Text: I will trust, and will not be afraid, [for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation]. (Isaiah 12.2).
Driving up to Cambridge last Monday, I was thinking about this evening’s readings when Rabbi Lionel Blue came on the radio with his Thought for the Day. A visit to the grave of his beloved mama had called to mind some of the difficulties he had encountered as a young man in marking out his identity. Neither his vocation as a rabbi, nor his sexuality, were easy for family and friends to accept, or even to come to terms with himself. But this had taught him, he said, to embrace all such difficulties as spiritual opportunities.
Coming from anyone less kind and gentle, one might be tempted to dismiss such advice as a familiar piece of management speak. We are all used to being bullied into regarding every difficulty as a challenge, every challenge as an opportunity. But that would be to do Rabbi Blue an injustice. As we turn the pages of our Bible we continually encounter stubborn, obstinate people – one might even say bloody-minded idiots – who insist on fulfilling the mission to which they believe they have been called, even in the most perilous circumstances. One thinks of Joshua, nailing his colours to the mast as he challenges the Israelites to trust God in the long campaign to conquer and settle the promised land – as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Josh 24.15). One thinks of Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego, asserting the power of God to deliver them from King Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace, and going on to say: But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up (Dan 3.18). In tonight’s psalm we have David the fugitive declaring his faith in God’s help. We have Isaiah, in exile, confidently proclaiming a triumphant return to Jerusalem. And in the New Testament we have Paul preaching hope and consolation out of an experience that appears to be a whole catalogue of mortal danger, stress and what he mildly refers to as affliction. Where do they get such courage, such hope? Can we learn from them, or do we have to say we are just not in that league?
Paul insists that his experience is available to every member of the Christian community. For him affliction and consolation are two sides of the same coin. Where he has experienced affliction, he has also experienced consolation. If that was all he had to say, we might admire Paul’s assurance, from a safe distance, without feeling able to follow his example. Joshua and David, Isaiah and Lionel Blue might all have said much the same But there is an extra dimension in what Paul has to say. The hope which sustains his courage is rooted in his identification with the sacrifice of Jesus and the triumph of his resurrection. In this passage, the main emphasis is on the empathy which links him to the Corinthians. As they share in his sufferings, so they will share in his sense of consolation. But elsewhere in 2 Corinthians we see more clearly how he relates his experience of suffering – and theirs – to the suffering of Christ. In chapter 4 there is that wonderfully vivid image of the truth about suffering and consolation being like a precious treasure kept in an ordinary humble clay pot. He goes on to insist that even as our physical bodies are being wasted out by our experience of suffering, hostility, exhaustion, as we seek to do God’s will for the sake of Christ our Lord, so day by day our inner nature is being renewed by his Spirit at work in our hearts (2 Cor 4.16-5.10). Throughout our lives we are continually being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in us (2 Cor 4.11). And that of course is the source of the consolation to which Paul points, even if we cannot always see it through our tears. This paradoxical relationship between affliction and consolation is finally resolved in chapter 12 where Paul declares that in God’s world power is made perfect in weakness. Just as Christ himself triumphed most surely on the Cross where it looked as if he was weak and powerless, so God delights to pour on us the grace that enables us to accept the misunderstanding, the mockery, the apparent failure, the abuse and exploitation that is still so often the lot of those who quietly but stubbornly put their trust in Him, as they get on with what they perceive to be His work.
I will trust, and not be afraid. Can we really say that? Yes, I believe we can, but only because Christ has been there before us. He it is who goes with us through the darkest night of any pain, trouble, affliction born for his sake, not advising us, however nicely, to treat our difficulties as spiritual opportunities, but silently transforming our experience – even ours – by bearing it with us until we rise with Him to new life in the morning.
Thanks be to God. Amen