Life Together - The Suffering Community

                                                                    

Series: “Life Together”
Title: “The Suffering Community”
Text: 2 Corinthians 1:3-7
Above the Great West Door to Westminster Abbey in London stand ten statues recognizing Christian martyrs of the 20^th century. One of those statues is of Wang Zhiming, who lived and preached in China’s Yunnan province. I read his story in the book God Is Red by Liao Yiwu, a Chinese journalist, critical of the communist regime. In his travels around China he interviewed a number of Chinese Christians, many of whom were persecuted quite severely for their faith. Yiwu is not a Christian, but these stories interested him.  Many of those he interviewed were 70 to 90 years old. Most came to faith in Christ in their youth through the work of missionaries before the communist revolution. Wang’s father came to faith in Christ through the work of missionaries with the China Inland Mission Agency, now OMF… which PCC has supported for 16 years.

Yiwu interviewed one of Wang Zhiming’s sons who told him his father’s story: “In 1951 the government closed the churches, confiscated church property and sent my father, a newly ordained minister, home. He was ordered to farm under the supervision of the revolutionary peasants. He was not antigovernment, but refused to renounce his faith. He never stopped his daily prayers. Christians in other villages would gather at our house late at night. The tense political environment made everyone nervous. All prayer activities went underground.”

“In 1966 the Cultural Revolution started. The revolutionary masses swarmed into our courtyard, ransacked our house, and beat everyone. They tied us together and paraded us from village to village. My father was forced to wear a big dunce cap with the words “Spy and Lackey of the Imperialists.” At public condemnation meetings attended by over ten thousand people, we were the targets of angry fists. The spit was almost enough to drown us. No matter how much we suffered, father never stopped praying. It went on like that for three years, until the revolutionary rebels began fighting one another and no longer had time to bother us. The daily harassment ended. My father found some former Christians, and they would gather inside mountain caves at midnight for prayer sessions. They didn’t have a copy of the Bible, but they believed it was in their hearts. The gospel started to spread again in the nearby villages. My father continued to baptize people. At dawn on May 11, 1969, my father was arrested.”

Wang’s son goes on to recount his father’s execution, involving crowds and taunts before the sentence was carried out. The son telling the story spent time in prison himself for his faith.

Scot McKnight: “We believe that the central goal of life is to be happy & to feel good about oneself. We believe that people who “accept Jesus as personal savior” go to heaven when they die & thus secure permanent personal happiness.”

The stories recorded by Yiwu make something of a mockery of the idea that the gospel is about my health, my financial prosperity, my personal happiness, and my life fulfillment. These stories are inspiring and humbling. This is the 3^rd in a series of messages titled “Life Together”. I’ve taken the title from German pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s little book Life Together. Bonhoeffer writes, “The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.” He understood the gift of life together in Christ. This series explores what it means to be a church, a community of faith in Christ our Lord. Today we face the sobering reality that we who follow Jesus are called to share in his suffering. To some extent every Christian congregation is a suffering community.

There is so much about suffering in the NT that it was a challenge to pick just one text. In all the passages about suffering not a single one is about how to avoid it. Paul addresses the issue of suffering in numerous passages. He writes in Philippians 3:10-11 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,  and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

“I want to know Christ”. Of course, we all do! We all want to know Christ in an intimate, life-changing, wonderfully exhilarating, fulfilling way. Who wouldn’t want to know “the power of his resurrection”? Who wouldn’t want a personal connection to the Jesus who heals & blesses? But Paul adds, “…and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings…” What? That’s not what I signed up. That’s not what we hear from tv preachers who write best-selling books on how to use God to get healthy and rich. All pain and suffering is bad and to be avoided at all cost, right? So why is Paul so eager to “share in his sufferings”?

When we talk about fellowship we’re thinking church dinners and picnics and Bible study groups and prayer groups usually with a few donuts or a dessert thrown in. Fellowship is singing together and serving together. Could it be that fellowship runs deeper than that? Could it be that suffering is part of life together? Could it be that God works through our suffering in ways we cannot fully grasp or appreciate? It seems to me that the NT provides one central over-arching truth about suffering that must be the compass we rely on when we are in the darkness of suffering… that truth, our compass is this: Christ, our Lord, suffered. Suffering may be hard, exhausting, discouraging, perplexing, painful, but one thing it is not for those who follow Christ; it is never pointless. God’s greatest work of love was delivered through the suffering Christ. God continues to work through our suffering. After all, the church is “the body of Christ”. We like to celebrate the glory & victory of his Resurrection. But his church is also to share in his suffering. If that is true, what does it mean for us to be the suffering community?

(Read 2 Corinthians 1:3-7)

We learn from this text…

Christ’s sufferings carry over to us
Paul says, “the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives”. The Greek word translated “sufferings” is πάθημα meaning, “hardship, pain, affliction, or suffering.” It can refer to all manner of troubles both persecution and adversity. Adversity doesn’t mean God is punishing us or has forgotten us or has stopped hearing our prayers. Throughout 2 Corinthians Paul emphasizes that God is at work in and through their suffering.

