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What do you do when suffering comes? When trials overwhelm you? When you are drowning under the troubles of this world? Can you actually do what Saint Paul claims that we Christians do in the Epistle lesson — that you “rejoice in [your] sufferings”? If I visit you in the hospital, you will often hear me paraphrase Saint. Paul's claim this way: “Can we actually give thanks to God for daily bread, today, even though it is coming through doctors who poke and prod, through IV's and not a full dinner plate of steak and potatoes and other delights, when it comes through various medical treatments some of which might cause pain before they cause relief? Can we, by faith, be brought to the point where we can recognize God's grace in Jesus Christ even hidden amongst our sufferings?
What do you do when suffering comes? Pray. Seek help where help might be found. If one of my children were suffering, I know I would go wherever the trail leads to help. I would pray more earnestly, perhaps, than I normally do, which is typical of a sinner like you and me. We truly tend to pray as we ought, with an earnest and persevering faith that knows and remembers that God wants to hear our prayers, only when troubles assail us. Otherwise, when things are smoothly sailing along, we tend to take our Lord and His blessings for granted. When the blessings that come to us are not so visible, not so enjoyable, but have become hidden in the cross bearing and sufferings of this temporal life our Lord finally gets our attention and our prayers.
Perhaps a good Lenten discipline would be, suffering or not, to begin better prayer and devotional habits at home on a daily basis. Use the daily prayer guides and Scripture reading guides found in your Lutheran Service Book hymnals on pages 294–304 if you would like a suggested program to help. The Concordia Readers' Edition also has a suggested daily reading plan to take you through the Lutheran Confessions in a systematic way.
Whatever the case may be, when our suffering comes, when discipline from God comes, there is a purpose to it all, and one clear object. “Suffering [and discipline] produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5). God's love, which has been poured into our hearts, is simply that we have been justified by faith; we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him, who is the very essence and expression of God's love, we have been given the gift of faith, and that faith consists of and finds itself in the hope, character, perseverance, endurance, and suffering of Jesus Christ.
The Canaanite woman in the Gospel read today has no standing before God on her own, because of her lineage or anything else. She and her people, the descendants of Noah's grandson Canaan, were under God's curse due to the unbelief of Canaan's father, Ham. She suffers from the curse of sin. She suffers because her daughter suffers. When your child suffers, whether from the flu or from a serious, life threatening heart condition, you suffer too. Yet, has anyone here ever had a child that suffers from demon possession? Some of you with rebellious teenagers or sugar–overdosed five year olds might be tempted to raise your hands.
Truthfully, however, all of you parents ought to be raising your hands right now. We forget so easily that our children are sinful from the time they were conceived. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All children conceived in sin are, from the moment of their conception, stolen possessions of the devil himself. It is why, in Luther's baptismal rite, we place our hand on the head of the child or person to be baptized and say, “Depart thou unclean spirit, and make room for the Holy Spirit.” This is not a superstition; these are not meaningless words, a cute thing for the pastor to say. This is confessing the truth of God's Word — this child is an enemy of God, and God is present in the holy waters to reclaim what belongs to Him.
That's why our Lord enjoins us to baptize “all nations” — and this means all ages. It is a gift God desires all to have. To be healed of demon possession. To die to the old Adam and rise to new life in Christ. To be reconciled to God. To be given peace with God. To be justified on account of Christ. To have sins forgiven. The Canaanite woman was not crazy. She might have been desperate, but she was not crazy. She had heard about Jesus from others, Mark's Gospel tells us. She believed the preaching she had heard about Jesus. God's Word did not return empty. The Holy Spirit kindled faith in her. The object of that faith was Jesus Christ. Nothing — not even her own daughter's sufferings; not even our Lord's little tests of her faith — could take her eyes of faith off of their only object. She had the gift of perseverance, because she had the gift of faith that believed that this humble man standing before her was the “LORD, Son of David”.
You are not crazy. You might be desperate in your sufferings, but you are not crazy to have faith and hope in the words and promises of God in Holy Scripture. To believe that pouring water and saying “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” to a little child, or even to anyone, can forgive sins, can reconcile to God, can heal of demon possession, can do anything, is considered crazy and even desperate by so many misled Christians. Their faith has other objects. They do not hold fast to Christ alone. Baptism goes by the wayside. Holy Absolution goes by the wayside. The Holy Supper goes by the wayside. The Divine Service, the hymns, the liturgy goes by the wayside. These promises and instruments of God are meaningless to these people. They are in danger of losing sight of Christ.
