The Pain of Irrelevance

1 Peter 4:12-19

No one wants to suffer.

How many exercise programs end in failure when the run hurts? How many of us forego some event because it would mean standing in line interminably? How many us avoid routine medical procedures because they hurt? Who willingly decides that hurting yourself is the best possible option? We smile at the “no pain; no gain” gladiators in the gym, but refuse to be one! 

No one wants to suffer.

But there is suffering, and then there is suffering.

Peter seems intent that his congregation understand the difference and the distinction in knowing what is suffering that is worth enduring and what is not.

Good suffering, if you will, is that which comes because one so embodies the call of Christ to be servants of love that the world rejects them. He asks his congregation to consider this bumper sticker thought--if you were on trial for your faith, would there be enough evidence to convict? 

Of course, Peter’s epistle appeared in a time when being a follower of Christ was not the most promising prospect one could choose. This letter appeared during a time of persecution as Rome was faltering and sought scapegoats to blame, rounding up followers of Christ because they were different, appeared to act contrary to conventional wisdom, and, in part, just because. To be found a Christian, then, was a serious risk. It would bring suffering--real and actual suffering that could well end in death. Peter wants to offer hope in that if somebody runs afoul of the world for following Christ, it will be all right--their suffering will lead to glory--immediate redemption in the Kingdom of God.

Times change.

No matter how often particular pundits try to make a case that following Jesus will still lead to suffering in our world, in our context, such a claim is laughable. The Church is part of the landscape and is not going anywhere except if pure, simple apathy kills it. That is a possibility, but suffering for Christ is not something any of us who gather in our mainline churches is ever going to have to worry about. 

Unless we reconsider what suffering can be.

In our American context, folks such as we Presbyterians are seen as regular, exceptionally ordinary human beings. Despite the mountains of paper (still) that flow from our headquarters in Louisville, KY, no major outlet of news waits with bated breath for our statements on much of anything. President Obama will not be making pilgrimage to Louisville anytime soon, nor will world leaders seek audience with the Moderator of the General Assembly as they do with Pope Francis or the Dalai Lama. Nope, we will be left alone to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. 

We will be left to make our relevance known on a much smaller scale--that of being practitioners of Jesus’ way in the neighborhoods, towns, campuses, and workplaces we inhabit on a daily basis. And for us Presbyterians, that will probably not even include preaching in the lunch room or handing out pamphlets in the parking lot. Instead, it will mean conveying and communicating the other-centered, self-emptying love found in Christ as we meet other people each day. It will mean seeking to embody the compassion of Jesus as we deal with other regular, normal, occasionally annoying human beings in the ordinary time of life. Some folks will have no idea whatsoever we are on a mission. 

That is our suffering--to do something as if it meant the absolute world to us because it does that a good many people see as totally irrelevant.

On the scale of global human experience, such suffering hardly registers a blip. It really isn’t suffering, truth be told. 

But it is meaningful.

It is meaningful because, like a mustard seed, it can transform and transcend life as it is and as we know it as it grows from our individual action into something that touches more and more human lives. As it grows, it might radically alter the experience of human beings locked in suffering we cannot imagine. 

For instance, a young woman hears a sermon about Christ calling ordinary people to be his ministers, decides that at 23, she needs to do something meaningful before life swallows her, accepts a call to go on a mission to Zambia where she ends up caring for a family whose infant is dying; and her love, patience, and endurance with them in their ordeal gives them a new view of human existence before God. They become lights in their village, their village becomes a beacon, and who knows what might happen from there?

See?

Joining an irrelevant community of faith changes everything when those within it embrace their dismissal and do it anyway, transforming themselves into instruments of God.

Go and do likewise.