Reclaiming Your identity: This Might Hurt

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today, as we look at this topic of suffering, I want to figure out what kind of image comes to mind when you hear that word “suffering.” Take a moment and think about it. What kind of images come to your mind when you hear that word of “suffering?”

Maybe as you hear it, I can explain some of the things that initially came to my mind. I think about the suffering that occurs in third world nations where people are malnourished. I think about the tsunami and the hurricane and the tornado victims that have to suffer through devastation. I think about the abuse of the lower portions of our society against the children, against the elderly, against spouses. I think about the homeless here in Des Moines who are going to be out another winter in the elements suffering from cold. It’s a lot of pictures of suffering.

It’s a lot of pictures of suffering that we come in face to face with every day, whether it be on the news or just hearsay. But we hear about these pictures of suffering. Sometimes we don’t know what to do with it. But we read 1 Peter and, as we continue into our lesson about digging into this book, we hear the words of Peter and his message that he talks about suffering. Is this the kind of suffering Peter’s talking about in his book? As we start to look at it, 1 Peter, there are a number of passages that try to help us out in this area starting with what we’ve kind of read over today, “But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed.” Then 3:17, “For it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God’s will.”

So what Peter is addressing here is not a suffering that happens in the body, a suffering that happens because we live in a sinful world but what Peter is addressing here is the suffering that occurs because you are Christian, because of your faith in Christ. We start to distinguish between those two today as we know that Peter was addressing these Christians who were starting to experience some of this suffering. And Peter lived in that world. He was talking to people who, if they hadn’t yet experienced suffering, they soon would. They lived under Emperor Nero and if any of you know about Emperor Nero, he wasn’t a real nice guy. He was most famous for killing his mother and his stepbrother because he thought that they wanted to take over his throne. And it says in one account that he hated his mother so much that he spent several accounts trying to kill her. And this is what the guy does to his family. Can you imagine what he might do to somebody whom he doesn’t know, whom he doesn’t really have any feelings for?

This is what the Christians in this day were living under. They were living under a time when the world was starting to look at them differently, look at them as though they were strange, something was wrong with them. And when something’s different, you push it away. The people who Peter is talking to in his day, they were experiencing this kind of suffering, suffering for their faith.

When we start to think about it, do we suffer for our faith today? Does this play out in our world today? When we start to look at all these cases of suffering, we start to make sure that it’s far away from us. We want to make sure that suffering is put in its place. Suffering can be seen as maybe even as an itch that won’t go away and what do you do with the itch? You put some cream on it. It’s a rash, whatever it might be and it’s going to go away.

And so we see, with suffering, we just want it to go away. We don’t see that this suffering is any part of our identity. This suffering has no place in our lives but yet Peter tells us today that suffering is part of our identity in Christ. But what do we do with suffering? We do whatever we can to alleviate the suffering so we can forget about it, so it will never be brought up again.

Are we willing to suffer for this faith? I remember talking to my confirmation students a couple of weeks ago and I said, “Back in the early church, the confirmation rite, the confirmands would stand up on that day of confirmation and they would vow with their lives to keep this faith. That means they would stand up in the face of death in order to keep this faith.” I asked them, “After this year, are you going to be ready to stand up in front of the congregation at Gloria Dei and say that you’re willing to die for this faith?” Some people say that’s extreme. Some people say, “Well, there’s no one who really has to die for their faith, do they?”

I found some statistics from Voice of the Martyrs. They are a group of Christians who study persecution throughout the world and here are some of the figures that I found shocking as we live in a world that we try to push suffering away. It says more than 43 million Christians have been killed for their faith since the crucifixion of Jesus. 43 million? It’s been estimated that more Christians have been martyred in the 20th Century than in the prior 1900 years combined. There have been more than 26 million documented cases of martyrdom in this century alone. More than 200 million Christians in over 60 nations face persecution on a daily basis and they estimate 60% of these to be children. 150,000-165,000 Christians are martyred every year. So are people suffering for their faith in our world? Yeah.

Suffering is happening throughout the world on a daily basis and this is suffering not just in the body but this is suffering for one’s faith.  Have we been challenged that way? I would dare to say that not many of us have ever, maybe not any of us have ever been under that pressure to either reject our faith or die. And we can see this on a grand scale. We know that the world, we can see 200 million Christians being persecuted every single day. We see this on a broad scale but we have to bring it down to a place where we can see persecution happening here.

We start to see this maybe in a job promotion and your boss comes to you and says, “Well, I’m going to give you this new job but it’s going to add all these responsibilities.” And you start looking at the responsibilities and it’s going to mean more time away from your family. It’s going to mean maybe following along some of the other company lines that don’t exactly match your beliefs and so you turn it down. That’s suffering for your faith.