We are always endangering ourselves by trying to lose sight of Christ and putting our faith and trust in ourselves and in the ways of this world. Without the help and mercy of God, on our own we cannot resist temptation, we take our Lord for granted, we give in to grievous sin, idolatry, hateful thoughts, words, and deeds done, and good thoughts, words, and deeds left undone. The object of our faith, the one to whom we turn for relief and aid, must be Jesus Christ and Him alone. Because He alone perfectly had hope in His Father, Jesus alone perfectly had the character to resist temptation and not take His Father's mercy for granted. Jesus alone perfectly had the perseverance and endurance to take upon Himself all of the sins, hatred, and attacks of the Devil and still fulfill His Father's will. Jesus alone perfectly suffered in our place.
Because our Lord Jesus Christ perfectly put His faith, hope, and trust in His Father in Heaven and fulfilled His will perfectly, the Heavenly Father no longer sees us as incomplete, imperfect enemies, no longer sees our sinful, wretched hearts, but sees us as redeemed people with whom He has made peace, whom He has judged to be not guilty on account of His Son. In Christ, our sufferings, perseverance, character, hope, and faith are perfected and given their value in the sight of the Father.
In Christ, the suffering, perseverance, and faith of the Canaanite woman and her daughter found their object and their perfection. All those who trust in Christ will persevere to their ultimate healing from demon possession, they are saints who are being preserved in the true faith unto life everlasting and the perfection of body and soul that awaits them there. Here in time, however, we must have the perseverance of faith that knows that our Lord is listening even if all we hear immediately is silence to our pleas for mercy. We must have the perseverance of faith to know that our Lord desires to show mercy to us, even when we are condemned in our sins by His Word of Law that reminds us of our sinful past. We must have the perseverance of faith to know that our Lord has great gifts of forgiveness, salvation, and healing from sin for us to receive, even if they come as humble crumbs from His table.
Our brother in Christ, Raymond Hillebrand, died this past week after being attacked by a severe episode of cardiac arrest. He was just shy of 84 years of age. Yet only days before our Lord saw fit to take him from this vale of tears, this fellow saint of Christ's Church so eagerly received with joy the forgiveness of sins found in our Lord's body and blood. He was preserved in the true faith, given the gift of faith that perseveres even in the face of infections, cardiac arrest, congestive heart disease, a broken tailbone, and a host of other sufferings that he faced with courage, hope, and faith in Christ. He had what the Canaanite woman had, and he had what you and I have even now — a God who pours out His love into our hearts, who gives us the gift of faith through preaching to us His Word of hope and consolation, who washes us in our baptism, feeds us with the medicine of immortality, absolves us of our failures and speaks peace and hope and comfort in our ear. Raymond could not receive the Blessed Sacrament enough — he had faith in Christ's promises, and never mind anything else. He could recite the confession of sins by memory, but he would give an even stronger and more confident “Amen” upon his absolution. He knew that the crumbs of His Lord's Table — humble men preaching humble words of absolution and comfort, humble bread and wine that contained his Lord's own body and blood — these “crumbs” were enough for his eternal good. It is the same perseverance and faith, the same holding onto Christ that the Canaanite woman had.
What do you do when suffering comes? When trials overwhelm you? When you are drowning under the troubles of this world? Can you actually do what Saint Paul claims that we Christians do in the epistle lesson — that you “rejoice in [your] sufferings”? Can we, by faith, be brought to the point where we can recognize God's love and grace for us in Jesus Christ even hidden amongst our sufferings?
Christians look in faith to their Lord Jesus Christ. He alone is able to preserve and defend us in this life and in the life to come. He alone is able to forgive your sins, to assure you that you are at peace with your Father in Heaven. He alone is able to wash you from your demon possession and place you safely into the ark of His Church. He alone is able to feed you with His body and blood that forgives and preserves and heals you. He alone is able to send you out to the world with the hope, endurance, character, and faith that it takes to resist temptation and to reflect His love to your neighbors. He alone is able, and He alone does send His Holy Spirit to gather you back in week after week, and even day after day, to once again cleanse and restore and feed you for the sufferings and cross bearing to come. In Him alone, dear saints in Christ, is your perseverance, your eternal good.
God grant that all of us baptized saints in Christ, with perseverance and faith, continue to keep our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. May we continually pray for His mercy and deliverance from all that the devil, the world, and our flesh might afflict us with. May we always hold onto Him who persevered for us, even unto His death on a cross. God grant it all for Jesus' sake. Amen.
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