The Authority of Suffering

Sexagesima
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  To whom do we listen?  Whom do we vest with authority?  That seems to be the topic of the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth chapters of St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.  And since our Collect today asks for the help of St. Paul, the Doctor of the Gentiles, I thought it fitting to focus in on those questions.

St. Paul

    Because St. Paul is encouraging them not to listen to the so-called experts who profess to correct the Corinthians and how they should believe.  Instead, the Apostle adjures them to listen to him, not only because of his bona fides, but because of his sufferings.  Yes, he is Hebrew; yes, he is an Israelite; yes, he is of the seed of Abraham.  But the false apostles have not suffered for the faith as St. Paul has: through labors, imprisonment, scourging, stoning, shipwreck, perils all around, and hunger and thirst.  But not just suffering: St. Paul also claims glorious visions of heaven.  And all of that is why St. Paul has a claim to authority to which the people of Corinth should pay attention.
    We so often do exactly what our parents and teachers warned us not to do in childhood: judge a book by its cover.  We look for the finest outside image, rather than looking deeper into the person.  We estimate that the ones who have all the answers are those who look the best.  But they often do not.  
    And if it’s true for the Apostle to the Gentiles, it rings even more true for the Lord who called him to preach to the Gentiles.  Well did Isaiah prophesy about Christ, “He had no majestic bearing to catch our eye, no beauty to draw us to him.  He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain, Like one from whom you turn your face, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.”  Yet this rejected God-Man saved the world, and communicated God’s message of reconciliation, not the fair-looking Pharisees in their fine robes and lengthened phylacteries.  
    And to drive home the point, J.R.R. Tolkien develops this same truth in “The Lord of the Rings.”  Aragorn is the rightful heir of the throne of Gondor.  And yet, from his wandering in the wilderness with the Dúnedain, he is rough and bears, at the surface, no kingly visage.  Still, Frodo recognizes, when they first meet, some goodness in him.  Frodo says, “‘I believed that you were a friend….I think one of [the enemy’s] spies would – well, seem fairer and feel fouler.’”  Frodo looks beyond the outward appearance and goes more deeply to see the regal nature of a man so many brushed aside as a mere Ranger.

    Or even consider Frodo himself.  In the end, it was not a wizard, or the son of the Steward of Gondor, or even the fair elf who understood or had to bear the weight of the One Ring.  Frodo, though small and easily written-off, was the only one who could fight effectively the evil that the Ring contained, and, even with some resistance, eventually bring it to Mount Doom where it could be destroyed.
    We do learn some lessons from those who have not had to endure suffering.  You don’t require your doctor to have had cancer in order to seek treatment from him or her.  Though I’m celibate, I am called upon to help married couples in their relationships.  Sometimes there is a wisdom that comes from not struggling through the midst of a problem.  But suffering through something and coming out on top speaks for itself, and provides an authority that those who have never experienced that suffering can never fully understand.  Like Jacob from the Book of Genesis, sometimes we have to wrestle with God all night before truly understanding His plan.
    This should encourage us in our own suffering, whether allowed by God or by our own making.  By going through the fight, by chastising our bodies as we will do in this upcoming Lent, we understand more about God and about ourselves, and how we can respond to His grace better each day.  As we wrestle with God to remain close to Him, even amidst the temptations of life, we understand better His plan and the work of His grace in our lives.  If we remain on the sidelines and take no risks to become saints, we may look better on the outside, but our relationship with God will be shallow and not fulfill us as much as we would like.
    It is as President Theodore Roosevelt said so marvelously, a quote that was echoed in the CBS cop-drama, “Blue Bloods”:
 

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

As we approach the forty days of Lent, the Quadragesima, may we prepare to enter the arena of self-disciple and conversion.  May we not stand on the sidelines and pretend like we know what it means to enter the desert of self-denial, though we look quite good.  But may we spend the forty days in the desert with Christ, allowing His grace to put to death in us all that is not of Him, getting mangled and beat up and coming out looking none-the-better, but truly knowing what it means to suffer for and with Christ in order that we might take hold of the gift of eternal salvation He offers us: who with the Father and the Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.