I heard one particular story. There was a Christian professor who was at a secular university and they said, “Well, we really like what you’re doing here and we really like the way you teach and so we want to give you this chair of this department.” They said, “But there are couple of things we  have to understand. You’re teaching some of these things that we don’t necessarily agree with and so we need you to kind of go over here and follow along with what we believe as a whole in this department.” And that professor looked at the guidelines and said, “This is not what I believe” and he turned down that position. And later on, this department ended up removing him from his position saying that he was not academically competent enough to stay there. Persecution for your faith.

We see this persecution of our faith in high school teenagers as boyfriend and girlfriend, as one or the other is pushing to have premarital sex. When you deny the other person, you know that’s going to mean an end to a relationship. And when you do it, the relationship ends, there’s a suffering for your faith.

It’s also seen when we meet in circles and groups and somebody starts making off-color humor jokes and you walk away because you don’t want to hear it because it’s not part of who you are. Suffering for your faith.

So does suffering exist in our world for your faith? Of course it does. We can see it on a broad scale when we look at the 200 million Christians that face persecution every year. We look at the smaller scale when we look at jobs and situations in life that we have to stand up for what we believe. Persecution happens to us. It’s part of our identity in Christ.

And yet, here it is, our identity tells us that we’re going to suffer. It’s not something that we like to hear. It’s not something that sounds like any much fun for us. And yet, as we live in this world, as our world becomes a little bit more hostile to Christians, as we’ve looked at the last couple of weeks, we can realize if you haven’t been persecuted yet, you may be soon.

And this is what Peter is warning us in his word today. He’s saying you might face this suffering but it’s part of who you are in Christ. But there’s something we have to look at with this suffering. This suffering of ours, this suffering, this part of our identity as Christians is something that has a purpose. It has a meaning. We look at 1 Peter again as he tries to explain some of these areas where our suffering has a purpose, “For it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God’s will than for doing evil, for Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous.” And then we also look at Chapter 4, Verse 1, “Since, therefore, Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking.” Our suffering has a purpose.

I remember reading a story about someone who said they were an atheist and what brought them to this point of atheism is they said they can’t believe a God would allow suffering in this world and especially call His people to a life of suffering. “And because of that, I can’t believe in God. I can’t believe there’s a God who would do that.” But I look at this and I say, “Our suffering has a purpose. It has a meaning.” When there is no God, suffering has no purpose. It has no meaning. What does it leave you with? Just pain. Just trials with no meaning at all. But our suffering today has a purpose. We know that we don’t face our trials alone. We read Hebrews 13:5, “I will never leave you nor forsake you so we can confidently say the Lord is my helper, I will not fear. What can man do to me?” The author of Hebrews echoes this Old Testament passage that says God’s never going to leave you. In your trials and in your sufferings for your faith, He’s never going to leave you. You can always know that God is with you. And there’s nothing that man can do to that in order to drive you away from God. Our suffering has a purpose.

We also know that we don’t suffer in vain. Romans 5:3, shall we turn to that book, “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope.” So Paul, in his letter to the Romans, is saying there’s a reason for this suffering. It brings about hope within us.

I like to look at this illustration of weightlifting. Weightlifting, in order to get bigger muscles, when you lift weights, you actually end up tearing and ripping your muscles, putting stress on that in order to make it bigger. This is positive stress in order to get your muscle bigger. And this is the way that we can kind of see it in suffering, that our suffering is not in vain, that God says this positive stress that’s in our life, suffering for our faith, is going to actually give us strength. It’s going to give us that perseverance that’s going to help us through this life. That’s why we know that this suffering, this persecution has a purpose.

We know that we don’t face defeat, no matter what the suffering, what the trial is, whatever we’re going to have to go through, we know the final outcome. We know that God is going to bring us through. Jesus says in John 16:33, “I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have trouble but take heart. I have overcome the world.” Jesus Himself is pointing out that He knows we’re going to face some trials. We’re going to face some things for our faith and He says, “Whatever you have to face, whatever those trials may be, just know that I have already overcome the world and you will, too.” That’s what happens in our participation with Christ. That’s what happens when our identity is in Christ. The suffering has a purpose. The suffering has a meaning and the suffering will not last forever because Christ has promised to bring us through.

And this leads to the point that Peter constantly brings through his book, the message of hope. This message of hope continues to go through this book for this very reason because he’s bringing these people to the realization that their suffering, whatever they’re going through at this point in time and whatever they will have to go through in the future, God is bringing them through. To have hope in the name of Jesus. The name of Jesus means that we know these things will not last forever. We have a hope of Him returning. We have a hope that will bring us through.

That’s the hope that then Peter says you share with others. That’s the hope that people are going to hear because they may only be suffering in body, mind and heart but yet, the hope that there is a way out of that, that’s going to speak volumes. The hope that you have inside is what Peter encourages his readers to share and that’s the hope that I encourage you all to share. Whenever anybody asks you for the reason of the hope that you have inside, share it with them. These trials, these sufferings, this world will no longer last but Christ is going to come and restore it. Take us all to be with Him. This is true hope, true hope that you can find comfort in today. Amen.

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church