Spiritual Suffering--a Lenten Thought

MEDITATION:

Have you ever felt completely alone?

We know many stories in our modern world of people feeling alone. The teen who takes their own life, because they feel alone, no one understands them, no one loves them, no one can help them at least they believe that. They feel alone in the midst of their real life experience of maybe bullying, humiliation, frustration, abuse.

There are seniors who feel alone, because health limits their interaction with others, many of their friends have died, their families are far away, or sometimes estranged from them. When people feel they are alone, forgotten in life, it is a spiritual pain and suffering that runs very deep.

There is the successful person who has a career or operates a business, who has many friends, is popular in the community, who has money to spend on all the toys of a modern society; and yet if they let themselves be quiet, not surrounded by the noise of a busy life, not surrounded by the countless people they interact with or those who wish to be near them or demand attention from them; if they allow themselves to be quiet and face the thoughts and feelings of their most inward heart; they also feel alone, empty, isolated, unloved, with no meaning or purpose, no meaningful hope for the future.......What they are experiencing is the pain of spiritual suffering.

We live in a modern Canadian society which has never been so connected to each other or to the world, than at any time in history. When our son lived in New Zealand for a year, he or we could pick up the phone and talk to him instantly. When our other son lived in London in the UK, we skyped once a week and saw him and visited with him every week, via the computer...We actually talked to him more regularly when he was outside the country, than when he lives in Saskatchewan and is only a couple of hours away.

We are a very connected Canadian society, but at the same time for many, many people, we are a people who often feel completed disconnected from anything meaningful. We often feel disconnected from anything that heals the emptiness of our spirits. We are disconnected from a sense of purpose in life or that our life matters, or that we are loved and or that we are not alone in this great big universe. That kind of disconnection, I would suggest is the pain of spiritual suffering.

In our Christian faith, particularly as we mark the last few days of Jesus’ life before his death and resurrection, we find that Jesus was no stranger to the pain of spiritual suffering as well.

This might surprise us. As Christian people, we affirm a very traditional and difficult to understand teaching, which is that Christ is both fully divine and fully human. But in our popular understanding of faith, and even in the church, we will often emphasize the divinity of Christ over the humanity of Christ. And in so doing we miss some deep, profound teaching and insight into Christ, into God and into our lives as well. We tend not to see the suffering of Christ in its full depth when we over emphasize his divinity.

But in the scriptures, particularly in the last days and hours of his life, we see real suffering of Christ in his full humanity. In Matthew today, we see Jesus on the cross. And we hear him cry, according to Matthew these words before he dies: “My God, my God why have your forsaken me?” It is a cry of deep pain...If we take the words seriously, we have someone cry the experience of many in our modern world...a sense of complete aloneness...And what is worse aloneness, isolation from someone Jesus knew on a very intimate basis.

What I mean is that it is one thing to have never loved and to feel alone. But it is quite another thing to have loved and then to be separated from that love and feel alone.

You see if you don’t know what you have missed and only sense that you are missing something; that is one kind of pain. But to have known great intimacy, to have known great love and then to have it disappear so that you know what you are missing, I would suggest this is an even deeper pain.

Jesus experienced the pain of spiritual suffering, being lost to the love and relationship with God he had known so deeply and intimately in his life.

Christ’s cry of suffering of course, as you probably know, or will have heard in our readings today, is a quote from Psalm 22.

Psalm 22, is a prayer to God in the midst of tremendous suffering. And we sense the depth of that suffering, which I would name as spiritual suffering, on top of actual physical suffering.

The depth of spiritual suffering that Jesus identified with by quoting the opening verse of this psalm is told in the next verses of the psalm: “Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.”

Have you ever felt that God was silent? Have you ever been desperate for help for healing, for comfort, for insight, for freedom from the trials of life? Have you ever felt distant from God in your prayers; alone, isolated? Jesus felt that on the cross.

Many modern people feel God is silent, and interpret that silence as an absence of God, or at least the absence of a loving God. Many modern people interpret that spiritual suffering to be about a God who does not care, or a God who is not real.

