Suffering

1989 (Year C), 24 March / Good Friday

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

 Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.  

Once we had a country and we thought it fair, Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread;
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.
Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: ‘They must die’; we were in his mind my dear, we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews.
Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.
Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours my dear, not one of them was ours.
Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me my dear, looking for you and me.

As if we needed telling suffering isolates. The poem by Auden, foretells the horror of the holocaust as the couple are separated and isolated from the society they knew so well. The same feelings are experienced by groups in our society who know persecution. And we as individuals know that illness, bereavement, sadness all drive wedges between even our closest intimates and ourselves. The pain is ours and nobody else’s.

The grief and the pain may be shared as it was to some degree in the poem, and as it sometimes is between groups of people, but ultimately it’s ours as individuals to bear alone. As a child I was bullied, as I recall now, almost mercilessly over period of two or three years, and although I was supported by caring, loving parents and a sympathetic teacher or two, in the end it was me who had to bear the pain and hurt.

And if suffering separates us even from those we love most it certainly isolates us from God. If I had a pound for every time I’ve sat and listened to people getting angry at God for some crisis they were facing there would be little need for me to work ever again. The suffering feel bewildered, neglected and forgotten by God.

Sometimes, and you will all be able to remember, as you think of the times in your lives when you suffered, things get said that would not otherwise have been said. We tell of our love for those undergoing pain. These are creative times and heal, they bring you closer to the one who is hurting and that is good yet it hardly justifies the experience being endured.

No doubt a new level of intimacy existed between Abraham and Isaac after their experience in that momentous story we heard as the first reading this morning. And I have no doubt that the most admirable examples of courage and devotion come from the most appalling suffering. I have seen that good does sometimes come out of evil but it never seems to justify the suffering that people go through and the isolation which some have to endure.

The truth is that we will never solve the issue of suffering satisfactorily nor will we discover why some people have to endure more than others or even why we feel so separated from those feeling pain. Trying to sort things out like this though is a game and we will never win. It will always remain a mystery.

A story may help and it’s one you may already know. In a concentration camp in Germany a young boy of fourteen was hung publicly for some trifling offence. All the inmates were made to walk passed the boy as he hung there. As two men walked passed one turned to the other and said, ‘Where is your God now?’ A voice from behind murmured ‘He’s hanging there.’

And so he is, for in truth, no matter how alone we may feel, God is there suffering alongside creation. ‘If I go to down to the depths of Hell you are there, If I climb the heavens you are there.’ He is suffering alongside the creation he will finally and joyfully save. AMEN