Sometimes the Gospel hurts

Sunday June 5 - Third Sunday after Pentecost  

Grace and peace in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Sometimes the Gospel hurts.

Sometimes, good news, causes us pain.

Perhaps it feels contradictory at first, but let me give you some examples and see if maybe you can relate to the sometimes painful nature of Gospel.

Several times in the Bible, women far past the age of childbearing are given the gift of fertility and the birth of sons.  Sarah in the Old Testament and Elizabeth in the new are given this gift of pregnancy.  Mary, though young, is also given the gift of a child.  Consider the number of women and men today who suffer with infertility issues.  Couples face the financial and emotional costs of fertility treatments and still find themselves childless while surrounded by friends who seem to have no problems conceiving.  Worse still, while they long for a child to love and cherish, they are surrounded by stories in the media telling of parents abusing, neglecting, and even killing their own children.  Some women even carry children in their wombs for months before the child dies never having lived outside the woman’s own body.  So, the news of another woman giving birth to a beautiful baby is good news, but also painful.

Today we have these two similar but different stories that again demonstrate how good news, Gospel, can still hurt.  I can imagine no greater pain or loss than that of losing a child.  In fact, that is not an exercise of the imagination that I am willing to pursue—it is just too awful.  But it happens.  It happens far too much.  Men and women lose children to miscarriage, illness, suicide, war, violence, accidents, carelessness on someone’s part, and the list goes on.  I have no doubt that most of these parents wish, pray, and desperately long for miracles such as are given to the widows in the First and Gospel lessons from today.  These women are so greatly blessed to have their sons given back to them.  Their only sons.  And while for many of us this may simply be another story of God’s greatness reminding us how wonderful is the love of God…for others, these stories raise a question that maybe is only a whisper in the back of the mind or written in scar tissue on the heart: Why her and not me?  Why not me, God?  Why not me?

Why does God only speak to some people?  Why does God only perform miracles for some people?  Why does God seem to take and take and take from some people?  Why do some seem to suffer so much while others seem so richly blessed?  Why?

Why is the Good News not always good?  Why does the Gospel sometimes hurt?

And sometimes, when the Gospel hurts, when it asks too much of us, or gives too little to us, or we don’t fully understand it, or it doesn’t fit with where we are in our lives, we might even be tempted to say it isn’t really Gospel at all.  It happens.  It happens to all who sin—of course, that’s all of us. 

I want to tell you about those women, those unnamed women, those widows.  You know that in those days a woman with no husband and no son was at the mercy of the community.  No one was required to provide for her and she had few resources with which to provide for herself.  The loss of a child, in and of itself, would already be a life shattering event, but the loss of a son was also the loss of a future and the loss of hope.  What God works through Elijah, and what Jesus does; these miracles are restorative.  They are giving back hope to these women.  They are not just being given the lives of their sons, but their own lives as well.

It doesn’t change the grief of every mother and father who has ever lost a child.  It can’t make up for those losses.  Good News doesn’t always make everything better.

Good News, however, should remind us that God loves us, God hurts when we hurt, God has compassion on us.  God knows what the loss of a child feels like.  Jesus knows that a mother needs a son and a son needs a mother.  Just look how he assured this for his own mother even as he suffered on the cross.  Good News means we are not alone…even in the midst of great suffering.

The psalmist tells us that “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”  We need to remember that sometimes the nights are very, very long.  The joy is not that the morning comes and God is with us again, it is instead that God is with us still.  God has not left us in the hard times.  God will not leave us, or let us stay, in the hard times.

Paul’s defense of the True Gospel is this: he didn’t receive it from any human being, including himself.  Gospel is received through a revelation of Jesus Christ.  The Gospel is not guaranteed to make you happy, or comfortable, or self-assured.  It is the Good News because it is a promise from God.  You are enough because God has made you and God is more than enough.  You are enough because Jesus loves you and Jesus is more than enough.

It doesn’t mean there will be no hurt or pain or grief or tears.  It doesn’t mean you won’t be called upon to do challenging things like sit with someone else in their loss, or love someone your instinct is to distrust, or believe yourself to be enough.  But it doesn’t change the True Good News of God’s love and grace.

God really, really, really, loves you.

Really.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.