Through suffering we experience more of God

Paul writes that “God comforts us in all our troubles.” παρακαλέω, translated “comfort” means, “to call to one’s side.” It is not so much the picture of one standing at a distance cheering on someone in trouble like a sports fan in the stands urging his team on from the cheap seats. It is the picture of one standing beside & lending a helping hand to someone in trouble. (catching Sharon’s dad) Some form of παρακαλέω is used 10 times in these 5 verses. Jesus uses the noun form of the word to describe the Holy Spirit. In John 14:16 he says, And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor (παράκλητος) to be with you forever--

The ultimate encourager & comforter is the HS. God, our παράκλητος works through our suffering & even turns it to our own spiritual & sometimes physical benefit. The man who survives the heart attack finally finds the motivation & discipline to quit smoking, get regular exercise, and change his diet has clearly benefited from the immediate affliction. How many people have turned to the Lord as a result of their adversity? How many believers have their walk with the Lord energized by their affliction?

A man in our church going through chemotherapy told me, “Yesterday I wanted to die.” With his next breath he said, “I’ve never felt so close to God in my life.”
About 10 years ago a man in the hospital bed waiting for the surgeon to come perform a life threatening procedure told me: “I’ve never felt so loved in my life.”
Through suffering we learn to rely all the more on Christ; that’s a good thing.

Suffering prepares us to deliver παρακαλέω

Paul writes in v.4, “We can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”
Suffering makes us much better at giving comfort, encouragement, & help to others. Kirk Bohls made this statement in the American-Statesman about Lance Armstrong: “I'm going to consider him more champion than cheat, mainly because of his super-human efforts in raising more than $470 million for his foundation's fight against cancer & inspiring millions of cancer victims & survivors...”
I wonder how much money Lance raised for cancer before he became a victim of the disease. I wonder how many cancer survivors he inspired before he was a cancer survivor. Nothing awakens us to the suffering of others like becoming one of them. There is no παρακαλέω like being able to say, “I know what it’s like.”
It may be that your suffering is for your own spiritual benefit, but it is more likely for the benefit of others. It is a great thing to become the messenger of God’s mercy, comfort, encouragement, grace, and hope.

What about those of us who are not suffering or in the midst of major adversity? What about those of us who have no crisis prayer request?

Hebrews 13:3 (NIV)
Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.
That’s a particularly pointed example because we have 2 members of this church in prison. I asked one of them last Friday what he’d say to the people of his church if he could. He said, “I have a brother who lives in Pville who has visited me 3 or 4 times in 8 months. You visit me every week. The church is my family.”

Bonhoeffer wrote: “The Christian is called to sympathy & action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ suffered.”

Be the means of παρακαλέω by…

Showing up
The whole idea of παρακαλέω is being with another. The isolated individual, living his or her own life in a sealed-off compartment away from the rest of the world, is totally foreign to Paul. In order to “be with” you have to show up.

Last Sunday afternoon I led the memorial service for one of our preschool mothers. The sanctuary was packed with people who came to pay their respects, celebrate her life, and share in her family’s grief. Being part of the suffering community means, in part, simply showing up for our brother or sister who is suffering.

Visiting our members in prison is visible, tangible evidence their church has not forgotten them. Every visit is a small taste of the incomparable joy and strength of life together. You don’t need a seminary degree to show up.

Listening

Every time I visit a brother in jail or a brother suffering with cancer or a sister grieving the loss of a dear loved one I think about what I can say. Sometimes I think, “What am I doing? I can’t fix this. Nothing I say will make a difference.”
In that moment I must remind myself that I’m not going with something to say, I’m going to be with the one hurting to listen. Sometimes the Spirit gives me a word of encouragement to share that is helpful. Sometimes not. Either way it is the listening that helps most. You don’t need a seminary degree to listen.

Praying

Prayer is not a speech. Prayer is not a performance. Prayer is a profound declaration of faith in God. So we must pray, even if it is the simplest one-sentence prayer: “God help my brother! Amen.” You don’t need a seminary education to pray. Being part of the suffering community means showing up, listening, praying.

Just as the life of Jesus meant embracing the purpose of the Father in his suffering out of love for us, so must we embrace our own suffering. There is always suffering in this community, and we come alongside those who suffer and in a sense, make it our own. We must resist the temptation to separate ourselves from the one who suffers in order to spare ourselves the grief. If your goal is to avoid all pain at all cost this is not the community for you.

Conclusion/Response

The Chinese government eventually reversed the verdict against Wang, once the Cultural Revolution was over, and against his son as well. The son recalls how in 1996 the church held a memorial service for his father – “the choir alone numbered two thousand.” He tells the journalist, “In the mid-1960s, when my father was preaching, there were 2,795 Christians in our county. We now (2005) have about 30,000 Christians in the county. The son concludes… “In our society today, people’s minds are entangled and chaotic. They need the words of the gospel now more than at any other time.”

We may never suffer the kind of persecution Chinese Christians have, but we suffer. We face our own adversity… devastating illness, heart-rending loss, gut-wrenching betrayals, and disappointments. But no one suffers alone. Let it be said by all who know this congregation, “That church lives out the verse; Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

Homework Assignment: Make a visit or write a letter to someone suffering.

Blessing: “May you know the παρακαλέω of the HS in your suffering, and may you share it with others who suffer. Amen.”