What Is Suffering All About, And Can We Gain From It.

This sermon was delivered Gordon McCulloch to the congregation at Holy Trinity in Ayr, Ayrshire, Scotland on the 24th March 2019; Holy Trinity is a Scottish Episcopal Church in the Dioceses of Glasgow and Dumfries.

Exodus 3:1-15 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 Luke 13:1-9 Psalm 63:1-8

“Please join me in a short prayer.” Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen. (Ps. 19:14)

Introduction

In my last sermon on loving our enemies, I said that bad things happen to good people, in fact very very bad thing happen to some very very good people as we all know; … and we wish it were not so, but that is the way of our world. … I personally believe that this is down to the fact that God has given us all … a free will, and had he not, such injustice would not occur.

This morning’s reading from Luke’s gospel is a very strange reading, and you can’t help but get that feeling that there is a lot of information missing. … I mean, it mentions a tower falling, and eighteen people who were killed as result, and very little else. … But it’s actually quite a relieving and comforting reading, considering the topic is all about suffering. However it becomes more topical if we relate it to a disaster that we are more familiar with, such as the collapsing 911 twin towers tragedy in New York away back in 2001 … a tragedy where we still feel for those, who were so brutally attacked … while innocently going about their daily business. And we may even still be asking the question as to why those innocent people were killed … and where was God on that day?

Now remind me … are we talking about the twin towers in 911, or are we talking about the tower of Siloam in today’s reading … do you see the similarities, we are talking about the same thing?

In verse 3 Jesus says a strange thing, “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish … Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem”?

To give such a strange answer, it implies that Jesus was asked the question as to whether “those people died because they sinned; or had they brought it upon themselves”. … What a horrible question to ask … although we all know that people can be so horrid to ask such a question, but Jesus answers it with a cryptic reply in verse 5, the answer he gives in verse 3, which means that it is important … “I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did”. … So what kind or answer is that? … What does that it mean? … … I mean, you come to Jesus with a deep, troubling philosophical question, “why does such harm come to good people” and turns the question around … into a statement about our own spiritual condition.

This idea of suffering has puzzled us all for centuries, and non-believers are always quick to say, “well if there is a God, why does he allow all the bad things to happen”. … And this is a reasonable question to ask, but what is the answer? … Well, I don’t know, and if I did, I am sure I could not answer it in this short sermon, however it is important that too answer this question, we need to understand the different elements of suffering, as they must all be accounted for in the answer, but the main element of suffering is the fact that we are part of a fallen world.

1. Suffering is part of a fallen world.

Yes, we live in a fallen world, because do you remember … there was no suffering in the Garden of Eden? … Well that is until Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, and made suffering a reality: and it’s a reality that we are living in a world affected by that original sin. … It is also complicit by adding the sins of our fathers, the sins of others, and of course the sin of our own making.

i. We live in a world full of Moral.

Yes we all know that we live in a world of evil, and we cannot help get the impression that it is getting worse, particularly with today’s familiarity and declining standards. … We also share this world with some very wicked people indeed and we are not short of an example of them … even back in the day of Jesus, the bible tells us that Pilate was a cruel evil Roman governor … for example, verse 1 tells us that one day when some Galileans were in the Temple getting ready to make their sacrifices, Pilate had some Roman soldiers disguised as Jews to intermingle with them … we do not know why … but for some reason known only to him … ordered these Roman soldiers to massacre this group of worshipers. What a horrible thing to do … and it sounds familiar, as is still raw on our minds, the recent and terrible events in New Zealand.