Obedience and Suffering
Lent 5 – March 17, 2024
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-13
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33
If there is one thing that most people try to avoid, it's suffering. All you need as proof of this is watch a bit of television and pay attention to the advertisements. Almost all of the advertisements about medicine talk about relieving some sort of pain. Both physical pain and mental pain. Even the made-up pain of not looking like others or not having perfect skin (whatever that means). It's not just the television that advertises a pain-free life, the street pharmacists do the same. In fact I know of some church leaders who say the same: Come to Jesus and your pain will go away. But that’s not what God has promised with God’s gift of Jesus. Our text from Hebrews draws attention to this. There it talks about Jesus suffering for us. His suffering came not because he made a mistake or did something wrong. Jesus suffered because he was obedient to God. Which reminds us of another human fault. We do not like obedience. Or, if we do, it's because the person we become obedient to promises that all of our pain and problems will go away if we let him or her make all of our decisions. But that is not God’s way. Jesus’ suffering and obedience was not for his own sake. His obedience and suffering were for the sake of others.
That is what God’s covenant has been about all along. God gave the Law so that the people could live together in community. God sent Jesus so that we can live together as the body of Christ. (The U.S. constitution is also about that – to make a more perfect union.) The gift from God is to be able to live in a community where we share all of our lives, from the joys to the sorrows. You already know that. You have sat in this place and enjoyed the gift of life as we watched God make new disciples in the waters of a baptism, gathered around the body of a loved one at a funeral, and have communed with all the saints at this table. There is nothing in God’s covenant that says, “Come and follow, and you will never suffer.” What the covenant says is that God is with you from birth to death and then beyond. Unfortunately we often forget that with the covenant comes obedience. Not the obedience of the world that would imprison or bind you, but the obedience that frees you to live a life of service with Jesus.
While the shape of that service changes throughout our lives, it's always the same whom we serve – God who sent Jesus to be our salvation and the model of a godly life. This Lent as you walk with Jesus to Jerusalem ponder the gifts that you have received from God, remember those times when Jesus walked with you in suffering, and dedicate your life, once again, to the obedience of love. An obedience that we take willingly because Jesus was obedient unto death for us.