Like a death to us
This time last year, one of the women’s groups in Gilnahirk had just held an Afternoon Tea event. Due to the nature of the occasion, I remember sharing that it felt very similar to what it must have been like prior to the outbreak of war in 1939. We knew that something dark and doom-laden was about to descend upon us, but we didn’t know all the consequences and implications. There was a strong sense that this would be the end of such gatherings for a while, but we hoped that we would ‘meet again some sunny day’.
In retrospect, as in 1939, we really didn’t have any understanding of what lay ahead - infection rates soaring; the NHS and its staff under severe stress; the care home sector devastated by the deaths and isolation of those most vulnerable; extreme pressures exerted on business owners and employees; financial problems for families; the education of a generation of young people seriously disrupted; many throughout our land and across the world experiencing loneliness and fear. On the horizon but heading rapidly in our direction was a tsunami of crises.
In so many ways the Covid-19 pandemic has been ‘like a death to us.’
Understanding suffering
Coincidentally, or as we might suggest providentially, our worship services in Gilnahirk a year ago were focussed on the book of Job. Job, a righteous man and yet afflicted by suffering upon suffering, whose capacity to cope is tested even further by friends who come alongside in order to urge him to acknowledge the sin that so obviously, in their view, must be the cause of his trials. If only Job would confess, then he would have his former health and wealth restored and live happily ever after. The friends’ view of how the world works is based on what has been termed ‘the retribution principle’. This approach to the problem of suffering is built on the foundation that the nature of God’s justice means that the righteous will prosper and the wicked will suffer. Many people today believe that their circumstances reflect whether they are in or out of God’s favour.
Jesus addresses this issue during his encounter with the man born blind in John chapter 9. The disciples look back to the past by asking whose sin is responsible for his disability as they seek reasons for his suffering (verse 2). Jesus directs attention towards the future by disassociating the man’s condition from any specific sin on his or his parents’ part and focusing on purpose: “this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (verse 3). The disciples’ cry is “Why?” Jesus prompts us to ask “What for?”
Holding on to God
In one of the bleakest passages in the Bible, Job laments his condition:
‘Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure, who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave? Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? For sighing has become my daily food; my groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.’
Job 3:20-26
However, even in the midst of this darkest valley, Job curses the day of his birth but refuses to follow his wife’s advice: “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9)
Somehow, perhaps only by his fingertips, Job manages to hold on to God. Or is it more like the reality that lies behind a parent instructing a child to hold on to the parent’s hand so that it will be safe walking along a busy road or a treacherous path? Actually, it is not the child’s grip that will keep it from harm; rather it is the parent’s firm grasp of the child’s hand that is the determining factor in its security.
Suffering as the crucible in which righteousness is tested
Eventually, in the last chapters of the book, God reveals himself to Job and, instead of God being in the dock, Job is under scrutiny. Who is he compared to the creator of the world? The book’s message is that God is wise and can be trusted even when our circumstances make us want to question his justice and his goodness, when we can’t find an explanation for, or a purpose behind, our suffering. Suffering is the crucible in which righteousness is tested.
In the end Job’s fortunes are restored, not as an affirmation of “the retribution principle”, nor as a precedent that always applies to us guaranteeing us health and wealth after trials. Job’s restoration arises out of the pleasure of God rather than the obligation of God. The book of Job invites us to learn how to think about God in times of testing and to trust him in spite of our circumstances.
Hope at Easter through the suffering servant
Ultimately the key to more fully understanding righteous suffering is found in the perfectly righteous suffering servant, Jesus, who made the supreme sacrifice by dying our death for us so we might live in his life.
Meditate on these words of Paul, who once had it all in his own eyes and in the view of his peers, from Philippians 3:7-11:
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Rev Stephen Moore is minster of Gilnahirk congregation, Belfast.
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