Just a sec

 

Sermon for the third Sunday after Easter

A little while?

The word Our Lord uses 

is mikron.

 It's a moment, a passing thought, 

an insignificant length of time. 

Our Lord might as well have said, "just a sec!"

For the apostles, that "just a sec!" 

is three days of fear, worry, 

horror and despair: 

three days which will 

change them radically.

 Yet, for the rest of us,

 our suffering goes on for years. 

It's not a second; 

it's not a micro amount of time. 

It hurts and it lasts 

seemingly forever!

In the world around us, 

we still see the effects of pain and hurt

 ricocheting backwards and forwards 

as one person,

or one people, 

seek justice for the agony 

that they are feeling. 

They want the pain to stop, 

and pain is not something 

that goes away when the body heals. 

An injury can leave the body 

with a weakness, 

and then there are 

the mental, physical and spiritual scars 

which never seem to leave. 

And so, 

many seek retribution,

 to inflict pain and suffering 

on those whom they think 

caused their sorrow.

Don't the apostles 

have emotional trauma?

 They surely can't forget 

the betrayal on Thursday, 

the blood on Friday 

and the buried on Saturday. 

They surely cannot forget 

the eyes of God Himself 

dimming into death, 

even if those eyes are now 

once again

bright and bursting with 

Life and Truth and Love. 

And the Lord says, "just a sec!" 

Isn't that a dismissal 

of all that the disciples 

have gone through?

[PAUSE]

Many people call God 

to account for 

all the heartache, misfortune 

and injustice in the world. 

"Why would a good God permit evil," 

they say, 

sometimes with 

eyes filled with their own 

hurt and outrage,

sometimes with 

the sneer of cynicism 

and even hatred for God, 

sometimes with 

an air of dismissal for any belief 

that we hold dear.

"Just a sec!"

To answer why 

our God permits evil 

is beyond our understanding. 

To know the true answer to this 

would be to know the mind of God 

and our minds are too small 

and imperfect for that. 

We can only know 

the answer to this 

when we are perfect,

and we are not perfect now. 

And what would the answer do? 

Convince the atheists and cynics? 

No. 

Some people will never be convinced, 

but God loves them so much 

as to respect their free will 

to make that choice: 

but that choice is there, 

and it comes with 

pierced hands, 

pierced feet, 

pierced head, 

pierced side 

and scourged back. 

There are wounds 

on Our Lord that never go away.

[PAUSE]

Never go away? 

That seems strange. 

Just a second or two of sorrow 

and then joy?

 Even with those wounds? 

Even with all that agony 

on the cross: 

an agony that we choose 

to remind ourselves 

with the crucifix, 

this image of our Saviour bleeding and dying?

 If we keep a crucifix, 

are we not holding on 

to sorrow and pain and death?

Of course we are! 

The fact that Our Lord keeps 

His wounds for us 

even in Eternity as 

the Lamb-that-was-slain 

means that His pain for us 

means something. 

This means that our pain, 

the pains that we suffer here and now, 

mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, 

are all met in the cross. 

We see them nailed to the cross 

on our crucifix with Our God. 

Our Lord suffers pain

because we suffer pain. 

Our Lord suffers injustice 

because we suffer injustice. 

Our Lord suffers humiliation, 

because we suffer humiliation. 

Every sorrow that 

we go through in life 

is met in Jesus, the Man of Sorrows. 

He doesn't just meet them 

on this world 

passing from moment to moment, 

but He meets them in Heaven 

where there is only the Eternal Now. 

In saying "a little while," 

He is firmly consigning 

the pains and miseries of life 

to this passing world, 

nailing them there so that

 they do not define the lives of those 

who are suffering in Him. 

He tells us that 

our suffering matters enough 

for Him to suffer and live 

with the effects of our suffering, 

but that our suffering will end: 

it will not accompany us 

into Eternal bliss with Him. 

In that sense, 

to ask "why does a good God permit evil?"

 becomes meaningless 

because the evil passes away 

as we journey in our lives 

to become perfect in Christ 

- a perfection which is only reached 

through Christ. 

We have to endure sorrow, 

and some of us must 

endure it very sorely, 

but we see the crucifix 

and Our Lord on the cross 

knowing what we are going through 

by direct experience. 

He is not comparing His suffering 

with ours, 

but sharing in our suffering 

so that we might share in His joy. 

"Just a sec"?

While God is not comparing 

His suffering with ours, 

He is showing us a taste 

of the Eternity He is offering us. 

The crucifixion matters to Him 

but is a cause for joy to Him in Eternity

 because through it we are saved, 

not a cause of sorrow 

because of the agony He went through.

 Sorrow passes away, 

but joy is Eternal. 

And us? 

We have to allow our sorrow to pass away, 

or at least permit God to take it away 

when He will. 

Some sorrow is very hard 

to let go of, 

but God says clearly 

that it is not part of our perfection in Him. 

Yet, if we use our sorrow 

to direct us to joy in Christ, 

we have the means of letting it go 

through God's gift of hope.

This is why we glory 

in the cross of Christ,

 for by that cross, 

Christ has overcome the world. 

This is why we venerate Christ's cross 

and our own crosses that we bear. 

Alleluia!