.  But it’s important that we talk about how and why this Shepherd suffers.  He does not suffer for the sake of it.  He does not suffer because of a vindictive God whose wrath must be abated so that we can be seen as God’s children.  He does not suffer because he’s trying to prove something or make a point.  Put simply, that Shepherd Jesus Christ suffers because we do. 

And so when our reading from 1 Peter this morning tells us to follow after that sort of suffering, following Jesus’ example, it is not telling us to suffer for the sake of it, or to accept violent action as God’s will, or to prove ourselves as worthy or faithful.  I believe we are being told that just as God suffers because we do, we suffer because others do. 

Anne Lamott captures this idea of a suffering God in her book Traveling Mercies.  She writes:

When something ghastly happens, it is not helpful to many people if you say that it’s all part of God’s perfect plan, or that it’s for the highest good of every person in the drama, or that more will be revealed, even if that is all true. Because at least for me, if someone’s cute position minimizes the crucifixion, it’s bunk. Which I say with love.

Christ really did suffer, as the innocent of the earth really do suffer. It’s the ongoing tragedy of humans. Our lives and humanity are untidy: disorganized and careworn.My understanding of incarnation is that we are not served by getting away from the grubbiness of suffering.

Any healthy half-awake person is occasionally going to be pierced with a sense of the unfairness and the catastrophe of life for ninety-five percent of the people on this earth.Pretending that things are nicely boxed up and put away robs us of great riches. 

Riches?  What an odd word to use.  What riches are there to be found in suffering? 

The best I can come up with is this: the riches of knowing we are not alone.  The riches of understanding that our worth (and the worth of those Nigerian schoolgirls) is not determined by our suffering.  The riches of knowing that the God who made us didn’t then go on vacation and check out from this world.  That God entered this world as a Shepherd who suffered, and enters the world again and again and again, wherever God’s children are suffering, calling us to do the same.

And so, on this Mothers’ Day, those daughters in Nigeria are our daughters.  The face of this suffering Shepherd we follow looks like their faces.  The next time you close your eyes to pray, picture them.  It is a painful picture, much more so than a tree or comforting grandfather God.  But if we are to follow Jesus, we must follow him into places of solidarity with all who suffer, refusing to let them go until they – every single one of them -- know healing on the other side of it.   Amen.