Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
Chapel of our Lord, Episcopal Church Center
Sts. Philip & James, May 1, 2019
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight O Lord. Our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
The prophet Isaiah tells us: ‘"Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it.”’
This passage invites some important reflections for us. No doubt all of us have known the bread of adversity and the water of affliction. The difficulty is that this passage would seem to imply that God gives us these. I don’t know about you all, but the idea of a wrathful, vengeful, spiteful God who sends us hardship just because God can does not sit well with me. It does not fit with my understanding and experience of a loving, liberating, life-giving God. So what do we do with passages like these? Or with popular theologies in our culture that say that says if we are experiencing hardship it is because we have done something to deserve or that we have superior coping skills, because “God does not give us more than we can handle.”
I don’t find these approaches to be particularly helpful or enriching. And I think our passage from Isaiah, and our reading from the Gospel of John can help us to see things differently. Notice what Isaiah says, “your Teacher will not hide” and “you shall see your Teacher.” So what if we think of "the bread of adversity" and "the water of affliction” not as punishments sent because we have fallen short or failed somehow. What if they are the realities that come with learning, with being challenged and with being pushed to be our best selves? The important caveat here is that learning and acceptance of suffering only applies to that which is endemic to the reality of being human. If the suffering we experience or witness is a result of injustice then that suffering is not to be accepted. To follow in the Way of Jesus is to stand up and fight against injustice whenever we find it.
Pope Gregory the Great called grief “The Great Teacher.” Indeed it is. I don’t know about you, but I have learned some of the most important and profound life lessons through the experience of grief. The reality of loss makes us sit up and pay attention. I am a cancer survivor. I had bone cancer when I was a teenager. The gift of confronting my own mortality at such a young age is that I was able to carry with me from that day the profound truth that life is precious and fragile. Each day is a gift. We never know how long we will have. In that knowledge and perspective there is an invitation to gratitude, an invitation to live life to the fullest.
The reality of grief, because of real or possible loss, is indeed a great teacher. Not just because we can gain valuable perspective out of our experiences. There is also a wonderful invitation to meet God more fully in the midst of our experiences of grief. In our readings today, we are reminded that Jesus is “The Way.” We are reminded that if we follow in that Way, Jesus will be with us. There is powerful comfort in this reality. It is no small thing to know that Jesus is with us even in the midst of our afflictions and challenges. And we are not so far removed from Holy Week. We can easily remember that Jesus does indeed know the fullness of the human experience. There is no pain or suffering that he does not also know.
So many places in our Scriptures - in our readings from Isaiah and John today - in the beloved passages of Psalm 139 - remind us of the beautiful, intimate nature of our relationship with God. God knit us together in our mothers’ wombs. God has known us since before we were born. There is no where on earth that we can go, from our own homes to the outermost parts of the sea where God will not also be. God will be with us at our waking and our sleeping. At our births and at our deaths.
God is steadfast and faithful. We will never be alone. Even in the midst of whatever challenges we face, God is with us. God shares in our experiences. God is our companion and our guide. So the next time you find yourself eating "the bread of adversity” and drinking "the water of affliction,” I hope that you will first do the “injustice check” regarding the source of your suffering to see whether you should respond by fighting back or with a healthy curiosity. When we encounter the realities of endemic suffering, I hope we will remember the truths of our readings today. I hope we will be curious and open students, on the lookout for what we might learn in the midst of it. I hope we will also always remember that we are never alone.
AMEN.
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