Christ, also experiences spiritual suffering, spiritual emptiness, a spiritual silence from God. But in the psalm reading, the ancient writer of this prayer, alternates between the cry of spiritual suffering, and the faith of a hope that in God there is still help.

Verses 3-5 of Psalm 22 says: “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praise of Israel. In you our ancestors trusted: they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried and were saved, in you they trusted and were not put to shame.”

In this psalm, we find a way to heal spiritual suffering. It is in remembering the acts of God from the past. The psalmist remembers the nature of God who is liberating and life giving. The central story for the formation of the Jewish people, for the basis of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament is about the God who frees the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. In all their times of suffering, danger and doubt; Israel, like the psalmist found the strength, the courage, the spiritual wisdom, the spiritual power to find their way, by remembering the God they worshiped and trusting that in this God there will come help, hope, and love...even on the days we are most afraid, even on the days we feel most alone, even on the days God seems the most silent.

I have found this myself in life....In a simple way, there will be times when the demands on my life, the demands of ministry can be great and almost overwhelming. There are funerals and grieving families to see, there are practical meetings, and worship services to prepare, there are family responsibilities to consider, there are too many appointments that need to be done. And there are times particularly in those emotionally charged and stretched situations that I find myself overwhelmed, exhausted, discouraged....But I have learned to trust that the strength needed will be found, the words and wisdom required will come, that if I meet deadlines, if I take one thing at a time, if I remember that I have come through other times of challenge and difficulty before, if I remember that God is present and when I pray, strength will be found, then I can go forward. If I forget, well, then I am paralyzed by being overwhelmed.

When Jesus cried from the cross, I believe he was reflecting the deep pain of spiritual suffering, that sense of being alone, cut off from God. Jesus expressed that cry of pain by quoting from a Psalm that does not shy away from expressing pain. The Psalm also however remembers God’s goodness and liberating power from the past and will in its verses express faith and hope in the God who will come to us in the midst of suffering, to bring the gift of liberating wholeness.

Because Jesus quoted that psalm I believe he was drawing upon the richness of faith, the richness of scripture and his spiritual and religious traditions, to help him find hope, courage, faith when he was so alone, that he couldn’t find any other words.

Sometimes in spiritual suffering, we feel so empty that we cannot pray, we cannot express to God our pain or our sorrow, or our need. It is then we have another gift; the gift of our spiritual traditions, like the scriptures, to say the words we cannot find, to help us remember the God we cannot find, to help us discover the nature of the faith, that we feel alienated from.

The pain of spiritual suffering is great I believe in our modern Canada. Most people do not know this is the suffering they are experiencing, they just know they don’t feel loved, hopeful, or that life is meaningful and has a purpose.

But when we look to Christ, and see his spiritual suffering, we see the things that can help us. As Christ did, the first thing is to cry and admit out loud our pain and our emptiness. The second is to draw upon the strength of others to help us and encourage us, as Jesus did by looking to the strength of his people of faith through the psalm. In modern times, it may be we look to the bible, maybe we look to worship, maybe we look to someone we trust, to share our emptiness... but that is an important step, to look to others for help.

And the third thing, I think is that Jesus, by quoting psalm 22, is drawing upon his spiritual tradition of faith in the God who has acted in the past and trusting in this God, Jesus places himself in God’s hands, trusting that God will also act in the present and the future with healing love.

On the Cross, after the cry of pain, he dies. Matthew says that he cried with a loud voice and breathed his last. In Luke 23: 46 it says” Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father into your hands I commend my spirit”. Having said this, he breathed his last.” It seems that at the final moment, Jesus in faith and hope, places himself in God’s embrace.

In our life’s journey, there will be times when we experience the pain of spiritual suffering. But as we look to Christ, we see not only the reality of that pain, but we see the strength Jesus found to face that pain. He faced the pain by expressing the pain, drawing upon the words and hope of others through the scriptures and the rich religious tradition of trust in the God of the Exodus, the God of liberation. And then Jesus shows us the ability to make the leap of faith in the midst of his pain to commit himself in trust to God’s embrace.

May we learn to help each other in our life’s journey, and discover the gift of faith and hope and help. Amen